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