TMP Online

The 8th March is International Women’s Day. To celebrate this TMP (The Multicultural Progressive) is putting a spotlight on Womens’ rights and liberation, throughout this week. As part of this, TMP has commissioned a special report into the state of women in the UK and internationally.

The London based Black Women’s Rape Action Project has produced this report exclusively for TMPOnline.

Since 5 February, women in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre (Bedfordshire) have been on hunger strike. They are protesting indefinite detention, lack of medical care and legal representation, and inadequate time and help with their legal claim. On top of this, they have suffered racist abuse and other violence from private agency staff. Many are mothers suffering separation from children, and most are survivors of rape and other torture. Their detention is contrary both to international law and Home Office regulations.

SOAS students showing solidarity with Yarl's Wood detainees

On day four of the strike, guards with riot shields ‘kettled’ the women in an airless hallway without access to water or toilets. Others were locked outside in freezing conditions for a sustained period of time. Four women, isolated from the others, were transferred to prison.  None of the women have been charged with committing any crime.

Despite efforts from the authorities to divide them,  at the start 84 women from many countries came together to organise the hunger strike.  Most of the detained women are from China, Jamaica, Nigeria, and Vietnam.

Last week John McDonnell MP tabled a parliamentary motion for an immediate independent investigation and a “moratorium on all removals pending the results of that investigation”.

Embarrassed Home Office officials wrote to all MPs denying that women were refusing food – they were getting food from visitors, they said. Women furiously pointed out that visitors are banned from bringing in food.

Other slurs were answered by the All African Women’s Group and Black Women’s Rape Action Project, based in Kentish Town ’s Crossroads Women’s Centre. Teams of volunteers continue to provide round-the-clock support to hunger strikers, providing lawyers’ visits media and contacts (publicity is a protection against abuse).  Sometimes the groups take on cases and stop removals themselves.

Cristel A miss of Black Women’s Rape Action Project said

“We are in daily contact with hunger strikers. Claims that women are treated with ‘dignity and respect’ mean nothing in the face of overwhelming evidence of appalling conditions and abuse. The case for mothers, rape survivors and other vulnerable women to be released grows stronger every day. ”

Stella Mpaka from the All African Women’s Group commented:

“Either children suffer alongside their mothers in detention or they suffer the pain of separation.  Ending the detention of children has to mean ending the detention of families. We know from the many acts of kindness, understanding and compassion from the public that there is widespread though hidden support for us. ”

Mothers will be taking their own action in Yarl’s Wood during the Mothers March for Recognition and Support for the Vital Work of Mothering, Sat 13 March, 2pm.

Activists showing solidarity with Yarl's Wood Hunger Strikers

“1° Marzo, una giornata senza di noi” – “1 March, a day without us”

Protest at the Italian Embassy
Monday, 1st March ,1-2pm
14 Three Kings Yard, London W1K 4EH

Immigrant people in Italy, France and other European countries, led by African people, have called an Immigrant Strike on the 1st March 2010 to protest: racist murders and attacks; police harassment; immigration controls; severe exploitation and inhumane conditions in agriculture and other work. Whilst many of the agricultural workers are men, immigrant women, including sex workers, have also been targetted.

The day of action will include strikes from waged work places, from schools, universities, shopping strikes, and demonstrations in many cities. Second-generation immigrants and non-immigrant people are also part of the co-ordinating committees helping to organise this “day without us”. (For more info please go to: see this link: mainly in Italian but some info in English) http://www.primomarzo2010.it/2009/10/chi-siamo.html).

Please also see the statement “Tangerines and olives don’t fall from the sky” (below) from the Assembly of African workers of Rosarno in Rome, Italy, January 2010 who on 8 January, were shot at by racists and fought back.

As women seeking asylum in the UK, many of us African, survivors of rape and other torture, mothers, detained without trial, destitute and facing racism in the UK, as immigrant and non-immigrant people, we are jointly organising this protest to support the 1 March Strike.

All African Women’s Group Global Women’s Strike Payday men’s network

contact:aawg2002@googlemail.com; womenstrike8m@server101.com; payday@paydaynet.org Tel: (020) 7482 2496 www.allwomencount.net, www.globalwomenstrike.net

SEE BELOW STATEMENT FROM AFRICAN WORKERS OF ROSARNO..
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“Tangerines and olives don’t fall from the sky”
from the Assembly of African workers of Rosarno in Rome (Italy, January 2010)

On 31 January 2010 we met to form the Assembly of African workers of Rosarno in Rome. We are the workers who were forced to leave Rosarno after we demanded our rights. We were working in inhumane conditions. We lived in abandoned factories, without water or electricity. Our work was underpaid. We used to leave the places where we slept every morning at 6, only to go back at night at 8 for 25 euros [about £22], not all of them ending into our pockets. Sometimes we could not managed to get paid after a day of hard work. We were going back empty-handed and our body bending with tiredness. For many years we have been discriminated, exploited and threatened in all sort of ways. We were exploited during the day and chased around at night by the sons of our exploiters. They beat us up, threatened us, pursued like beasts, kidnapped, some of us disappeared for ever.

They shot us as a sport or in someone’s interest. We continued to work. In time we became easy targets. We couldn’t take it any more. Those of us who had not been wounded by bullets, were wounded in their human dignity, in their pride as human beings.

We could not wait any more for some help which would never arrive, because we are invisible, we don’t exist for this country’s authorities. We made ourselves visible, we went into the street to shout that we exist.

The people didn’t want to see us. How can anyone demonstrate if he doesn’t exist?

The authorities and the police arrived and they deported us from the town because we were not safe anymore. The people of Rosarno were hunting us, lynching us, organised now in real chasing squads.

We were put in detention centres for immigrants. Many of us are still there, others went back to Africa, others are scattered around in the towns of Southern Italy.

We are in Rome. Today we have no job, no place to sleep, no belongings and no wages, which have not been paid by our exploiters.

We say we are part of the economic life of this country, but the authorities don’t want to see or listen to us. Tangerines, olives, oranges don’t fall from the sky. They are in the hands of those who pick them.

We had managed to get a job which we lost simply because we demanded to be treated as human beings. We did not come to Italy as tourists. Our work and our sweat are useful to Italy as they are to our families, who have placed many hopes on us.

We demand from the authorities of this country to meet us and listen to our demands:

We demand that the residence permit which was given to the 11 African men wounded in Rosarno for humanitarian reasons, be given to all of us, victims of exploitation and of our irregolar situation which left us without a job, abandoned and left behind in the streets. We want the government of this country to face its responsibilities and guarantee us the possibility of working with dignity.

Assembly of African workers of Rosarno in Rome.

TMPOnline Editor, Justin Baidoo responds to Rod Liddle’s infamous Spectator blog on Multi-culturalism and claims of Liddle’s racism.

Rod Liddle’s blog post entitled “Benefits of a multi-cultural Britain” attributes most of the high profile social ills (knife and gun crime, violent sexual crimes) to African Caribbean males. Aside from this being factually incorrect, he goes on the next day in response to a post on Diane Abbott’s blog to state that he hates racism and in an attempt to appear non-racist quotes Diane Abbott and Trevor “segregate black boys” Phillips which he portrays that they make similar points to his argument which he says is based on cultural rather than racist values.

Here he is being disingenuous, by deriding and highlighting the only contributions an ethnic group has brought to society as “rap music, goat curry”and laden “us” (read: indigenous whites) with an “alien” culture, it cannot be viewed by the impartial reader that he is giving an honest though brutal critique with problems in a community. He is denigrating the African-Caribbean community and suggesting that London would be better off without them.

Is he entitled to say it? Yes.  But let’s not pretend that it is not racism. You can attack ideas without slandering an entire community, Liddle references to multi-culturalism like many BNP activists often euphemistically describe their racist attacks as an “expose on the benefits of ‘enrichment’ and multi-culturalism” Liddle is neither naive or ignorant, he is forcefully made the point when publishing his post that he believes that London has suffered as a result of the presence of the African-Caribbean community. He is not pandering to the politics of the BNP but rather cheer leading them on, his claims of hating racism is as credible as Nick Griffin’s claims that the British National Party do not “discriminat[e] on grounds of colour”.

Though I am not blind to woefully high numbers of African descendant males involved in violent crime in London (they are not only African-Caribbean, but perhaps Rod couldn’t tell the difference), the answers do not lie in the politics of hate and reactionary anger but in precision and truth. No one is hiding these issues but only honesty will bring us forward not dangerous rhetoric.

If Rod Liddle doesn’t believe that lamenting the presence of a ethnic group and belittling the contributions of generations of Caribbean workers to curry goat isn’t racist then I would suggest he volunteers himself for a diversity course.