Racially-motivated attacks are a daily occurrence in Britain, and since the 7 July London bombings have increased sharply. In many areas, minority ethnic people, especially children and the elderly, live in constant fear, some too scared to answer the door. Stones, petrol and excrement have been put through windows and doors. Muslim women and Sikhs have had hijabs and turbans forcibly pulled off in public by vigilante racists.
The state does nothing to prevent this; indeed official racism creates a climate in which freelance racists thrive. Black and Asian people, especially youth, continue to be disproportionately targeted for stop-and-search. Asylum seekers continue to be detained, deported and are soon to be electronically tagged. Section 9 of the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act, which forces asylum seekers into destitution by removing all benefits and threatening to take children into local authority care, has begun to be implemented in pilot areas. By October around 116 families (over 400 people) are expected to have had their benefits withdrawn. Hundreds more will suffer when the scheme becomes nationwide.
Unofficial racism
In Merseyside, racist attacks reported to monitoring groups increased four-fold to over 200 between 7 July and18 August 2005, from 48 over the preceding six weeks. 170 attacks were reported to police between 7 July and 8 August compared with 91 over the same period last year (Daily Post, 30 August). Following the example of the British media and politicians in blaming Muslims, freelance racist thugs used the bombings as an excuse to step up what they had been doing anyway. The police do nothing to protect the victims and most attacks have barely been reported. Since the 1999 MacPherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, there have been 47 race-hate murders (Institute of Race Relations, 3 August 2005). Most people would struggle to name even one of the victims.
The racist murder on 11 July of 48-year-old Kamal Raza Butt, called ‘Taliban’ and punched by a mob of racist youth in Nottingham, was barely mentioned, let alone condemned. The only murder to receive any coverage was that on 30 July of 18-year-old Anthony Walker, who was attacked by a sadistic gang of thugs as he walked home with his girlfriend and cousin in Huyton, Liverpool, and left slumped on the ground with an axe in his head.
In Oldham, a mob of 100 racists hunted down and attacked three Asian children, two aged 11, in the grounds of Counthill School. Just four people were convicted for the assaults. One 14-year-old was kicked, punched, stamped on and hit with a wooden log until unconscious, and all were left too scared to go outside (Asian News, 26 August).
State racism
It is little wonder that racist attackers are not more vigorously pursued when British state officials such as police officers routinely commit racist attacks themselves, both in and out of uniform.
On 5 July six off-duty PCs and a WPC were arrested after they attacked and hospitalised five Asian men in Wimbledon, in a ‘racially motivated brawl’. On 8 August, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that three Greater Manchester Police officers who were caught on CCTV in June 2003, repeatedly kicking a restrained Delbo King in the mouth and testicles, are not to be prosecuted due to ‘insufficient evidence’.
Racist oppression against asylum-seekers continues to intensify, often with tragic consequences. On 15 September, Manuel Bravo became the sixth known asylum detainee to die in custody in the last 12 months; he apparently committed suicide so his 13-year-old son Antonio wouldn’t be deported. Manuel Bravo’s parents had been killed and his sister raped in Angola. Manuel, his wife Lydia and their two sons, Antonio and Mellyu fled to Britain in 2001 and settled in Leeds. Earlier this year Lydia returned to Angola with Mellyu to care for relatives. A few months later Manuel learned that his wife had been arrested on arrival and that both his wife and son had disappeared.
Manuel and 13-year-old Antonio were arrested on 14 September and taken to Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre to be deported the next day. Now Antonio may be allowed to stay until he is 18, when he can apply for asylum.
The Home Office decided that from 1 August 2005 it would recommend deportations of Iraqi asylum seekers, as there was now a ‘viable route of return’. By 16 August, hundreds of Iraqis were detained pending deportations on specially chartered, cost-saving flights.
Along with this decision went the withdrawal of ‘hard case support’ – accommodation, food and other basic essentials provided under section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 to would-be refugees whose applications have been refused, but who can’t be deported because it’s not safe to do so.
The number of asylum seekers qualifying for hard case support had increased sharply this year to over 6,700 between January and June 2005, from less than 2,000 for the whole of 2004. 69% of all recipients were fleeing Iraq and the British government, which is occupying their homeland, is now trying to starve them into returning.
Charles Chinweizu
FIGHT DEPORTATIONS!
Eucharia and Timeyi
Eucharia Jakpa and her six-year-old son Timeyi escaped from so-called ‘safe’ Nigeria after the disappearance of Eucharia’s husband and daughter. When they arrived in Manchester they were refused the right to stay and were abandoned by their solicitor, making an appeal impossible. Eucharia realised that the only available option was to build a defence campaign. Local MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has refused to help the campaign or write to the Immigration Minister. Eucharia says, ‘I know I can’t win unless I fight.’ Get involved in the campaign: email defend_eucharia @yahoo. com; phone 07904 880039, or send letters or donations to Defend Eucharia and Timeyi Campaign, c/o PO Pox 20, Bridge 5 Mill, 22A Beswick Street, Manchester M4 7HR.
The Sukula family
The Sukulas are a family of eight who fled the Congo after violent attacks on them by soldiers; they are now living in Bolton. Their asylum appeal has been rejected and if Bolton Council decides to implement Section 9 of the 2004 Act, five of the family’s six children – including a seven-month-old baby – will be placed in the care of social services and separated from their mother, father and 18-year-old sister.
In the Home Office letter to the Sukula family the British state’s motives were made clear: a ‘proportionate response to safeguard Britain’s economic interests’ – in other words these draconian measures are for the benefit of capitalism. For more information about the Sukula family’s campaign to stay, visit www.sukula.org
Manchester FRFI
FRFI 187 October / November 2005
