 For Immediate Release Monday 13 June 2022 PRESS RELEASE: Stand Up To Racism, Care4Calais will join mass protest at the Home Office ahead of 14 June day of action to oppose Rwanda offshore detention 📣 TODAY! MONDAY 13 JUNE 5.30pm outside the Home Office Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF Stand Up To Racism and Care4Calais will protest alongside others tonight, Monday 13 June, 5.30pm outside the Home Office, against the widely condemned government plans for offshore detention in Rwanda. Tomorrow, Tuesday 14 June, Stand Up To Racism and Care4Calais have called a Britain-wide Day of Action to stop Rwanda offshore detention. See the emerging list of planned protests HERE On the eve of the first planned flight, the PCS union and Care4Calais legal team are in court appealing the result of their submission for an injunction last Friday to stop the flight going ahead. Presently (12.00 13/06/22), Care4Calais has reported, “Another Rwanda deportee has had his ticket cancelled. “Twenty-one people have now had their Rwanda tickets cancelled, but ten still have live tickets for tomorrow.” Protests took place at the Brook detention centre near Gatwick yesterday, Sunday 12 June, and followed another mass protest that stopped an immigration raid, in Peckham, London on Satutday 11 June. This mass action echoed what happened last month in Hackney, and in Edinburgh’s Nicolson Square, and come a year on from the events on Kenmure Street in Glasgow’s Pollokshields. Care4Calais and Stand Up To Racism are also organising a major bloc on the TUC’s upcoming ‘We demand better’ demonstration in London on Saturday 18 June. Stand Up To Racism is also organising a series of regional and local rallies, From Offshore Detention to the Nationality and Borders Act, End the Hostile Environment – #AllRefugeesWelcome These mobilising rallies are lined up around Refugee Week in June, to scrap the borders act, oppose offshore detention in Rwanda, and organise networks in localities that can challenge the hostile environment, and stop detention raids when the Home Office attempts to inflict these attacks on our neighbours: Leeds rally, Tue 14 June, 7pm York rally, Fri 17 June, 7pm Glasgow rally, Mon 20 June, 7pm Sheffield rally, Wed 22 June, 7pm Birmingham rally, Thu 23 June, tbc — Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said “PCS believes that the government’s Rwanda plan is unlawful. In the past five years, we have lodged five judicial review applications against the government where they have breached the law. We are determined to hold them to account over this latest scheme. “It appears this government have learned nothing from the Windrush scandal, among others. Our members are sick of clearing up the mess resulting from ministerial incompetence. PCS is not prepared to countenance our members being put in potentially dangerous and traumatic situations, where they may be asked to act illegally and be liable to prosecution. “PCS is determined to work for a more humane environment on asylum and immigration. This would give our members the time, space and resources that they need to carry out their jobs properly and would improve the experience of refugees. This latest judicial review application is key to that endeavour.” Clare Moseley, Care4Calais CEO, said “The one thing that all refugees have in common is that something truly terrible has happened to them.“Now they are facing the further trauma of being sent by force across the globe. Sending them to Rwanda will abuse their rights, cost taxpayers millions and break international law.“We’re fighting it, and we believe the public will support us.” Diane Abbott MP said “From the disgraceful treatment of refugees, outrageous deportation flights and the widening of stop and search this government is engaged in an all-sided attack on the rights of Black and Asian people and other ethnic minorities. We have to prepare to fight back on all these issues and more.” Weyman Bennett, co convenor Stand Up To Racism, said: “Johnson, Patel and the government is hellbent, despite the incredible growth of an anti racist movement in the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and opposition to racism, to intensify their racist hostile environment for refugees and migrants and make people in the most desperate situations seeking safety into the scapegoats for a crisis and attacks on living standards that they did nothing to cause.” “The PCS and Care4Calais did brilliantly in their joint legal challenge against Priti Patel’s horrifying ‘pushbacks’ in the Channel that would undoubtedly lead to more needless deaths. “Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Act that threatens the citizenship of some 6 million people in Britain. The act’s assertion of a two tier system that defines anyone arriving via ‘illegal’ routes, which is the vast majority, as undeserving refugees and removes their right to asylum, represents a step change and full scale assault. As many charities and organisations have pointed out, it is in breach of international human rights law. “That’s why Stand Up To Racism is joining PCS, Care4Calais and all anti racist and human rights motivated opposition in challenging the unthinkabley cruel, callous and deeply ideological plans for offshore detention in Rwanda, and why we are intensifying our fight and organising the wider anti racist movement across Britain to scrap the Nationality and Borders Act. “One year one from the magnificent mass action in Pollokshields, Kenmure Street, we have seen similar mass actions in Edinburgh, Hackney and now Peckham. We are organising to prepare in every area for this kind of response to the Home Office and its attacks on out neighbours.” For more information, interviews and further quotes: info@standuptoracism.org.uk |
