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

AbM activists were attacked on September 26 and 27, 2009, at the Kennedy Road settlement in Durban , South Africa. Two nights of violence by masked armed men that caused Anglican Bishop Rubin Phillip to say democracy itself was ‘under attack’ in South Africa.

‘Once again people have been beaten, had their homes destroyed, been driven from their community…for their political views and practices… The militia that has driven the AbM leaders and hundreds of families out of the settlement is a profound disgrace to our democracy’
Bishop Rubin Phillip, 29 September 2009

The attacks came while Abahlali baseMjondolo was challenging the state government’s proposed “Slums Act”, shortly after the attacks AbM won a ruling which deemed the state law unconstitutional. Shortly after the attacks, many shack dwellers fled or went missing and two attackers died at Kennedy Road. The police arrested thirteen members of AbM despite some not being present during the attacks on suspicion of involvement in the two deaths. One has been released completely; five remain in prison without charge, while seven have been released on bail. In November 2009 another AbM settlement was attacked by local police and innocent dwellers were beaten, shot at and arrested, only for all charges to be dropped two days later.

There have been international calls across academia and civil society organisations for a public inquiry into Kennedy Road . In December 2009, Amnesty International produced a report into the attacks citing further human right abuses in the failure of the South African authorities to investigate. There is increasing pressure on the South African authorities to make a public statement, to date they have refused calling it “just a criminal matter”.

Five months since the attacks, the democratically elected leadership of AbM with their spouses and children, are all in hiding. President Zuma has signally failed not only to condemn the attacks, but also failed to heed the call and order a judicial investigation into who was responsible for the violence in Kennedy Road, and the role of the Sydenham police.

Today’s demonstration will call on President Zuma to order an impartial judicial investigation as a matter of urgency. Activists will also urge him to guarantee to AbM members and leaders the same rights to security, safety, freedom of expression and freedom of political expression that the Constitution guarantees all South Africa ’s citizens.

Seb Klier, an Abahlali Solidarity UK campaigner said

“The shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo represents part of a grassroots movement of the poor who have been abandoned by official bodies in South Africa, but are organising themselves to counter poverty and injustice. The ongoing repression and criminalisation of Abahlali baseMjondolo which is a peaceful and democratic movement is an affront to basic human and democratic rights – it’s now time for President Jacob Zuma to explain how his government will begin to address this shameful episode.”

The Right to Know: The Fight for Open Democracy in South Africa

- A Short Film Showing and Discussion -

7pm – Wednesday 3rd March

Room 4418 (4th Floor, SOAS Main Building)

Since the mid-2000s, a number of social movements in South Africa have organised and acted to improve the lives of those living in substandard housing and working, if at all, precariously in the informal economy and fighting against privatization, evictions, water-collection and electricity cut-offs.

These community-oriented struggles are based in the “illegal” settlements which are mushroom in and around major cities and sections of the countryside because of South Africa’s ongoing housing crisis. Loosely linked together in the Poor People’s Alliance, movements like AbM, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Landless People’s Movement, and Abahali baseplasini (Rural Network), have taken direct action against government policy and official neglect.

Abahlali Website

UK group email list

Facebook event (please indicate if you’re coming)

UK group blog

All are welcome to enjoy the short film and discussion on these movements, as well as learn how YOU can help support their struggles.

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..
——————————————————-

“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.

BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
Authors: Cary Alan Johnson and Ryan Thoreson
The global outcry against Uganda’s ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ could not be more deafening. Opponents of the legislation have condemned the effort not just to put gays in prison, which is already the law in Uganda, but to further criminalise the ‘promotion of homosexuality’, require that suspected gays and lesbians be turned in to authorities, and to punish some individuals – including those who are HIV positive or those euphemistically called ‘repeat offenders’ – with death.

The governments of Canada, France and Sweden have branded the bill wrongheaded. From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to President Barack Obama himself, the US, a major foreign donor to Uganda, has made its disapproval of the legislation clear. Usually silent religious leaders, from Anglican and Catholic church leadership to Saddleback church’s Rick Warren and other evangelical Christians, have condemned the bill’s promotion of the death penalty, imprisonment for gays and lesbians, and the threat its provisions pose to pastoral confidentiality.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) executive director Michel Sidibe has expressed deep concern with the bill’s potential impact on Uganda’s heretofore successful HIV-prevention efforts. And while both the African Union and the government of South Africa have characteristically failed to condemn the bill, several important African leaders, including former president of Botswana Festus Mogae and UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Elizabeth Mataka, have spoken out firmly and forcefully. If the bill passes in this firestorm of criticism, it certainly won’t be for lack of unified, unequivocal condemnation.

This vehement response was absent less than a year ago and fewer than a hundred miles away, when the parliament of Burundi amended its penal code to criminalise consensual same-sex relationships for the first time in its history. Nor was it conspicuous when Nigeria considered criminalising attendance at gay-rights meetings or support groups in 2006. Now, horror at the cruelty of these new laws and growing evidence of direct involvement by the US religious right is leading to a subtle, but significant, sea change. Local LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) and civil-rights movements are finding the voice to condemn these horrible new pieces of legislation and the international community is standing its ground. Last month, the government of Rwanda dropped a proposal to criminalise homosexuality in the face of pressure from rights activists and HIV-service providers inside and outside of the country.

But while condemning new oppressive laws is important, it is just as important – and perhaps more pressing – to take measures to hold governments accountable for the daily violence and lifetimes of discrimination that LGBT people face in the more than 80 countries around the world that continue to criminalise homosexuality and the many more that impose penalties for those who challenge gender norms.

Take Senegal, for instance, where homosexuality has been illegal since 1965. The last two years have seen a dramatic escalation in homophobic persecution and violence, largely unnoticed by the international community and the world media. The country has experienced waves of arrests, detentions, and attacks on individuals by anti-gay mobs, fuelled by media sensationalism and a harsh brand of religious fundamentalism. Police have rounded up men and women on charges of homosexuality, detained them under inhumane conditions, and sentenced them with or without proof of having committed any offence. Families and communities have turned on those suspected of being gay or lesbian. In cities throughout the county, the corpses of men presumed to have been gay have been disinterred and unceremoniously abandoned. As the international community has laudably warned Uganda on the progress of its nonsensical law, arrests on charges related to homosexuality in Senegal – five men in Darou Mousty in June, a man in Touba in November, and 24 men celebrating at a party in Saly Niax Niaxal on Christmas Eve – continue largely unnoticed.

Responding to the homophobic extremism in the Ugandan legislation is hugely important, but it is no substitute for a broad and unequivocal condemnation of sodomy laws and anti-LGBT violence wherever it occurs. When just such a statement condemning grave violations of human rights on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and calling for the end of criminalisation was brought to the UN General Assembly just one year ago, only 66 of 192 countries voted for it. At the time, the US was not one of them.

Even if the campaign against the anti-homosexuality bill succeeds, homosexuality will continue to be illegal in Uganda – just as it is in Senegal, where the lives of LGBT people are virtually unliveable. The test of our commitment to rights for all members of the human family, including LGBT people, is not whether we respond when the media turns its hot spotlight on a new, extreme piece of legislation. It is whether we are willing to commit our attention, resources, and political will in places like Senegal, where there are no cameras or reporters chronicling the impact of a decades-old law to hold us accountable. While the global sense of outrage at Uganda’s bill is inspiring, it will be a missed opportunity if this spirited condemnation of homophobic violence fails to become standard operating procedure.

* Cary Alan Johnson is the executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). Ryan Thoreson is a research fellow at IGLHRC and co-author of ‘Words of Hate, Climate of Fear: Human Rights Violations and Challenges to the LGBT Movement in Senegal’. The opinions expressed here are the authors’ and not necessarily those of the organisation.

Original URL: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62380
2010-02-18, Issue 470

As Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) announce quarterly profits of £772 million this week, cleaning workers and their supporters will be demonstrating at their London offices on Friday 12th February.

The demonstration is in protest at attacks on workers’ pay and the dismissal of Alberto Durango, the cleaners’ now former shop-steward.

Alberto and his supporters believe his sacking is directly related to his workplace union organising and campaigning work.

Many of the cleaners – who are members of the Unite trade union and are predominately migrants from West Africa, Latin America and some European countries – were involved in a campaign in 2008 to win the “London Living Wage” at UBS, currently £7.60 per hour.

Despite this victory, most workers still have to work multiple shifts in order to make ends meet. UBS has encouraged a race to the bottom resulting in their cleaning contractors cutting cleaning staff hours – therefore pay – or make redundancies.

This in contrast to UBS’ announcement on 9th February reporting a 34% increase in their bonus pool to £1.72 billion and their decision last year to increase their London banking staff wages by 15% – 20%.

“Maria” has been cleaning desks and toilets at the UBS Lombard Street offices for over 3 years.

She said:

The Company has broken their promise that they would not change our hours or conditions after we won the ‘Justice for Cleaners’ campaign. A year after getting an agreement on the living wage, we are still fighting. I just want to earn enough to be able to spend time with my family during the weekend.

Unite the Union representative Chris Ford said

The public are outraged by the continued and undeserved bankers’ bonuses since banks like UBS, Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Scotland have been bailed out by public money across the world.

What’s the bankers’ excuse for attacking the subsistence wages of the people who wipe their computer screens and clean their toilets?

Friday 12th February’s “Defend Living Wage – Justice for UBS Cleaners” demonstration is at 1pm outside UBS Capital, 100 Liverpool Street, London EC2M 2RH.

Hat/tip: Liberal Conspiracy

The Left, broadly defined, has become quite fractious and
fissiparous. There are left-wingers in Labour, in the Lib-Dems, in the Greens, in Marxist groups and in no party at all.

The Progressive London Conference aimed to gather together speakers from the capital’s left. As an attendee, I found some of the sessions interesting and some of the speakers good. Others, however, notably Harriet Harman, fell flat. People were not happy with the government’s record and with its rhetoric. As Deputy Leader of the Labour Party she failed to inspire people with confidence in the leadership or with optimism that the government was going to move leftwards.

Although all wanted to see a Conservative defeat, many of those present did not want a Labour victory. The Lib-Dems and Greens present would obviously rather people voted for them rather than Labour. Unless left-wing voters unite behind the strongest anti-Tory candidate in every seat, the Tories will benefit from the splits on the centre-left.

The Progressive London Conference seems to be the brainchild of Ken Livingstone. As such, it is partly to build his profile for his candidacy for London Mayor in 2012. To regain the mayoralty, he has judged he needs Lib-Dems and Green support [or second preferences] as well as Labour ones.

Given this, the key test he may have for Progressive London may well be whether the Tories can be beaten in the 2012 Mayoral election rather than in 2010.

On broader political issues, there was a clear view articulated that the cost of balancing the budget must not be at the expense of public services. It is in defending public services that the left can strike the strongest chord with the public .However I was disappointed at the two Labour councillors who spoke at the ‘Defending Public Services’ session for failing to strongly articulate the notion that both local and national public services ought to be protected from cuts.

Another issue touched on is that the trade union movement is in need of revitalisation. It is through trade unions that workers can get a better deal and that inequality can be reduced. As is natural for a meeting held at Congress House, there were a number of trade union speakers. Both Frances O’Grady, Deputy General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress and Len McCluskey Assistant General Secretary of Unite the Union, spoke passionately about the need for strong trade unions and for more left-wing policies. Len McCluskey’s speech in particular articulated a strongly left-wing line while remaining committed to the Labour Party. If he is elected Unite General Secretary, there may be hope of the union exercising some influence on the party to move it leftwards.

The cloud hanging over the conference is that of the recession. As we know, economic policy has been dominated by the City for too long. Ken Livingstone spoke of the need for more investment. It is right that we should invest more in infrastructure and more in manufacturing industry. We can not be dependent on the City for a large chunk of our GDP – as we were during the 2000s boom. However, speakers cited China as an example of a society that is taking the right route to tackle the recession. Although China’s investment and stimulus packages are to be admired, it must not be forgotten that it is a repressive authoritarian regime. And, furthermore, it is one that has become more financially corrupt and has dismantled some state industries and allowed the private sector to dominate some of the newer parts of the economy.

We must look for a democratic socialist way forward – and not be too seduced by the fast rates of economic growth in authoritarian state-capitalist China as it plays “catch-up”.

Progressive London was good in terms of hearing from speakers and trying to build links between various elements of the left. However, it was hampered by the lack of a clear consensus on the way forward. Disparate sections of the left now need to work together to stop the Tories and also to tackle the neo-liberal free-market ideology that has dominated and withered away democratic socialist ideas in the Labour Government.

People who want to make the world a better place usually start with the big things – war, poverty, climate change etc and they usually look to make changes on a national and global level, because surely you can have more impact more quickly that way?

But I want to convince you that in fact you change more by working on apparently very small and local issues. ‘Politics’ as it is, is simply too remote and too conservative, you could spend your whole life lobbying governments and international organisations and get absolutely nowhere, but a few days working to help local people stop their school being closed or even just making sure that someone unfairly denied benefits gets what they’re entitled to could have a much greater effect. This is because in addition to directly helping those specific people the more we give people hope that sticking together and solving our own problems actually works, the more people will have the confidence to try it. In short working on small local stuff is a virtuous cycle of empowerment and small victories, whereas the opposite is true of ‘politics’ where even success can mean that people as a whole feel less able to do things for themselves.

And of course it’s not only for strategic reasons that working locally is better – we directly benefit from the improvements we work for and perhaps most importantly we start to feel like part of a community, something I believe we all want to some extent. But surely this approach can’t work for the biggest and most urgent problem we face – climate change? Well yes, and in fact I believe that it might be our only realistic chance. Copenhagen showed us that Governments are unable to make a sufficiently ambitious deal, and I doubt whether they could enact one even if they did. The only way for rich countries to start to reduce emissions on the trajectory required is for individuals and communities to just do it themselves. In fact it looks really simple if you look at it from this point of view – you have probably reduced your own impact drastically in the last few years, partly because other people you knew were doing it and it seemed like the right thing to do, so why can’t everyone else do the same?

This is already beginning to happen in the shape of the Transition Towns’ movement. OK, so these groups are still largely middle class usual suspects who are mostly focussed on ‘the environment’ as a single issue, but if TTs themselves or other related groups start to form that add the goal of tackling immediate, everyday problems that ordinary people face and build a really feeling of the community taking responsibility for itself then social norms have a strange way of gathering weight and then going over a tipping point. I’m not claiming it’s guaranteed to work, relying on inter governmental process for so long has meant that we have very little time but even if we fail then we still have built resilient, self reliant and healthy communities, and surely that’s better than what your left with after another failed international conference or lobbying of governments?

I and many other liberal-lefty people in Britain use to sneer and mock the American law-enforcement for overreacting to anyone joking about Osama Bin Laden. But in a Britain, where you can be banned for life from your local airport for making a tasteless joke… maybe it’s time we stop mocking and start campaigning before we lose even more of our liberty.

The home of the world’s first and only successful slave revolt and the Western hemisphere’s first post-colonial black nation, Haiti was still struggling to recover from the four hurricanes that hit it in 2008 when around 1,000 people died and 800,000 were left homeless. Reports state that most of those who have escaped with their lives have spent their first night without any shelter, some even sleeping amongst dead bodies and this is likely to continue, whilst hundreds or possibly thousands are buried alive underneath the devastation.

This disaster is not only shocking in scale but especially shocking because of the inability of Haiti to help itself. Haitians have been struggling with chronic unemployment affecting 75% of the population, 70% without adequate access to sanitation; 78% of the population live on a meagre $2 a day (the so-called absolute poverty threshold). All this plus coups and civil wars have brought intermittent political stability since 1990.

Though Obama and many leaders in the international community have pledged emergency rescue assistance, and as I write NGOs and charities descend to deliver most-needed emergency relief. It will take more than this to help Haiti into a stronger nation, but international aid and interference in the past has moved Haiti away from policies that would have delivered a higher minimum wage and agricultural strength to provide food self-sufficiency to the policies of further impoverishment to stimulate “foreign investment”.

These problems however must be tackled another day, for now do we should do all we can to help Haiti.