Appeal For Hazizi Family

FORWARD FROM UNITY CENTRE, GLASGOW
The Hazizi family who were detained on Saturday while reporting in Glasgow are due to be put on a Home Office charter flight to Albania and Kosovo on Thursday at 9am.

This is the family who recieived huge support and publicity after their family were dawn raided in their Red Road flat in the north of Glasgow last year, and who were then released from detention. The eldest daughter, Merita (22), is a student of Maths and Physics at Strathclyde University, having won the only yearly free place for asylum seekers. She still has an exam to sit, so this detention flies in the face of the memorandum of understanding agreed between the Home Office and the Scottish Executive that students would be allowed to complete their education and would not be detained if they still had exams to sit.

At the same time it is unbelievable that this family should be considered suitable for removal since the start of the “legacy case review” in Scotland. In the month before the last Scottish election, the Scottish Executive wrote to the Home Office asking that families who were well integrated should be looked at favourably. It is difficult to imagine how much more this family could have integrated in the Scottish community–they have been here for 6 years, have a daughter studying at a great Scottish university and a son in a long-term relationship with a Scottish woman with a child of his own

Diana and Naim are still being kept in Dungavel despite the fact that their two sons Gani (20) and David (15) were not detained. David, a minor, will be left in Scotland if his parents and his big sister are forcibly removed. Son, Gani, has a long-term Scottish girlfriend with whom he has a year old daughter, and Merita isn’t only close to completing any university degree, but depite the stress and difficulty of being detained and dawn raided last year is completing a Physics degree–one of the hardest science degrees anyone can do.

On Saturday, as the family left the reporting centre in a blacked out Group4Securicor van to Dungavel, mum Diana collapsed and turned blue. At first the guards were reluctant to divert to a hospital but after repeated requests the family were taken to the Royal Infirmary. Merita and Naim were not allowed to see her while she recieved emergency treatment from doctors. After an hour Merita and her dad where forced to leave her mum behind and were taken to Dungavel. Mum, Diana, joined them 5 hours later after she had recovered from a serious panic attack.

Dad Naim, Mum Diana and Merita, have recieved removal directions for 9.00am on flight PVT640/PVT641 to Pristina/Tirana on Thursday 28th June. We do not know the name of the airline that leases the planes for these privately chartered enforced deportations, we think these flights operate out of Stansted Airport, and there have been 69 such ‘Charter’ flights under “Operation Aardvark” since February 2006, removing 1,578 people. It is possible therefore that other Albanian and Kosovan families are due to forcibly returned on the same day as the Hazizi’s as well.

Urgent action is required to help this family.

What you can do to help:
1) Send faxes to Liam Byrne, Immigration Minister on 0207 0354745 demanding that the Hazizi family be allowed to stay in the U.K.
Remember to quote their Home Office Reference Number H1082859

2) Send faxes to
- First Minister, Alex Salmond, on 01779 474460
- MSP Nicola Sturgeon, on 0141 204 1776 (constituency) and 0131 348 6475 (parliament)
- MSP Sandra White, on 0141 204 1781 (constituency) and 0131 348 5945 (parliament)
asking for urgent action that the removal of the family be stopped. An example letter is attached, but if you write your own then remember to quote their Home Office Reference Number H1082859

3) Phone Stansted Airport on 0870 000 0303 to tell them about the case and ask them to cancel the flight
–
The Unity Centre
30 Ibrox Street
Glasgow G51 1AQ
0141 427 7992
theunitycentre@btconnect.com
www.unitycentreglasgow.org

Raids on asylum seekers’ families must stop, says commissioner

The Children’s Commissioner for Scotland yesterday called for the Home Office to end immediately the detention of asylum seeker families settled in the country, describing the practice as “inhumane”.

Kathleen Marshall told the Herald she believed the removal of thousands of so-called legacy families, including children who have lived in the country for more than three years, should be stopped and the Home Office should complete a review of the system urgently.

She gave her damning indictment of detention and dawn raids after speaking to “traumatised” children from asylum-seeking families now being educated in schools in Glasgow.

As part of her fact-finding mission, Ms Marshall has become involved in the case of Saima Asim, a 35-year-old Pakistani mother-of-two who was yesterday feared to be under threat of detention with her children after having lived in Glasgow for six years.

Ms Asim, who left Pakistan with her sons Ali, now 11, and seven-year-old Bilal, to seek refuge from her violent husband and in-laws, was expected to be forcibly removed after being asked to meet immigration officials in Glasgow with her sons. They have been given a two-week reprieve. The Asims are among the 4000 people in more than 1000 legacy asylum families in Scotland.

Ms Marshall described a “very emotive meeting” with children of asylum-seeker families at St Brendan’s Primary School in Yoker, where Mrs Asim’s children are pupils, and at Drumchapel High.

“I am not a politician,” she said. “I am only interested in the rights and welfare of young people. All these stories just do not sound like Scotland. It sounds like some strange thing from some foreign country.

“It is really concerning when you hear children with Scottish accents saying if they go back to the country they came from, their father or mother will be killed.

“It seems, on the one hand, we constantly talk about the need to teach children citizenship but when you hear primary schoolchildren through tearful eyes saying, I hate the government’, what messages are they getting of what we value in this country?

“One boy at primary school told us his father gave him some money and told him if immigration come, just run and go up to any group of people and pretend you are with them. Now that is quite scary, telling a child to do that.

“You hear about sleeping on friends’ floors, youngsters jumping off balconies and running away. She said the system of dealing with applications from asylum seekers for refugee status must be speeded up and meantime those with children who have settled in Scotland must be allowed to stay: “Some of these families have been here for so long, they have roots in the community and there are many people, including me, who feel it is basically inhumane to send them back.”

Yesterday, the Home Office announced a new amendment to the UK Borders Bill will, for the first time, place a legal obligation on the Border and Immigration Agency to keep children safe from harm.

The agency will have a duty to have regard to a statutory code of practice when dealing with children as it carries out its immigration functions.

But while there is a review under way of family removals, the Home Office said it would not address the issue of an amnesty for legacy cases.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Families with children are detained only when absolutely necessary and for as short a period of time as possible. We feel it is in the best interests of the children to keep them with their parents.”

My sons fear being sent to a country they don’t know’
Saima Asim quit Pakistan for Glasgow to seek asylum after leaving her violent husband and in-laws.

Six years on, the 35-year-old from Yoker fears being sent back to Pakistan with her sons Ali, now 11 and seven-year-old Bilal.

Yesterday, with the support of campaigners for human rights of asylum seekers, she attended a tearful meeting with immigration officials in Glasgow, fully expecting to be detained. She was ordered to attend the meeting with her sons – ringing alarm bells among campaigners, including Glasgow-based Positive Action In Housing and the Unity Centre.

There were more tears when she came out of the meeting with a two-week reprieve.

“It is a great relief but I am aware it is just temporary,” she said. “We are always worried about what is going to happen. I am a mother and I don’t know what to do. My children, who are both at school, like it here.

“We were terrified about the meeting because normally it is just me who reports and lots of families have been taken away recently.

“If they detain us, it will be the worst thing. I tried to save myself and my children. No-one will stand up for us in Pakistan. We came here for refuge, not benefits.”

Ali and Bilal, who attend St Brendan’s Primary School, have broad Glaswegian accents. Both are worried about what is going to happen to them after being aware of schoolfriends who had been detained by the Home Office.

“They won’t let you out, you can’t go out, they keep you locked up and maybe they will send you back to your country,” said Ali.

“But Pakistan’s not my country, because it doesn’t feel like it and I don’t want to go back. My best friend was one day in class and the next day, he wasn’t. He never came back.

“I tell my wee brother maybe they will take us away one day so he has some idea what’s going to happen.

“Bilal cries about it because he was really small when he came here. We don’t remember anything about Pakistan.”

Robina Qureshi, executive director of Positive Action in Housing, the charity which has played a pivotal role in challenging racism and discrimination, particularly in housing, said: “She has a fresh claim in for refugee status and we are just concerned nothing should happen to this family.”

12:38am today

By MARTIN WILLIAMS