On Tuesday 28 August, an RCG comrade joined a mass demonstration against removals to the Democratic Republic of Congo outside the Home Office immigration reporting centre in Glasgow. Up to 150 asylum-seekers and refugees protested, chanted, sang and spoke against deportations and dawn-raids, denouncing the Kabila dictatorship and Britain’s tacit co-operation with his regime.
The protestors joined a large group of their comrades who had mounted an all-night demonstration outside Brand Street from Monday evening onwards. Banners were attached to the Home Office fence reading ‘Kabila = Hitler’ and denouncing the Home Office’s conspiracy of silence over the Congo and the racist use of asylum and immigration laws against the Congolese. Placards calling for an end to all deportations and dawn-raids and for equal rights for asylum-seekers were held by all.
Pastor Daly, whose deportation in 2005 was prevented after a large campaign in Glasgow, attended the protest with a generator and a set of speakers. This added to lively and militant atmosphere of the event, with songs and speeches booming out from the Congolese, letting the petty bureaucrats and racist security guards of the Home Office know that the community would not leave without a fight.
After a ‘complaint’ was made by a drunken racist who taunted the protestors the police tried to prevent the use of the soundsystem. However, the leaders of the demonstration refused to be intimidated and carried on regardless: “How can the police or residents complain about the noise we are making and not about the Home Office who is sending people back to their deaths?”
FRFI spoke to one asylum-seeker who had been living in Britain for ten years, fleeing the DRC after his parents were murdered in the imperialist-fomented war. He explained that people were forced to leave the DRC because of the violence. France, Belgium, Britain and the US “do not want peace – they want war to divide the people so they are able to rob the Congo of its resources. They want war – look at what they have done to Iraq and the Iraqi people.”
This protest followed on from ones called by the Cameroonian community following the kidnapping and detention of one of their members in Glasgow on Thursday. RCG comrades joined around 30 militant demonstrators in the city centre and subsequently Brand Street. The lively protests called for the return of Anatole to Glasgow, but also for equal rights and an end to all racist deportations. Many of the Cameroonians had opposed imperialist interference in their own country and explained to FRFI the massive exploitation of Cameroon by French and US capital which robs the country of its wealth and leaves millions in poverty.
It is clear that many are willing to challenge imperialist oppression wherever it may be
