Latest News from Positive Action in Housing

UPDATE: 21ST November 2007 - 5pm
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE GERMAN AUTHORITIES HAVE CONFIRMED THEY EXPECT MELTEM AVCIL AND HER MOTHER IN DUSSELDORF TOMORROW THURSDAY 22 NOVEMBER AT 10:00 HRS. THE UK AUTHORITIES HAVE NOT GIVEN TIME OR PLACE OF THE FLIGHT DEPARTURE.
THE FAMILY IS AT BEDFORD HOSPITAL, UNDER CLOSE GUARD.
THE NATIONAL UNION OF TEACHERS HAS NOW GIVEN THEIR FULL BACKING TO MELTEM AVCIL’S BID TO REMAIN IN THE UK.

Inside Meltems Card

We have just been informed that government authorization has been granted to Home Office officials to charter a private jet to remove 14 year old Hall Cross Lower pupil, Meltem Avcil, and her mother, either today or first thing tomorrow. We have been informed that removal is IMMINENT and “use of force” has been authorized.

Meltem Avcil, whose 14th birthday is today, had been assessed by doctors from Medical Justice yesterday. There was concern about Meltem’s psychological state, as a result of being incarcerated for three months at Yarlswood Detention Centre, after being dawn raided by an immigration snatch squad at their flat in Doncaster, their home for the past six years. Doctors requested she be transferred to Bedford hospital for assessment.

Until literally minutes ago, Meltem’s supporters believed she had been transferred to Bedford hospital along with her mother. Unfortunately, our sources have informed us that it was “extremely worrying” that Meltem was being taken from Yarls Wood WITH her mother.

What is most worrying of all is that the Children’s Commissioner has taken up Meltem’s case and Dianne Abbott MP raised her case in the House of Commons yesterday. Meltem’s case was also highlighted in today’s Independent newspaper.

Meltem’s mobile phone has been cut off. During her time at Yarls Wood she says she was denied access to newspaper coverage of her case. The Home Office has cut off all communication with Meltem’s lawyers, despite counsel standing by to carry out a judicial review of her case.

We are concerned that Meltem’s school, Hall Cross Lower, responded to Meltem’s predicament by saying they “wish her the best of luck for the future” . We are also concerned that the National Union of Teachers, where protests were held today in Doncaster, have issued no statement on the treatment of Meltem Avcil.

PLEASE ACT NOW – email and copy.

Write directly to Prime Minister Gordon Brown to protest at the removal of Meltem Avcil. Email browng@parliament.uk. Write also to the Home Secretary homesecretary.submissions@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk .

Please copy your mail to: robina@paih.org and adrian.matthews@11million.org.uk (email for Sir Al Aynsley-Green, children’s commissioner)

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FOR REFERENCE – SEE BELOW ARTICLES OF INTEREST:

Meltem Avcil’s Testimony, the Article in today’s independent about Meltems case. Please act now.
Thursday 15 November 2007
Meltem Avcil’s Testimony

At 3.25 am, some officers came into the small room I share with my mother. Ten minutes later, they took us down to the reception.

At 3.45 am, five escorts, one woman and four men arrived; the woman searched our bodies in front of the waiting men. Then, one of the men escorts, came up to me, he was talking loudly, looking with a mean face, and said:

“If you refuse to go on the plane we will handcuff both of you and tie your legs. Okay?”

They took us to a black van, two escorts next to me, one next to my mum, the other two in the front. They chatted by themselves during the journey. I could hear my mum crying very quietly. I wasn’t crying. The lady escort asked me what year at school I am in, it was a strange question because I was locked up, not in school. I said

‘Year 9’. Then, she said,

“You must be looking forward to your GCSEs”.

I didn’t answer, but my tears came I couldn’t help it so I looked out the window. Then she said,

“well, obviously not.”.

They started chatting amongst themselves. Then that male escort said to me:

“You know if you refuse to go on the plane, I will handcuff your mum and tie her feet.”

I did not answer, I didn’t like him saying things about my mum. They went quiet, and he told the escorts to talk to me. I said to the lady,

“is that man your manager?

She said:

“yes”.

After a while the escorts fell asleep, I looked out of the window, but it was dark. I was thinking what were my friends doing, would I see my school again. I was saying to myself why do I have to be here when my friends are outside, why do I have to go into a country I don’t know. I felt angry with everyone.

Then they woke up and started chatting again, it became daylight, they stopped somewhere. The manager went for a cigarette, we waited in the van, he got back in, and they kept driving.

We arrived at Heathrow, the manager took my mother through security, but not normal security like other passengers, he came back with my mum to the van, he had another cigarette. Another man took me through security. When he brought me back, the manager was waiting, then he said to me very loudly,

“You know if u refuse to go on the plane, we’ll put handcuffs on you and tie your feet, tell your mum what I said.”

I told my mum. They drove us right next to the plane, we stopped, and the manager said to me that,

“Germany faxed a letter through saying that they are going to look at your asylum again, then you might be successful, and get your status and Leave to Remain in Germany, and come back to this country.”

And then, obviously, I didn’t believe that, and I told this to my mum, and she didn’t believe it either.

Next to the plane, the manager and another male escort, they took my mum out, and my mum started crying more and tried not to go up the steps. The manager went on top of my mother, held her legs down, and went to handcuff her, but the handcuffs hit my mothers face badly, and she was bruised and cut. He handcuffed her, and dragged her off the [tarmac] and up the plane steps to the very back of the plane. I started crying, I was scared. Two escorts held me by the hands but I kept saying ‘let me go’ but one of the escorts pinched my hands to make me go. And then they put me in the plane, I was crying.

Passengers were looking at us. The manager sat with my mother on one side, she kept crying, he kept telling her “shut up, shut up”. Two or three passengers looked a bit worried, but the ones in front of us just kept reading their newspapers as if we were invisible, but my mother was crying. They sat me between two escorts who kept squeezing my hand very hard like to break my fingers. I kept crying and saying,

“I want to speak to the pilot”.

They closed the plane doors. I could not stop crying, and then the two escorts kept squeezing my hand hard.

Then the pilot came. He told my mum “SHUT UP”.

He never asked what the matter was. Do you know, the manager he kept squeezing my mums hand with the handcuffs on, i could see he was hurting her, I felt sick. I said to the manager

“stop hurting my mum”,

and the woman escort told me, it wasn’t hurting, but she kept squeezing my hand as well.

A teenage passenger started taking mobile phone pictures. The plane moved a bit, then the pilot said:

“We are sorry for the disturbance, the deportees should be off loaded”.

Then the pilot came to the back of the plane, he looking straight at me, and said to the air-hostess,

“bring the steps”.

We went down, and went in the van. They put us in the van quickly, they kept staring at us angrily, one of the men kept saying to me,

“you’re going back to Yarlswood, are you happy now?”

We drove for hours, they stopped a couple of times for cigarette breaks and burgers for themselves. One of them asked us if we wanted one, but we said no. We got back to yarls wood at 3.30pm. ENDS

TUESDAY 20 November: Anniversary of the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child
“The first general issue that makes the detention of children for immigration purposes deplorable is the arbitrary nature of the detention process. I ask hon. Members to reflect on the fact that a child who has committed a criminal offence and is put in prison, who is serving a sentence at Her Majesty’s pleasure-that is how sentencing is termed for children under a certain age-has more rights than a child held in immigration detention and is dealt with in a more transparent way. Immigration detention is not ordered or sanctioned by a court; it is an administrative power. People are not being detained because they have committed a criminal offence. That means that there is a lack of transparency and accountability and it gives the immigration service the kind of control over people’s lives and rights that a court would not have. The first thing to say about the detention of children is the arbitrary nature of the process.”
Ms Diane Abbott MP

House of Commons - Westminster Hall 20 Nov 2007 : Column 39WH
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071120/halltext/71120h0001.htm#07112055000001
Ms Diane Abbott MP (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) (Lab): “Today is universal children’s day. It is also the anniversary of the 1959 declaration of the rights of the child and of the 1989 convention on the rights of the child. It therefore seems a suitable day to try to bring the attention of Ministers to bear on one of the most tragic and socially excluded groups of children in Britain in 2007-children in immigration detention.”

Qudoos Family

Humaira Qudoos and her three young daughters were detained one month ago on 12th October by the Home Office when going to report in Glasgow. The Home Office tried to send them back to Pakistan but their lawyer managed to stop this.

Soon after they were detained the family were moved from Dungavel in Scotland to Yarlswood in Bedfordshire but were not released after their flight was stopped even though 8 year old Wajeeha was due to have an operation to remove lesions from her ears. Instead the Home Office moved the whole family back to Dungavel so the operation could be carried out in Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow. After Wajeeha’s operation the family were returned to Yarlswood where they have been ever since not knowing what was going to happen to them and terrified that they were going to be returned to Pakistan where as a single mother Humaira would face extreme difficulties.

What you can do:

Please send faxes and/or letters to Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith, Secretary of State for the Home Office asking that Humaira Qudoos and her three children be released and be granted discretionary leave to remain in the UK. You can use the Qudoos’ model letter or copy/amend/write your own version (if you do so, please remember to include the HO ref: Q1043430).

To: Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, MP, Secretary of State for the Home Office, 3rd Floor, Peel Buildings, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF, Fax: 020 7035 3262 (00 44 20 7035 3262 if you are faxing from outside UK)

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Meltem Avcil

Meltem Avcil who has been in detention for almost three months

It is Meltem’s 14th birthday TODAY! (Wednesday 21st November) And she is having it behind bars in Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre where she has been imprisoned for almost 3 months. In August 2007, 12 immigration officials carried out a “dawn raid” on the Avcil’s family home in Doncaster. They were then taken to Yarl’s Wood in a caged van and have been held there since.

Meltem had been hoping she would be released before her birthday and would be able to celebrate with her friends in Doncaster, but instead the home office attempted to remove her on Thursday 15th November. Meltem had to watch her mother crying and Meltem says she saw her mother getting hurt. They were taken off the plane because she couldn’t stop crying.
Since being incarcerated at Yarl’s Wood, Meltem has had no appropriate schooling. She and her mother have had poor medical and social support. Her mental and psychological state has deteriorated and she had to be brought to hospital after self-harming.

Juliet Stevenson, the actress, who met Meltem recently while visiting Yarl’s Wood detention centre with Women for Refugee Women, said, “I am shocked that this young girl is being put through such an ordeal.”

What you can do
1.) Please send Meltem a birthday card. You can also send her a present, but please do not include any “banned items” - e.g. any food stuffs (including chewing gum), medication, any thing containing glass, aerosols, or any sharp objects.
Meltem Avcil - Room C135, Yarl’s Wood IRC, Twinwoods Road, Clapham, Bedfordshire, MK41 6HL
2.) Please send faxes and/or letters to Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith, Secretary of State for the Home Office asking that Meltem be released on her 14th birthday and be granted discretionary leave to remain in the UK. You can use the “model letter” or copy/amend/write your own version (if you do so, please remember to include the HO ref: A1127471/3).
To: Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, MP, Secretary of State for the Home Office, 3rd Floor, Peel Buildings, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF, Fax: 020 7035 3262 (00 44 20 7035 3262 if you are faxing from outside UK)
Please let the campaign know of any faxes or letters sent ;
Contact : Theresa Schleicher Email : theresa.schleicher@hotmail.co.uk Mobile : 07716 510148

Maud Lennard, 36. Beaten and abused by British security guards, she fears she is about to be handed back to Mugabe’s thugs
Meltem Avcil, 14. The Kurdish teenager and her mother sought asylum in Britain. Now she claims attempts to deport her have left her traumatised

By Emily Dugan, Robert Verkaik and Chris Green
Published: 21 November 2007

The Independent

Maud Lennard

When the Zimbabwean Maud Lennard arrived in the UK in 2004, she thought life would be easier. The outspoken opponent of the Mugabe regime had endured rape and torture at the hands of the President’s henchmen, forcing her to flee the country, seeking refuge in the UK.

But last week Ms Lennard saw a very different side to the haven she sought. Still sporting the deep scars of her treatment in Zimbabwe, her skin now bears fresh marks, received this time at the hands of agents of the British state. She claims she was racially abused and left weeping and bruised by an escort team of five, who had been working for the UK government, seeking to remove her on a flight to Malawi last week.

After her screams for help attracted the attention of the pilot, she was taken off the plane. “The four men pulled me down the stairs,” she said, “and I felt one of them kick me from behind. I was very traumatised. They called me a ‘filthy black African pig’, then they threatened, ‘You don’t belong to Malawi, you don’t belong to Zimbabwe, so next time we are going to book you on BA and take you to Congo Kinshasa, where we can kill you and feed you to the crocodiles… One of them said, ‘If I had a gun I’d blow your brains out’.”

That Ms Lennard entered Britain on a Malawian passport, having paid a desperate bribe of $500 does not seem to have prevented the eviction attempts; nor does the fact that since 2004 five of the 11 Zimbabweans removed to Malawi have been returned to Zimbabwe.

Following The Independent’s coverage of Ms Lennard’s case last month, it was decided that the 36-year-old, who had already been on hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood detention centre for 44 days, was not fit to fly. But less than two weeks later, when her time without food had reached 53 days, the Home Office tried again to remove her.

Tonight, she will be compelled to board a BA flight for Lilongwe. She lives in fear of what will happen to her. “I’m really scared, I think they will arrest me in Malawi, because they will know I am not a Malawian, and then they will deport me to Zimbabwe. Going to prison in Malawi would be bad but I’d rather be in prison than back [in] Zimbabwe.”

Having worked outside Harare as the women’s wing secretary for the opposition MDC, she fled persecution by Zanu-PF agents, who had attacked her several times.

In the most recent attempt to remove Ms Lennard from Britain, she was sleeping in the waiting room, weakened from 53 days on hunger strike, when the guards arrived to take her to Heathrow. “I was so frightened that my knees were knocking.” But her fears could not have prepared her for what came next.

“As they took me to the car, they threatened me, saying if I didn’t behave they would call the Kenyan police to make sure when the plane stopped in Kenya they would come to beat me up.” On the plane she was ordered to eat the first meal following her hunger strike. She was sick.

Fearing it was her last chance, she stood up and started shouting to her fellow passengers for help. According to Ms Lennard, the guards dragged her back to her seat and pinned her down.

“They were all over me,” she said. “One was holding my neck and was choking me; I struggled to breathe, someone had their hand over my nose. Another had his foot on my right leg as he was pinning me down. They handcuffed me so tightly it was painful.”

At this point, Ms Lennard told the guards “I can’t go alive, you’ve got to kill me if you want me to go”. The pilot ordered them to take her off the plane, during which she was kicked and manhandled down the stairs, before being thrown into the car “like a sack of something”.

While the other four went inside, one of the guards stayed with her. Ms Lennard recalls they told her: “You came here to nick our money, you must go back to your country, you black pig”. She began to cry, and he said, “I’m not finished yet”. Ms Lennard said: “I was so scared because I thought he was going to beat me up”. Then the others came back.

An independent doctor from the Medical Justice Network this week confirmed that the bruising on her wrists and right leg corroborated her account. The Home Office has refused to discuss an individual case. According to Dr Frank Arnold of the Medical Justice Network, the publicity surrounding the violent deportations of asylum-seekers has yet to change the behaviour of guards. Dr Arnold said: “Following articles in The Independent, and the report of the Border and Immigration Agency’s own complaints audit committee (CAC), the incidence of harm during failed removals should have declined. I have no evidence it has. But of the cases examined by the CAC, over 90 per cent of complaints were investigated by the companies about whom the complaints were made, and only 8 per cent of the complainants were interviewed.

“It must be concluded that this deplorable practice continues.”

Patson Muzuva, Chair of the Zimbabwe Association – a campaign group based in the UK – said: “Her life is at stake if she is sent to Malawi… they will send her straight to Robert Mugabe.”

Speaking on the phone from Yarl’s Wood yesterday, Ms Lennard said: “I was nervous, but now I want to fight. It has been difficult for me in the UK, but I have no other option: I cannot go back.”

Meltem Avcil

They came for Meltem Avcil in the middle of the night. There were five security guards, four men and a woman. The 13-year-old Kurdish asylum-seeker and her mother were driven from Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in the back of a black van to a British Airways plane waiting at Heathrow airport.

When they reached the plane, Meltem claims the men held down her mother, placed her in handcuffs, dragged her off the Tarmac and up the steps of the aircraft. When it came to Meltem’s turn she remembers one of the guards telling her: “You know if you refuse to go on the plane, we’ll put handcuffs on you and tie your feet; tell your mum what I said.”

Two more escorts grabbed Meltem’s hands and forced her to follow her mother through the door of the plane. In the end it was only the intervention of the pilot that halted the deportation.

Today Meltem will be 14 years old, but she will not be celebrating her birthday. For the past three months, the Doncaster schoolgirl and her mother, Cennet Avcil, have been detained in Yarl’s Wood. And every day Meltem fears another knock on the door will herald the arrival of the men to deport them from their adopted country.

Thursday’s aborted removal was just the latest crisis in Meltem and her family’s flight from persecution in Turkey, to seek sanctuary first in Germany, and then in Britain. After their application for asylum was rejected by the German justice department, the family came to Britain in 2001.

In the time it took to consider their asylum application, Meltem managed to establish a new life for herself in Doncaster. Her school describes her as an outstanding student and Meltem says she wants to study to be a doctor. But she has had to grow up fast.

Her father left the family soon after they arrived in Britain and neither Meltem nor her mother has seen him since. The persecution the family claim to have suffered in Turkey and the family’s struggle for asylum in this country has taken a huge toll on her mother, who is now deeply traumatised by her experience.

Their friends in Doncaster say that Meltem has had to learn to become her mother’s mother, familiarising herself with asylum law and all the bureaucracy necessary for establishing a new life in a new country.

In the past two years, 2,079 asylum-seekers have won an eleventh-hour reprieve because of what the Home Office describes as their “disruptive behaviour”. But many asylum-seekers claim that the “disruption” is as much to do with the excessive force used by the security guards emplo yed by the Home Office in its increasingly desperate battle to meet tougher and tougher removal targets as it is with their protests.

In nearly every incident the experience is deeply distressing for the asylum-seeker as well as the airline passengers, who have to witness the shouts and cries of the traumatised refugees. Campaigners representing the rights of asylum- seekers now want the Government to find a more ” humane ” system for the removal of refugees refused asylum, of which there are about 4,000 every three months. For Meltem, it was a particularly harrowing experience because she was forced to watch her mother’s desperate efforts to stop her daughter being deported from a country they had regarded as their home after fleeing persecution in Turkey six years ago.

Meltem told her lawyers afterwards: “They took my mum out [of the van], and my mum started crying more and tried not to go up the steps. One of the guards went on top of my mother, held her legs down, and went to handcuff her, but the handcuffs hit my mother’s face badly, and she was bruised and cut. He handcuffed her, and dragged her off the [Tarmac] and up the plane steps to the very back of the plane. I started crying, I was scared. Two escorts held me by the hands but I kept saying ‘let me go’ but one of the escorts pinched my hands to make me go. And then they put me in the plane.”

On Friday, Meltem asked the Home Office to investigate the alleged ill-treatment suffered by her mother, who she claims suffered bruising to her wrists and cuts to her face during her struggle with the guards. Robina Qureshi, director of Positive Action in Housing, which has been galvanising support to keep Meltem and her mother in Britain, said last night: “I believe that the trauma that the UK Government has put Meltem Avcil through will haunt her for the rest of her life, and that it is in the best interests of this child to be returned to her home in Doncaster, the familiarity of her school, friends and teachers, and to have access within this comfort zone to psychiatrists to assist her in returning to her former happy self.”

The Home Office declined to discuss this case, nor would it say which private security firm carried out the aborted removal of Meltem and Cennet Avcil. But a government spokeswoman said that those who resorted to ” unlawful” means to prevent their removal would not be successful and would be removed at a later date. “It’s preferable if they return home voluntarily and it is regrettable that not all choose to do so and it becomes necessary to enforce their removal.” She added that all allegations made to the Border and Immigration Agency were treated very seriously and properly investigated.