Monday 22 June 2009

Asylum seekers: Britain's shadow people

As new figures suggest half a million failed asylum seekers are living destitute in Britain, the Guardian speaks to those living in the margins of society.
March 2009, Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/mar/16/asylum-seekers-refused-britain

Sunday 21 June 2009

"Immigration centre detainees stage hunger strike over inadequate medical care"

Written by Emma Ginn
By Daily Mail Reporter, 16th June 2009

"Around 20 people were on hunger strike at an immigration detention centre today in protest against inadequate medical care, a group of detainees said.

Melchior Singo, 39 and originally from Malawi, said inmates in the family unit at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire stopped eating yesterday morning.

They are protesting against what they claim is sub-standard health care and the detention of children at the site.
Yarl's Wood

The UK Borders Agency confirmed that some inmates at Yarl's Wood were refusing meals, but said the situation was under control

A spokeswoman for the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) said detainees had access to snack bars and that the situation was 'under control', and insisted that medical facilities were as good as the NHS.

Susanna Kushaba, from Uganda, raised concerns about her five-month old son Sean when his temperature shot up earlier this month.

She claims medical staff at the centre ignored her, and she was forced to dial 999 to get her son examined.

The 26-year-old said: 'He was really sick and he'd never been in that condition before. I tried telling the staff, and the staff were calling the health care but no one was coming.'

Epileptic Siddika Suloojee, 37, has not received proper care for her condition, it is claimed, and Mr Singo said when she fell from her bed staff told her she was 'faking it'.

Sophia Cherbal, 29, who suffers from depression, was left without any medication at all after staff said they would alter her drugs because she is two months' pregnant.

Her husband Ismail, 34, from Algeria, said: 'She's not been eating properly and now she won't go to see the healthcare staff. When she was arrested they took her off her medication. Then they found she was pregnant and they said they would give her something that would not harm the baby, but we have heard nothing from them.'

Mr Singo's nine-year-old daughter Olger was referred to an orthodontist before they were imprisoned but has now been denied further treatment.

Children's Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green has called for an end to the detention of children

He said: 'Medical attention is not given as a priority. We've got medical healthcare but we don't get the right care that we need. If you fall ill after lunch you can't see the nurse, even if it's urgent, until the following day.'

The detainees are also protesting against children being held at the centre.
Solomon Ojehonmon, 38, from Nigeria, said: 'It's not good for us as families to be detained in here. This is the most famous free society in the world and there should not be a place like this where they detain children.'

In April, following a visit to Yarl's Wood, Children's Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green called for an end to the detention of children before deportation.

He found that every year nearly 2,000 children were locked up solely for administrative reasons and that the length of time they were being held was on the increase.


According to the UKBA Yarl's Wood has 121 family beds, along with 284 single female beds, and there is a healthcare centre on-site with a small in-patient ward.

A spokeswoman for the UKBA said: 'A small number of detainees at Yarl's Wood have refused meals since lunch-time yesterday. Some are accessing snacks through the night cafe and children are obtaining additional snacks in classrooms in the day. The situation is under control and we are discussing with detainees their concerns.

'Our centres have been praised by independent monitors and our medical care is as good as on the NHS. There is 24-hour nursing care, doctors on call night and day, and access to social workers and dentists.'"


Guardian : "Hunger strike at Yarl's Wood detention centre" - 18/06/09

"Detainees protest at sub-standard healthcare and the detention of children.

At least 30 detainees at the Yarl's Wood detention centre have been on hunger strike since Monday in protest at poor conditions at the Bedfordshire site.

Melchior Singo, 39, from Malawi, said people in the family unit had stopped eating in protest at the sub-standard healthcare and the detention of children. The action began on Monday.

One detainee, Solomom Ojeheonmon, said: "Children, some of them as young as five months old, in this detention centre, are sick."

In April, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the children's commissioner, said the government's policy of holding 2,000 children a year in removal centres could be harmful to their health. "The UK should not be detaining any child who has had an unsuccessful asylum claim," he said.

Susanna Kushaba, from Uganda, raised concerns when her five-month-old baby developed a temperature. She claims staff ignored her and she was forced to dial 999 to gain medical attention. "I tried telling the staff and the staff were calling the healthcare but no one was coming."

Dr Frank Arnold, clinical director of Medical Justice, said: "We are not at all surprised by these complaints." He said he agreed with MP Alistair Burt, who described Yarl's Wood as "beyond comprehension and decency"."

Article on Guardian website



BBC : "Fire at immigration removal unit" (Brook House) - 13/06/09


"Brook House was opened in March and can house 426 people

A fire was started and "disorder" broke out at a wing of an immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport, Sussex police said.

Officers said there were reports of minor damage and a blaze in the exercise yard at Brook House, which houses 312 people awaiting deportation.

No-one is believed to be hurt and the fire is said to have burnt itself out.

The force said "disorder" involving 30 detainees started at about 2250 BST and was confined to one wing.

Officers were called in to support security firm G4S.

'No risk'

G4S, with the help of HM Prison Service, currently manages the welfare of detainees inside the centre, the police said.

Ch Insp Ed Henriet, of Gatwick Police, said: "Sussex Police is supporting the security arrangements. All detainees are accounted for and there is no risk to the wider community."

West Sussex Fire Rescue Service has also been monitoring the fire at Brook House.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith opened Brook House, which can house up to 426 people, in March.

It is situated next to Tinsley House, a 136-bed detention centre."

Article on BBC website



Sunday 14 June 2009

No peace - the Netanyhau speech

Netanyahu spoke about peace, a peace that is clearly dictated by Israel. A Palestinian state with no sovereignty over its airspace, no army and that gives full recognition of a jewish state of Israel; no freezing of settlements ('the settlements are not an obstacle to peace'), no solution for the refugees except outside the borders of Israel. The well chosen words which frame the core and real content feel like a badly stitched coat. He doesn't really want to talk about peace or negotiations, he was voted in for conflict.
This speech is a clear no to Obamas plan and vision of the Middle East. And as if Israel already knows that it will be very difficult with a weakening political back up from the US, Lieberman today visited Russia and talked with Putin. The welcome was friendly, Russia would like to take a leading role as a broker of a peace process. So a peace summit in Moscow is planned.
Tomorrow Lieberman will meet with the EU leadership to discuss the relationships in the future. It will be interesting to see if economic and military trade relations will be more important for the EU than regional stability in the Middle East. Will there be a freeze of the upgrade? With a state that openly disregards human rights, criminalises comemmoration of the Nakba, would like all its citizens to swear loyalty to a jewish, zionist state, who is on the way to introduce more and more fascist laws...
Will there be anybody at all, who is still interested in holding Israel to account about what was done in Gaza, not so long time ago? Every fact finding mission has revealed horrendous acts and crimes performed by the Israeli army against the population in Gaza, the facts lie clear on the table for everyone to see, who wants to see them. There should be a way to bring those who were responsible for those crimes to court as well as those who profit from them, which in some way includes some states in the EU. Military research and development always needs places and people to try how it works. The increasing number of drones used in Gaza show a link to research and trade agreements with the EU and the US.

Hostage to Israel’s far right

?Two states or a state of two nations?
(german version posted below)

Following the Israeli elections the far-right leader Avigdor Lieberman has become foreign minister and deputy prime minister. His views on the Arab-Israeli conflict have provoked a clash with President Obama. And he is calling the Israeli Palestinians’ citizenship into question, even talking of eventual ‘transfer’

by Joseph Algazy and Dominique Vidal

David Rotem’s leitmotif is allegiance to the state, but he never spells it out. So much so that, before leaving, we put it to him: “Imagine yourself in Nazi Germany. Where would your loyalty lie?” “To the state,” he replied, without blinking an eye. That retort, given in the Knesset building in Jerusalem, left us stunned, particularly since he went on to tell us how his father left Germany when Hitler came to power.

Rotem is a lawyer, former deputy speaker of the Knesset, prospective director of the new Law Commission and close confidant of Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party (Israel is Our Home). He rehashes his recent election speeches. “Whether he’s a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian, a citizen must demonstrate his loyalty to the state. If he does not, he’s not a citizen,” he says. The same tirade castigates Rabbi Meyer Hirsh for having met Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1), and those Arab parliamentarians who dared to protest against the recent Gaza massacres.

The party’s stance is that every Israeli should swear an oath of allegiance to the flag (which includes the Shield of David, the symbol of Judaism), sing the national anthem (which evokes the “Jewish soul”) and do military service (Arabs, apart from the Druze and some Bedouin, are exempt along with ultra-orthodox Jews).

Yisrael Beiteinu’s electoral slogan leaves no doubts: “Only Lieberman speaks Arabic”. The historian Shlomo Sand quipped: “In his native Moldova he was a night-club bouncer. Now it’s the Arabs who get bounced”. This joke does, however, ignore one fact about the “Russian” party (2): its official line is not to expel Palestinians (3) – as in 1948 – but to form a future Palestinian state around the areas where they are most populous, particularly Umm al-Fahm and the northern Triangle. In exchange, Israel would annex parts of the West Bank settled by Jews, starting with those who surround East Jerusalem.

For, unlike Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu formally embraces the two-state solution. “We accept the 1947 principal of partition,” Rotem emphasised. “Palestinians want a judenrein (4) state, Israelis a 100% Jewish state, not one which is open to all citizens. An international agreement must redraw frontiers in this spirit.”

Why is there such fury against Israel’s one-and-a-half million Arabs? The three Arab political parties represented in the Knesset have similar views on the subject, but all the same there are certain nuances.

The charismatic 29-year-old Hanin Zoabi – the first female parliamentarian from an Arab party – helped “save” the electoral chances of the National Democratic Assembly (Balad), whose founder, Azmi Bishara, fled the country after being accused of treason. Strangely she sees Lieberman’s position as offering a sort of quid pro quo – “I withdraw from the occupied territories so I must have your loyalty”. As a consequence, she says, one must “remind Israeli Palestinians that they live in a Jewish state and should accept it as such”. Benjamin Netanyahu “has no need to insist on Israel’s Jewish nature because he is not in favour of two separate states”.

‘Only justice heals wounds’

In his Nazareth office, the lawyer Tawfiq Abu Ahmed claimed to represent the Islamist movement, part of the United Arab List/Arab Movement for Renewal (Ra’am/Ta’al). For him, the far right takes an anti-Arab stance to “show to Israeli Jews that it protects their interests”, creating “an internal enemy to fight and so reinforce its own popularity”. Instead of trying to demand loyalty among Israeli Arabs as a condition of citizenship, the lawyer suggested, “the establishment should understand that the opposite works: only real citizenship, that’s to say equal rights, can guarantee loyalty. As one of our proverbs says, only justice heals wounds.”

The long-serving mayor of Eilaboun in Galilee, Hanna Swaid, is second on the Communist ethnically mixed Hadash list, and one of four Knesset members. Without ignoring Yisrael Beiteinu’s electoral impact he is worried about specifics: “Making military service compulsory would aggravate every kind of anti-Arab discrimination” (5). “Above all,” he added, “these themes benefit from popular support and risk provoking tensions between Jews and Arabs which threaten their very coexistence, already strained by the shootings of October 2000 and the Acre pogrom of October 2008 (6). The ‘Lieberman era’ has been ushered in by clashes, particularly in towns with mixed populations.”

“Everything stems from the setback when former prime minister Ariel Sharon invented the politics of separation,” claims the lawyer Hassan Jabareen, director of Adalah, the Legal Centre for the Arab Minority Rights in Israel, whom we met in his Haifa office. For Jabareen, Israel’s policies of building the wall, of withdrawing from Gaza, its military adventures of summer 2006 and winter 2008-9 have all failed: “The Israeli establishment blames everything on the Palestinians of Israel precisely because it is impossible to impose a unilateral solution.”

The “demographic threat”, which explains the interest in the creation of a Palestinian state, now also concerns Israel itself. “Nobody believes any longer in two states,” said Jabareen. “Conflict is breaking out on all fronts, as in 1948: there’s no great difference between Haifa, Nablus and East Jerusalem. Except that to make ‘war’ on the Palestinians of Haifa would be easier.”

In so saying, Jabareen finds himself alongside Lieberman. In January 2008, when Lieberman stepped down from the previous government where his role was minister of strategic affairs, he spoke openly: “Our problem is not Judea and Samaria, but the extreme fundamentalist leadership that is in the Knesset… Our problem is [the Arab-Israeli parliamentarians] Ahmed Tibi and Barakeh, they’re more dangerous than Khaled Mash’al [the Damascus-based Hamas leader] and Nasrallah [head of Hizbullah]. They work from the inside; they operate methodically to destroy the State of Israel as a Jewish state” (7).

In reality, mobilisation against this “fifth column” – the current expression – began long ago in hearts and minds, both within Israel’s institutions and at the grassroots.

Take normalisation of racist talk, like that in 2004 by Yehiel Hazan, the former deputy leader of Likud, comparing Israeli Arabs to “worms” who have worked in a “subterranean” way to “harm the Jewish people for 100 years” (8). Another Likud contender for the Guinness Book of Arabophobia, Moshe Feiglin, has opined: “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber, a killer and a liar” (9).

A law passed in 1985 prevented Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party from taking part in elections because of similar statements. The aggravations of early 2009 prompted President Shimon Peres to worry, just before the polls, about “incitement to violence against any part of the electorate. Arabs, like all the country’s citizens, have equal rights and duties.” Sadly, the damage has already been done. According to opinion polls conducted in 2006 and 2007, 78% of Israeli Jews are opposed to having Arab political parties in any government; 75% wouldn’t like to live in the same building as an Arab; 75% believe they engage in violence (54% of Arabs think the same of Jews); 68% fear a new intifada; 64% worry about Arab demography; and 56% think that “Arabs can never reach the Jewish level of cultural development”. As for “solutions”, 55% of Israeli Jews believe that the government should encourage Arab emigration, 50% advocate their transfer and 42% suggest that they should no longer have the right to vote (10).

The little Liebermans

History tells us that such a climate of opinion makes huge backward steps possible, if not probable. Proof of this was the voting in of the 2003 law forbidding a Palestinian living in the West Bank or Gaza to join their husband or wife in Israel (11). Of course, the new government won’t turn any projects proposed by Foreign Minister Lieberman into legislation tomorrow. But who knows about the day after tomorrow?

“The worst is not Lieberman himself but the little Liebermans he spawns, creating a climate of terror where the smallest incident can get out of control.” Ahmed Oudeh, a baker, knows what he’s talking about. He lives in Acre (53,000 inhabitants, of whom 17,000 are Arab) and sits on the local council of a city still bruised by the events of last October. Several hundred Jewish rioters destroyed or damaged 30 homes, 84 shops and 100 cars (12).

We were off on a strictly non-tourist trip around Acre. First we went to see five venerable dwellings in the ancient city restored – and offered to Jewish students by Amidar, the housing company that “owns” Arab property “abandoned” in 1948. Then, we visited a new block under construction bearing the friendly name Northern Fist, promised to former Gaza settlers. Nearby is the site of the largest yeshiva (religious school) in the north of Israel; dozens of Jewish schoolboys stroll around the souk with four armed guards. And there’s the al-Lababidi mosque, still closed although most people who live around it are Muslim.

At Lod (formerly Lydda), where the architect Buthaina Dabit plays host, the theme was similar. The thousand Palestinians who avoided expulsion in 1948 have become 11,000 in a total population of 70,000. “To revive the town’s Jewishness”, our guide explained, “the mayor is both trying to chase out Arabs and attract more Jewish residents”.

The ill-made road, which our small car found hard-going, illustrated this double process: to our right was the smart Jewish Ganei Aviv (Spring Gardens) complex; to our left lay a kind of ruined Arab shantytown, obviously abandoned and threatened with demolition with, here and there, a few expensive villas, separated by a wall – whose construction was stopped by legal action – from the moshav (cooperative) Nir Tzvi. “Yesterday”, the architect recalled, “they used oriental Jews to chase us away. Then it was the Russians and now the ultra-religious. We should all be fighting together rather than against each other.”

Jaffa, once known as “the sea’s fiancĂ©e”, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. Its population is currently 40% Palestinian. There, too, a project to Judaise the town revolves around poverty. Judith Ilany, coordinator of a women’s help group organised by Hadash-Balad, explained: “Take family F, a single mother with three children. Waiting, without any great hope, for local authority housing, she rents a private apartment for 2,000 shekels ($483) a month, or two thirds of her salary. Her landlord throws her out. She then is forced 
to sign another rental agreement for 4,000 
shekels which, obviously, she can’t meet for long. Heavily in debt, she is thrown out a second time. She could, of course, obtain a tax reduction by 
completing a large dossier in Hebrew, a language she doesn’t speak. But it wouldn’t be sufficient to put her beyond the long arm of the private company acting for the municipality to repossess defaulting tenancies.”

More than 500 expulsion orders for dwellings built without permission hang over Jaffa like a sword of Damocles. In the Negev they also tear down housing, whole villages at a time (see The forgotten Bedouin).

No longer ready to stand by

Aida Touma-Sliman, the Communist director of Women Against Violence, is proud of founding the world’s first refuge for battered Arab women. As a grassroots activist, she says it’s there, rather than at the polls, that you see a “drift towards fascism. Some may think this is exaggeration but, unfortunately, the facts support us: our very legitimacy is challenged, violent harassment happens frequently, our towns are threatened with Judaisation. The human destruction of Palestinians in Gaza crossed the boundaries. We know from experience where it is all going.”

Nazareth feels secure. Not only has the capital of Galilee remained almost exclusively Arab but, because housing is in short supply there, people are renting, even buying, places in its “sister” town, Nazareth Ilit, created as a Jewish balance. For Touma-Sliman, however, “even here, Lieberman’s speeches resound like a call to attack us”.

Israel’s distraught Arab community does not intend to stand by and let things happen. The Gaza tragedy and the racist nature of the general election campaign could lead, according to many observers, to a large boycott. But some 52% of Arab Israelis went to the polls and their voting patterns changed radically. Only 12% of Arab electors voted for a Zionist party (compared with 30% three years ago), the others choosing between the three parties representing 
their cause, particularly Hadash. There was also 
mass participation in this year’s Land Day on 30 March.

How to build on this riposte and stop what Hassan Jabareen calls “rampant apartheid”? Some 200 Arabs and Jews, representing different age groups and cultures, recently joined the debate one sunny Saturday in Acre at a conference called to counter racism. Heavy anger characterised many of the speakers. The Islamist councillor Adham Jamal, deputy mayor of Acre, paid the price for talking 
about his powerlessness. Accused by one of the families without housing since last October, he left the hall to jeers.

At the heart of the exchanges lay the issue of allegiance. “We’re the victims, so we should define the ground rules,” said a young Balad councillor. She was challenged by Miriam Damoni-Charbit, who trains Jewish and Arab teachers at Israel’s largest educational NGO. “I understand that Israel’s Arabs are torn between their country and their people”, she said, “but for their own sake they must understand Jewish sensibilities. It is simply unacceptable to chatter during the Shoah siren or to violate the peace of Yom Kippur.” She pointed to “all the Likud voters who, on questions of social justice, could get involved in the fight for equality.” On 11 November 2008, in Tel Aviv’s mayoral election, the Communist parliamentarian Dov Khenin broke all records in capturing 35% of votes (nearly 75% of those younger than 35). But his rainbow coalition did not have any Palestinians of Jaffa on its list.

Allegiance, then, but to what? Two states, or a state of two nations? “Some solidarity movements forget that they don’t represent the Palestinian people. Our right to self-determination includes the right to choose for ourselves what seems to be the best solution,” insists Aida Touma-Sliman.

She brandishes every opinion poll “with no exceptions” taken in the West Bank and Gaza. “If nine out of 10 Israeli Jews want their own state, the same goes for two out of three Palestinians in the occupied territories”. And for good reason. “In a two-nation state, what happens to the settlements? Beyond that, who would guarantee our rights?” She believes that real power lies elsewhere. “Only the international community can impose a solution on Israel: that’s what we should all be working for – here and in your country.”

Palestinians of Israel

Dates

1947-9 During the fighting, 700,000-800,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes. Only 160,000 remained in Israel.
21 October 1948 The authorities imposed military rule on the Arab population based on British emergency law.
1948-2008 Massive expropriation of Palestinian lands.
End 1966 Military rule lifted
June 1967 Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan allowed Palestinians to re-make contact with those expelled.
30 March 1976 Repression of demonstrators protesting the confiscation of land caused six deaths and dozens of injuries. The date became known as Land Day.
October 2000 Demonstrations of solidarity with the second intifada. Reprisals by the authorities caused 13 deaths.

Figures

  • The average salary of Israeli Arab workers in 2007 was only 67% of that of oriental Jews and 52% of that of Ashkenazi Jews.
  • The average per capita income of Israeli Arabs was $7,700 dollars, compared with $19,000 for Israel as a whole.
  • In 2007, 51.4% of Palestinian families lived beneath the poverty line, compared with 19.9% of all families.
  • Less than 6% of state employees were Arab.
  • Only 18% of Arab Israeli women were employed, compared with 56% of Jewish women (and 59% of Arab men).
  • Since the founding of Israel in 1948, there has been no new Arab municipality, as against 600 new Jewish municipalities.
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel own only 3.5% of the land.
  • Arab municipalities received less that 5% of development budget funds and 3% of normal government funding, although Israeli Palestinians form 20% of the population.

Sources: Different reports by UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); The Human Rights Status of the Palestinian Arab Minority, Citizens of Israel, Mossawa Centre, Haifa, October 2008; Israel: Social Report 1998-2007, Adva Centre, Tel Aviv, 2008. Unless specified, statistics are from 2006.

Friday 5 June 2009

Spring in London


London street in spring, Green Lanes


Hackney Marshes...


The Anchor and Hope, River Lea


Springfield Park, Hackney


Highgate cemetery


well known London resident