Protests against Dawn raids on Scottish Asylum Families Continue

The issue of dawn raids against asylum seekers made headline news in Scotland again last week when an immigration snatch squad entered the quiet community of Kingsway at 6.45 am on Monday October 2nd and dragged 24 year old Caritas Sony and her two kids from their beds.
Caritas was handcuffed and separated from her two children who were screaming in the other room. Caritas was then put into a caged van. Her distressed children were taken in a separate vehicle.
After being ‘processed’ at Brand Street, the young mother and two children were taken in another van to Dungavel. During that 40 minute journey, Caritas’s two year old was thrown from his improperly fastened baby seat. Caritas was helpless to do anything because she was told not to touch her children by the immigration officials. On arrival at dungavel, Caritas was handed baby milk for babies six months and upwards, while her baby was four months old and required specific prescription milk. She had to wait till the evening for appropriate baby milk and cried constantly.
Kingsway is where the Vucaj kids lived until they were the victims of a brutal, humiliating dawn raid almost exactly a year ago. The area comprises 6 high rises on the corner of Anniesland road and Dumbarton road in Glasgow.
We published the family’s testimony. The next day, Tuesday 3rd October, 120 Kingsway residents, school teachers and supporters turned out at 5.30 am in peaceful protest at dawn raids in their communities, on their neighbours. 
Around 6.30 am an immigration snatch squad turned up in Kingsway to take another family. Watched by STV cameras – thank you STV – protesters linked arms and demanded the snatch squad cease the dawn raid on one of their neighbours. After a 40 minute stand off, the chief of police informed the protesters there would be no dawn raid and the snatch squad would leave. Sure enough, the snatch squad complete with stab vests and metal battering rams scuttled off empty handed into their caged vans, waved off by the residents. Within minutes it transpired that the family they had come to remove had been part of the dawn peace vigil. The relief on the Uzul family’s faces was obvious. Mr Uzul looked terrified. His daughter, who attends Drumchapel High Secondary, cried when she realised what had just happened. The residents met later that evening. Since that day, the Kingsway Community have been on constant vigil in the hours before dawn, watching for immigration squads coming for one of their families.
On Wednesday 4th October, the immigration snatch squad visited Cardonald, where there has been heavy BNP leafleting and severe racism problems. Cem Coban went out onto the balcony of his 20th floor flat and threatened to throw himself over. His wife needed medical attention. Meanwhile their two children, 14 year old son, and three year old daughter, were forced to witness the drama inside their own home that was about to unfold for the next 11 hours. Neighbours in Cardonald gathered outside to prevent the removal. A crowd of around 60 residents gathered. The Dawn raid vans were sent back by police, unable to carry out the removal. Numerous ambulances, police vans and cars arrived. Around 1 pm Cem Coban was taken by police to a waiting van. when the van tried to leave, women, children and elderly people blocked the van. Some neighbours shouted racist statements and ‘just knock them down’ from the flats above. The police van eventually left after the police announced that the dawn raid vans had left and Cem Coban was being taken to the police station and would go to court the next day. an ambulance was called for Mrs Coban. Their two children stayed with a neighbour. On Wednesday evening the residents had a meeting to discuss peaceful protest. A further meeting took place on Thursday.
On Friday 6th October, Caritas Sony and her children were unceremoniously released from dungavel Removal centre and allowed to return to her community. Why were they detained and then suddenly released? They had never absconded so why was such humiliation heaped upon Caritas and her children made to suffer? What about the psychological damage being done to the children?
On Saturday, over 500 people met in George Square to call for an amnesty for Scottish asylum families and an end to the policy of dawn raids.
Our political leaders, those that instigate these dawn raids and those that keep turning a blind eye, seem to forget some important facts.
First, the families that are being removed have been here for years, some as long as six years, they have put down roots, they have followed every ‘integration’ policy put out by schools, local authorities and the government, they have given back a sense of dignity and neighbourliness to communities that were otherwise ridden with social deprivation and could not be ‘cured’ by local or central government led initiatives. Their children attend local schools, they have made friends, begun relationships, had babies. They are the local communities.
Second, this country is losing 25,000 people each year through emigration, it has the fastest declining population in Europe. Scotland’s political leaders are effectively standing by under the excuse of ‘its a reserved matter’ while Westminster barbarically sends back our future lifeblood.
Finally, if the home Office thinks that Scottish people are so sheep-like that we will simply stand by and let its barbaric policies be continued on Scottish soil, then it should think again. I was told last week by a Scottish MP who should know better that the ‘dawn raids will continue’ and i should accept that. I had no choice but to reply with my observation ‘then so will the protest’. And this week every day there were further vigils and protests at Kingsway, Cardonald and Brand Street Home Office where the dawn raid vans leave from.
Here in Scotland we have good reason to fight for humane asylum policies, to fight against the subservience being imposed on us by Westminister by its reserved asylum excuse, to fight against dawn raids and to fight for the right of asylum seekers to stay here. Of course our observation is that the protests will continue. No community is going to take kindly to their neighbours, whole families, being removed like criminals, when plainly they are not. is criminal is that the Home Office thinks its okay to rip whole families out of their communities when those self same families were in fact stuck in an asylum system for many years, and in many cases for the whole lives of their children who know no other country than Scotland. what is criminal is that Scotland, a country is losing its future lifeblood, because of an insane policy dictated by Westminister, for Westminster’s interests.
Apparently the first minister is having urgent talks with the home secretary John Reid, himself from Scotland. Let’s not go there again. What we need is urgent action not urgent talks. Asylum might be reserved but our consciences are not. Cos there’s nothing reserved about the neighbour that has to wake up at five o’clock in the morning and hear their neighbour’s door being booted in by metal battering rams and children being dragged out screaming. And there’s nothing reserved about the Scottish school teacher in a Drumchapel school who doesn’t know whether his kids didn’t turn up that morning because either they were off with flu or because they disappeared because the Home Office dawn raid van’s came out and dragged their children away screaming and crying, without even so much as a goodbye. there’s nothing reserved about whole communities who have had to endure humiliation, fear and poverty, have not been allowed to work and been forced to stand still in their lives for years with no possibility of planning their future. It upsets everyone, there’s nothing reserved about the pain that’s being felt because of these dawn raids and that’s why the pressure is growing to stop the dawn raids, and to boot that tactic out of Scotland.