[Onthebarricades] Uprisings and protests by migrants and refugees, Apr-Aug 2008

[Andy]

ON THE BARRICADES:  Global Resistance Roundup, April-August 2008
https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/onthebarricades
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/globalresistance/


*  BELGIUM:  130 arrested at protest for migrant rights

*  BELGIUM:  Migrants occupy cranes in protest for rights

*  SOUTH AFRICA:  Protests against xenophobic violence, migrants set up 
protest camp

*  Protests against South Africa pogroms in UK, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda

*  AUSTRALIA:  Protests against removal at Villawood, before and after death 
of Chinese refugee

*  US:  Protests against border fence

*  US:  Immigration "Gestapo tactics", raids condemned

*  US:  Racist cop chief Arpaio draws protests on book tour

*  Protests also target shock jock

*  KENYA:  Internally displaced refugees protest at lack of food

*  UK:  Blockade of North Shields deportation site to halt snatch squads

*  US:  Protests over deportation raids

*  US:  Iowa factory raid, conditions protested

*  TURKEY:  Child refugees protest at camp

*  INDONESIA/AUSTRALIA:  Indonesian fisherfolk protest boat seizures at 
Darwin camp

*  FRANCE:  Undocumented migrants speak out

*  THAILAND:  Protest by Hmong at deportation bid

*  UK:  Nottingham protest for detained Burundi refugee

*  CANADA:  Wife protests deportation of imam

*  UK:  Tyneside protest for refugee facing deportation

*  MEXICO/US:  Mexicans plant trees at border to protest fence

*  DOMINICAN REP/HAITI/US:  Protest at consulate over mistreatment of 
Haitians in Dom.Rep.

*  US/ISRAEL:  Messianic Jews protest Israeli discrimination

*  CAMBODIA:  Vietnamese Montagnard refugees protest against deportations

*  UK:  Protest against abuse of refugees in Leeds

*  TURKEY:  Uprising at migrant detention centre, one killed by guards

*  UK:  Uprising at Campsfield detention centre

*  MALAYSIA:  Burmese refugees stage uprising at detention camp, torch 
building

*  BELGIUM:  Uprising at detention centre after death of refugee

*  UK:  Protesters hit company ISS after immigration attack on strikers

*  GREECE:  Seasonal migrant workers protest, clash with farmers


http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3302276,00.html

30.04.2008
Police Arrest 130 in Brussels Protest for Migrants' Release

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Police said protesters did 
not heed calls to disperse

Several hundred people demonstrated into the early hours of Wednesday, April 
30, outside the Palace of Justice in central Brussels, demanding the release 
of undocumented migrants.
Police had used force to break up an unlicensed protest when it began on 
Tuesday outside the city offices that deal with the registration of 
foreigners. They arrested 130 people.

"We approve demonstrations when we can," a spokesperson for Brussels' 
mayor's office said. "But in this case we did not receive a request. The 
demonstrators setup tents with the intention of staying for 24 hours. The 
security and sanitary conditions were not respected."

Demonstrators, mainly foreigners, have regularly protested in Brussels to 
start a political dialogue aimed at providing legal status to foreigners 
without Belgian residency permits. This is the first time the protests ended 
with a large number of arrests.

The majority of those taken into custody were held overnight in the Palace 
of Justice, Belgian media reported. Two lawyers accompanying the 
demonstrators were also manhandled by police, according to media reports.

The migrants face penalties for taking part in the unlicensed demonstration 
and they could also be deported, according to a spokesman for an 
organization that defends the rights of foreigners in Belgium.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=94621

Moroccans take to cranes in Brussels protest
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

BRUSSELS: Perched on two construction cranes in front of the European 
Commission, six Moroccans living illegally in Belgium sought Tuesday to make 
a high-profile protest against EU policy on illegal immigrants. The six were 
among about 40 illegal immigrants who climbed construction cranes around 
Brussels early Tuesday in a growing campaign to win residency permits.
"We chose the European quarter to tell Europeans we are against what Europe 
has in the works for immigrants," said Rachid Moumni, a young Belgian of 
Moroccan origin speaking on behalf of the six protesters.
While the Moroccans took to cranes in the heart of Brussels' European 
quarter, others chose cranes at the construction site of a casino in the 
city center. The protesters said they were on a hunger strike and were not 
drinking liquids either.
"There's a European agreement that says that illegal immigrants must be 
deported," said Moumni.
EU countries have been cracking down on illegal immigration recently, 
agreeing tough new rules forcing the 27 member nations to give residency 
permits or send them home.
"We're humans. Give us residency permits so that we can legally work on the 
construction sites where we are employed. We don't want to work like 
slaves," added Moumni.
Some of the six Moroccans, aged between 20 and 30, toil illegally on 
construction sites as tilers or painters, paid between 20 and 25 euros ($31 
and $39) for a day of back-breaking work starting at 5:00 a.m. and ending at 
8:00 p.m.

With the summer holidays, they found themselves unemployed with only a 
promise to be hired back when the site gets going again.
Although illegal immigrants and their supporters often demonstrate and hold 
sit-ins in Brussels, the cranes protest began last week with three Iranians 
who were already on a hunger strike. One of the three, a young woman, had to 
come down because of her weak condition on Friday and a day later the other 
two followed.
Campaign groups that help illegal immigrants estimate that 100,000 
foreigners reside illegally in Belgium, which has a population of around 10 
million people.
Last year, Belgium deported 9,000 illegal immigrants and helped arrange for 
2,500 others to leave the country voluntarily.
The issue of illegal immigration divides Belgium's governing coalition 
between those in favor of more flexibility and those wanting a harder line.
Until the government takes a position, however, Belgian authorities are 
driving a hard line with the protesters.
"We are not discussing with people who hold actions [protests]. There is no 
dialogue and there will be no dialogue," said the head of the Bureau for 
Foreigners Freddy Roosemont.
Likewise, Migration and Refugee Minister Annemie Turtelboom's spokesman 
insisted "we are not negotiating." - AFP


http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/29/europe/EU-Belgium-Asylum-Protest.php

Asylum seekers occupy construction cranes across Belgian capital in protest 
action

The Associated Press
Published: July 29, 2008

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Thirty asylum seekers are staging a sit-in on top of six 
cranes at construction sites across Brussels demanding rights to work and 
live in Belgium.
The group of mostly Algerian nationals started to occupy cranes Sunday 
evening at a site near the city's historic Grand Place market square. They 
are also occupying two cranes near European Union headquarters.
The protesters are frustrated with delays in processing their application to 
stay in the country, which they entered illegally.
Freddy Roosemont, from the government's immigration affairs office, told VRT 
television Tuesday the protest is dangerous and won't force authorities to 
grant the demonstrators automatic rights to stay.
Construction unions are warning the protests could hold up their work.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20080728-1252-southafrica-migrants.html

SAfrican authorities remove protesting migrants from roadside camp


ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:52 p.m. July 28, 2008
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Armored police trucks on Monday removed several 
hundred migrants who camped by a busy road for four days to highlight their 
mistrust of South Africa and disgust with how they've been treated.
The migrants - many from Congo and Burundi - were among thousands who fled 
their homes in the Johannesburg area because of xenophobic violence in May 
and June.
They were housed in a tent camp for the displaced, but refused to register 
with government officials, apparently fearing that this might jeopardize 
their right to stay in South Africa. Some held out for the U.N. to resettle 
them abroad. All said they were afraid to return to the communities they 
fled during the violence.
The government last week lost patience and moved them to the department of 
Home Affairs Lindela camp, which detains illegal immigrants before they are 
deported. More than 400 foreigners refused to go into the Lindela center, as 
their documents were in order, and instead they camped out by a freeway.
Authorities said they had no power to deport refugees and immigrants with 
valid papers - but could not let them stay by the side of the road.
South African television and the South African Press Association said Monday 
that six armored police trucks had removed women and children to a family 
care center and took the men to police stations. It said the "roadside 
refugees" offered no resistance and were visibly exhausted.
Local government official Jorrie Jordaan said the refugees might be charged 
with a road traffic offense, of allegedly occupying land by the roadside, 
endangering traffic as well as endangering their own lives, according to 
SAPA.
SAPA said officials of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees were at the 
site registering asylum seekers and refugees who wanted to return to their 
home countries.
More than 60 people died in the attacks, which erupted from Johannesburg to 
Cape Town out of anger that migrants were taking scarce jobs and housing 
from poor South Africans. At the height of the crisis, 20,000 people were in 
government tent camps.

http://www.newser.com/story/28394/thousands-protest-south-african-violence.html

Thousands Protest South African Violence
Posted May 25, 08 6:55 AM CDT in World
(Newser) - Thousands of South Africans marched through Johannesburg 
yesterday to protest anti-immigrant rampages that have claimed at least 50 
lives. Carrying placards comparing the violence to apartheid, marchers 
brought traffic to a standstill, Reuters reports. The action was organized 
by labor unions and churches. The nation's largest newspaper today called 
for the resignation of President Thabo Mbeki for failing to stop the mob 
violence.
Throughout this crisis-arguably the most grave, dark and repulsive moment in 
the life of our young nation-Mbeki has demonstrated he no longer has the 
heart to lead,'' said the Sunday Times. " He has shown himself to be not 
only uncaring but utterly incompetent.''

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=568948&rss=yes

Thousands protest South Africa violence
10:34 AEST Sun May 25 2008
76 days 22 hours 57 minutes ago

SAfrican protesters against xenophobia marched Saturday.
By Marius Bosch
Thousands of people marched through South Africa's biggest city on Saturday, 
calling for an end to the violence that has killed at least 50 African 
migrants and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
Demonstrators carrying placards saying "Xenophobia hurts like apartheid" and 
"We stand against xenophobia" brought traffic to a standstill in 
Johannesburg's city centre.
People in the Hillbrow district, home to many African immigrants, cheered 
the march, which was organised by churches and labour unions.
Police said townships around Johannesburg were quiet but shops were looted 
and burnt outside Cape Town late on Friday.
The South African government has been criticised for its slow reaction to 
the violence, the worst since apartheid ended 14 years ago, and for not 
addressing the poverty that is widely blamed for the bloodshed.
President Thabo Mbeki said South Africans should not turn on other Africans 
and pledged that his government was committed to ending the violence.
"Today we are faced with a disgrace, a humiliation as a nation in that we 
have allowed a handful of people to commit crimes against other Africans 
living in our country," Mbeki said on visit to a mission school in the 
Eastern Cape province.
The violence started in Johannesburg's Alexandra township on May 11, and has 
spread to Cape Town and the eastern port city of Durban.
Police said at least 50 people had been killed in areas around Johannesburg. 
More than 25,000 had been driven from their homes in 13 days of attacks by 
mobs who have stabbed, clubbed and burnt migrants from other parts of Africa 
whom they accuse of taking jobs and fuelling crime.
Police said townships around Johannesburg were quiet today and in South 
Africa's premier tourism destination of Cape Town security forces were 
monitoring several flashpoints after anti-foreigner violence continued 
during the night.
Superintendent Andre Traut said shops were looted and burnt in Du Noon 
squatter settlement and in Kraaifontein outside Cape Town, as well as the 
city's largest township, Khayelitsha, where an estimated one million people 
live.
"Most of the incidents (on Friday night) occurred in Khayelitsha, where we 
had our hands full to protect the community," Traut said. Most foreigners 
left the area voluntarily or were escorted by police.
South Africa's foreign minister said yesterday the violence was embarrassing 
for the government and created a "very bad image" for the country. Nkosazana 
Dlamini-Zuma told Reuters in Moscow that the government would deal 
decisively with it.
Manala Manzini, head of the National Intelligence Agency, has said that 
people linked to former apartheid security forces are stoking the violence.
Earlier this week, Mbeki authorised the army to help quell the violence, 
which comes amid power shortages and growing social discontent which have 
rattled investors in Africa's biggest economy.
Officials in the tourism industry fear overseas visitors will stay away from 
a country that hopes to draw half a million extra tourists for the 2010 
soccer World Cup.

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_South%20Africa&set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20080611113721772C200840

Protesters ask for refuge in 'white areas'

    June 11 2008 at 02:04PM

By Niemah Davids

About 60 members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and the Aids Law 
Project, as well as refugees, protested outside Mayor Helen Zille's Rosebank 
home on Tuesday night in a bid to get the city to make more community halls 
available to house displaced foreigners.

This comes after the provincial government obtained a court interdict at 
midnight on Monday to force the City to open community halls to ref- ugees 
from the seven safe sites.

TAC representatives said the halls that had been made available were still 
in "high risk areas" in the townships.

"These people are still too scared to go back there in fear that violence 
will resurface," said the Aids Law Project's Fatima Hassan. "No halls were 
opened in so-called white areas." At least four more halls were needed in 
town, she said.

Zille, who is in Johannesburg, said on Wednesday: "Only the UN can deliver 
to refugees what they want and that is to leave the country." She is due to 
meet UN officials this afternoon.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200806120943.html

Africa: Exiled Zimbabweans Protest in London Against South Africa's Policy

SW Radio Africa (London)
12 June 2008
Posted to the web 12 June 2008
Alex Bell
A crowd of exiled Zimbabweans gathered outside the South African High 
Commission in London Thursday to demonstrate against the South African 
government's policy on Zimbabwe, as well as the recent xenophobic violence 
that has forced thousands of foreigners out of South Africa.
The group of about forty demonstrators staged the protest this afternoon and 
presented a petition expressing horror at the recent attacks that left more 
than 60 foreigners in South Africa dead.

The violence there came as thousands of Zimbabweans were forced to flee 
their homes and take refuge in South Africa, after the disputed March 29 
presidential polls saw an upsurge of attacks on opposition supporters and a 
climbing death toll.
A copy of the petition was handed to Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond 
Tutu in London on Monday, where he asked forgiveness on behalf of the people 
of South Africa for the violence against foreigners.
The petition reads: "A Petition to Thabo Mbeki: Following the recent attacks 
on Zimbabweans and other foreign nationals in South Africa we, the 
undersigned, call on President Mbeki to take action to ensure the safety of 
these endangered people and bring the perpetrators to justice. We urge 
President Mbeki to end his support of President Mugabe, allowing a 
resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis and the return home of exiled Zimbabweans. 
"Zimbabwean blood is at your door."
Thursday's protest came as the political violence in Zimbabwe was once again 
blocked by South Africa from being placed on the agenda of the United 
Nations Security Council. The Council met Thursday to discuss Zimbabwe, but 
as a concession to South Africa they agreed only to discuss the humanitarian 
crisis and not the political one. Mbeki has been widely criticised for his 
quiet support of Mugabe, and for not taking stronger action against the 
economic, political and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.
On Wednesday Mbeki publicly denounced Zimbabwe's violence for the first 
time, calling it a matter of 'serious concern', but he opened the doors for 
further criticism by failing to lay the blame on the Mugabe regime. Rose 
Benton from the the Zimbabwe Vigil , the group that organised Thursday's 
demonstration said it is 'unacceptable' that Mbeki's condemnation has come 
so late after the violence in Zimbabwe started and that the South African 
President's 'quiet diplomacy' can no longer be tolerated.
Benton said she hopes their petition will force Mbeki to start taking action 
to prevent not only violence in Zimbabwe, but also attacks on foreigners in 
his own country. She said: 'More and more Zimbabweans will have no choice 
but to flee. We believe there is a crisis in Zimbabwe and that he (Mbeki) 
can help resolve it'.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/210792,protestors-in-mozambique-seek-compensation-for-xenophobia-victims.html

Protestors in Mozambique seek compensation for xenophobia victims
Posted : Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:26:02 GMT
Author : DPA
Category : Africa (World)

Maputo - Thousand of people marched through Mozambique's capital Maputo 
Saturday to urge that their government demand neighbouring South Africa pay 
compensation to Mozambican victims of a recent spate of xenophobic attacks. 
At least 62 people were killed and hundreds injured in the anti- immigrant 
violence that swept through poor communities across South Africa last month.
At least 23 Mozambicans were among the victims, most of whom were Africans.
Human rights activist Alice Mabota, who was among the around 1,000 
demonstrators, said: "Mozambique's government must activate mechanisms with 
the South African authorities in order to have our compatriots rapidly 
compensated and the authors of the heinous acts brought to justice."
Carrying banners with slogans such as "xenophobia is selfishness" and "down 
with intolerance and hatred," the demonstrators assembled in Maputo's 
Independence Square.
Some of the protestors recalled that Mozambicans, who fled the violence in 
their tens of thousands - many returning home with the help of their 
government - had been staunch allies of South Africans during apartheid.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2332415,00.html

Nigerians protest over attacks
31/05/2008 14:04  - (SA)

Lagos - A group of Nigerians have staged a peaceful protest outside the 
South African High Commission in Lagos against attacks on their compatriots 
resident in that country, witnesses said.
The protesters, made up mostly of members of civil society groups, staged 
the protest on Friday outside the deputy high commissioner's office in the 
Victoria Island district of Lagos, carrying placards and chanting slogans.
Some of the placards read "other Africans supported your independence. Stop 
this madness", "South African madness must be tamed", "attack against 
Nigerians is unjustifiable" and "Nigerians must be treated with dignity in 
South Africa."
Nigeria played a major role in South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, 
providing funds, food and other forms of assistance.
Security was beefed up around the mission to prevent a breakdown of law and 
order.
President Umaru Yar'Adua on Thursday ruled out official retaliatory measures 
against South Africa over attacks on Nigerian citizens in that country.
"I am going to South Africa next week on a state visit. Nigeria is playing a 
very critical and important role on the African continent... so the issue of 
retaliation does not arise," he said in a live television interview to mark 
his first anniversary in office.
The visit begins on Monday, officials said.
"What we need to do is to resolve these problems through dialogue. We are 
trying to bring Africans together... to integrate our economies," Yar'Adua 
said.
Nigeria previously said on Tuesday it would press for compensation from the 
South African government for its citizens who were victims of anti-immigrant 
attacks in that country.
More than 50 people have been killed and tens of thousands of foreigners 
left homeless, mainly around Johannesburg, following two weeks of attacks 
which later spread to most parts of South Africa.
The state-run News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported last week that dozens of 
Nigerians resident in Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville districts in Johannesburg 
had been attacked and their shops vandalised or looted.
The Super Eagles of Nigeria and South Africa's Bafana Bafana are playing on 
Sunday in Abuja in a 2010 African Nations Cup football qualifier.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200805310004.html

Nigeria/South Africa: Protesters Picket South African Deputy High Commission

This Day (Lagos)
31 May 2008
Posted to the web 31 May 2008
Yemi Adebowale
Lagos
Following the on going xenophobic violence on foreigners in South Africa by 
Black South Africans, a selection of civil society organisations yesterday 
in Lagos staged a protest at the South African Deputy High Commission in 
Lagos.
The protesters, who arrived the Deputy High Commission around midday, 
denounced the xenophobic attacks and called on the Nigerian government to 
take punitive action against the South African government.

Some of the placards read: "South African madness must be tamed," and "other 
Africans supported your independence, stop this madness," while the 
protesters sang war songs round the Deputy High Commission.
Security at the mission in Lagos had been tightened ahead of the protest, 
with an unusual large number of security men seen at the premises.
Despite heavy presence of security men during the protest march, an official 
of the Deputy High Commission who asked not to be named said, "our security 
is no longer guaranteed."
However, members of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) did 
not join in the protest as earlier indicated.
NANS had earlier distributed pamphlets in Abuja and sent copies to the South 
African High Commission demanding for the immediate closure of the office 
and all South African businesses in Nigeria.
The students also called for the South African national football team 
(Bafana Bafana) which arrived in Nigeria on Friday, to return home. Bafana 
Bafana are scheduled to play in a crucial game against Nigeria as the 
nations on the continent vie for a place in the FIFA World Cup in 2010.
A South Africa Deputy High Commission official in Lagos told THISDAY: "There 
was indeed a protest at the Deputy High Commission today. But we suspect 
that touts hijacked it because NANS had written to say they were putting off 
the protest till next week Tuesday. Happily, the protesters dispersed 
without violent incident. There was no violence of any sort."
The protest is coming ahead of President Umaru Yar'Adua's visit to South 
Africa on Tuesday for the World Economic Summit on Africa.
Both countries have moved fast to ease tensions. Just on Thursday, Yar'Adua 
down-played calls for retaliation, saying it was unnecessary.
Yar'Adua said the South African government had taken adequate measures by 
deploying its military personnel to the troubled areas.
He said: "by next week I will be going to South Africa on state visit and 
will use the opportunity of the visit to resolve the problem through 
dialogue."
South Africa Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said 
yesterday: "We would like to draw attention to the fact that both South 
Africa and the Federal Republic of Nigeria enjoy fraternal diplomatic 
relations, which enables discussion of issues of mutual interest and concern 
between the two countries through existing bilateral mechanisms."
Also last week, the deputy president of South Africa, Her Excellency, 
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, tendered unreserved apologises to the government and 
people of Nigeria over the violence against foreigners.
The South African deputy president tendered the apology at the end of the 
7th Nigeria-South Africa Bi-National Commission, held in Abuja.
The Deputy President who led her country's delegation to the Bi-National 
Commission said, though no Nigerian was killed, the action was regrettable 
and shocking and also added that her government was determined to get to the 
root of the crisis with a view to preventing a recurrence.
She said the violence was being perpetrated by hoodlums whose main aim was 
to destabilise South Africa and promised that they would be stopped.

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/19/631981

Ugandans protest South Africa killings Thursday, 5th June, 2008

Chiliza (left) talks to Tumusiime and Godi at the South African High 
Commission

By Godfrey Kimono

DRAMA ensued on Wednesday at the South African High Commission in Kampala 
when demonstrators blocked the commissioner, Henry Thanduyise Chiliza, from 
accessing the premises.

Under their umbrella organisation, Concerned African Patriots, the 
demonstrators were protesting against the recent attacks on African 
immigrants in South Africa.

The ambassador, who was out when the protesters gathered at his offices, had 
to alight from his car and address the group, which held placards reading: 
"South Africa stop Black Apartheid", "P. W. Botha is gone", "We condemn 
black apartheid" and "Where is the plan for African Unity?"

The demonstrators, led by Arua Municipality MP Akbar Godi and president of 
the Forum for Integrity Party, Emmanuel Tumusime, called upon African 
leaders to condemn the xenophobic attacks.

South Africans, they added, should remember that most of Africa stood by 
them during the anti-apartheid struggle.

"It was a great pain to see our fellow Africans being hunted down by South 
African blacks like animals, yet countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and 
Nigeria have unselectively opened up to receive South African businessmen," 
Godi said.

The demonstrators handed over a petition to Chiliza addressed to South 
African President Thabo Mbeki and copied to presidents Museveni and Jakayi 
Kikwete, who chairs the African Union.

They demanded that the perpetuators of violence and killings be brought to 
book. Citing several South African companies that have taken up 
opportunities in Uganda, they said it was unfair for South Africans to hunt 
and burn fellow Africans.

Godi added that the various jobs held by South Africans in other countries 
could have been reserved for the murdered Africans. But Chiliza said South 
Africa was not against foreign blacks.

"This is just a group of six to 10 people who move from place to place 
causing commotion."

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=582144&rss=yes

Sydney asylum seekers protest over death
16:38 AEST Wed Jun 18 2008
48 days 14 hours 3 minutes ago

Asylum seekers protest deportation at Villawood.

Asylum seekers at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre have peacefully 
protested against forced deportations following the suicide of a former 
detainee sent back to China.
The man, referred to only as Mr Zhang, claimed before being sent home in 
April last year that he would be persecuted due to his involvement with a 
pro-democracy group.
He committed suicide after being detained and tortured by Chinese 
authorities when he returned, the Refugee Action Coalition said.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans said earlier this week he would be seeking 
further information about the "tragic" incident.
Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said a ministerial review of long-term 
detainees at Villawood decided to deport 24 people, five of whom have 
already left the country.
"The asylum seekers are demanding an end to forced deportation and for a 
fair assessment of their cases," Mr Rintoul said in a statement on 
Wednesday.
"Zhang's death is an absolute tragedy ... but it highlights the flaws in the 
refugee determination system and the need for the minister to seriously 
adhere to Australia's obligation not to return asylum seekers to danger."
The Immigration Department confirmed a peaceful protest was underway at 
Villawood.
"The department ... can confirm that a peaceful demonstration is continuing 
inside the Villawood Detention Centre," an immigration spokesman told AAP.
"The demonstration started about 2pm (AEST) yesterday in the recreation room 
with varying levels of participation.
"The centre remains calm and normal operations continue."
Mr Rintoul said asylum seekers were preparing a petition calling for a 
reassessment of their cases, which will be sent to Mr Evans.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=600018&rss=yes

Villawood detainee injured in protest
18:45 AEST Fri Jul 18 2008
A Villawood detainee injured in a rooftop "protest" at the Sydney detention 
centre has been taken to hospital.
The Department of Immigration says the man, whose details could not be 
confirmed, was injured climbing onto the roof about 2pm (AEST) Friday and 
again when coming down 20 minutes later.
Two members of centre's staff were also hurt as they tried to bring him 
down.
None of the injuries were said to be life-threatening.
"The decision was taken to assist him down from the roof and while (the 
staff) brought him down they became caught in security wire," an immigration 
spokesman told AAP.
"One cut their finger and was treated on site. The other had more serious 
injuries and was sent to hospital for further treatment."
The detainee was also taken to hospital.
The immigration spokesman said the incident was not a suicide attempt.
The incident occurred on the roof of Stage One of the centre, the highest 
security area and the only part of the facility that has security wire.
Jamal Daoud, a member of the Refugee Action Coalition of NSW, was at the 
centre at the time of the incident and said the atmosphere at the facility 
was "depressing".
"Many people there have been in detention for more than six months, some 
more than two years," he said.
"They are just counting incidents like these and have reached their limit. 
They are very depressed."
Investigations are continuing.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=569757&rss=yes

Villawood protest won't stop deportation
11:13 AEST Tue May 27 2008
74 days 21 hours 2 minutes ago

Two protesters will stay atop Villawood indefinitely.

Two Chinese nationals will continue on the path to deportation when they end 
their rooftop protest at Sydney's Villawood detention centre, immigration 
officials say.
The men entered the second day of their protest, which began when they 
climbed on to the roof at about 8.45am (AEST) on Monday.
They have been in detention for more than three years and have exhausted 
every option to be granted a permanent visa.
Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) spokesman Ian Rintoul says the men will 
remain on the roof indefinitely until the Immigration Minister Chris Evans 
reconsiders their cases.
He said one of the men is a Falun Gong practitioner who fears for his life 
if he returns to China.
"It's indefinite at this stage," Mr Rintoul told AAP.
"I think they'll be up there hopefully until they get their cases 
reconsidered. Coming down for them is no option."
The men were among a group of 19 people in long-term detention whose 
applications to remain in Australia were rejected by Immigration Minister 
Chris Evans last week.
They have accepted food and blankets during their protest but have indicated 
they will not come down unless their demands are met.
However the government says they have nothing to gain by maintaining their 
protest.
"They're on the pathway to removal at this stage and clearly we've got to 
get them off the roof in order to take the next steps," an Immigration 
Department spokesman told AAP.
The spokesman could not specify when the men are scheduled to leave the 
country.
Mr Rintoul said the RAC would protest outside the department's offices in 
Sydney to highlight the plight of the detainees who face deportation.
"For the people who have been rejected, then the only alternative is 
deportation, which means we're going to see more protests and more desperate 
acts at Villawood," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/26/2255883.htm

Detainees climb Villawood roof in deportation protest
Posted Mon May 26, 2008 3:02pm AEST
Map: Villawood 2163
The Department of Immigration has confirmed two Chinese nationals have 
climbed on to the roof of Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre.
The Refugee Action Coalition says the men are protesting against a decision 
to send them back to China.
Last week, federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced there would be 
24 deportations from Villawood.
Staff at the centre, including an interpreter, are talking with the men, who 
are yet to make any formal demands.

http://www.latinalista.net/palabrafinal/2008/06/resistance-at-usmexico-border-heats-up-in-anticipation-of-next-months-fence-construction.html

Resistance at US/Mexico border heats up in anticipation of next month's 
fence construction
Categorized under | Tags:
Today, all eyes are fixed on Washington DC and ears glued for the latest 
hint at what was discussed at a late-night meeting between Obama and Clinton 
but the real action is happening outside the Beltway - at the US/Mexico 
border.
Things are heating up and it promises to be a long, hot summer showdown 
between border residents and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
By now, the story is old.

Opponents of a border barrier gather on the Mexican side of the fence in San 
Diego as part of a binational protest to the construction of a border fence.
(Source: Proyecto Fronterizo)
DHS is determined to construct as much fencing as they can accomplish along 
the US/Mexico border while the Bush Administration is in office. They've 
been stymied because they underestimated the sophistication of our nation's 
border residents when it came to organizing themselves against being 
railroaded to comply with an order that would rob them of familial and 
public lands for a project that is bound to be known throughout history as 
Bush's Blunder.
Yet, like cactus flowers growing in a waterless desert, there are little 
signs that resistance is growing.
In a significant sign of binational opposition to the border fence, a 
special vigil along the southern border called "From Friendship to Hope" 
(Friendship Park in San Diego to Hope Park in South Texas) took place last 
weekend.

Young girl at binational border protest at Friendship Park passes candy to 
children on the Mexican side of the fence.
(Source: J. Holslin)
John Fanestil, executive director of the San Diego-based Foundation for 
Change was present and shared some notes about the event:
Laurie Lynn Silvan Nogaim, of Fundacion La Puerta, shared how odd it was for 
Mexican environmental advocates like her - who have so long envied their 
U.S. counterparts because of the U.S. government's openness and transparency 
and commitment to environmental protection - to find themselves seeing the 
U.S. government abandon these historic commitments.
Testimonies were shared. One man was deported last December after living 35 
years in Los Angeles. With all his family still in LA, he has decided to 
make the best of it in Tijuana. He has landed a job, but complained about 
the salary - six days a week, eight hours a day, take-home pay: $70 per 
week.
One Border Patrol agent greeted a group of participants on their way out, 
addressed them warmly and invited them on a tour of the border so he could 
explain the challenges they face and why he feels they need the border 
fence.
Some law enforcement officers spent the period of our vigil running the 
license plates of all the cars in the State Parks parking lot. One student's 
vehicle with expired registration was towed. When the professor who had 
invited the student asked the officer if there was any way the student could 
be spared the inconvenience of having the car towed, the officer told him 
that the decision was already made. "It's like shooting fish in a barrel," 
he said.
Border Patrol presence at Friendship Park was very high - at least a dozen 
officers were surveying our gathering at one point - in marked contrast to 
the low-key presence that has been typical at our gatherings in years past.
These mild confrontations between the Border Patrol and residents are in all 
likelihood going to escalate into passive disobedience as the government 
physically starts to erect the fencing.
It's being reported by The Rio Grande Guardian newspaper that some border 
residents opposed to the fence are planning acts of civil disobedience late 
next month when construction is scheduled to start.
"There are people ready to do civil disobedience, people who have experience 
in doing civil disobedience, who are not afraid to do that," said No Border 
Wall coalition member Ann Cass.
"We are going to gear up our actions through July 27, that's when they said 
they will start building the fence."
Asked what civil disobedience is, Cass responded: "Civil disobedience is 
when you are willing to break a law and you know in your conscience that the 
law is a bad law and what they (the government) are doing is bad."
Are recreations of what happened at Tiananmen Square 19 years ago too 
farfetched to be a reality in South Texas and in more spots along the 
border?
Hardly.
What this administration has been able to accomplish with this issue, versus 
all of its other failed policies, is unite diverse groups, who would never 
have before joined forces, to counter an enforcement policy that has nothing 
to do with national security as much as it has to do with exercising 
government control - not because it has to but simply because it can.

http://politicom.moldova.org/stiri/eng/134193/

Texas protest aimed at border wall
Nearly 200 people gathered in Edinburg, Texas, to protest a proposed wall 
along the U.S.-Mexican border, activists say.
Activist Jay Johnson Castro said Saturday's protest by Rio Grande Valley 
residents was in opposition to the proposal aimed at halting the ongoing 
wave of illegal immigrants from Mexico, the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News 
said Sunday.
Texas is the last stand against the border wall, Castro said.
It's a shame. It's a criminal shame what has happened. It's a criminal 
regime that is doing this to this country, he added.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed that 370 miles of 
pedestrian fence be completed by the year's end, the newspaper said. That 
news does not sit well with those in Saturday's protest, who argue such 
efforts will only cause future immigrants to try riskier border crossings.
That is the only impact the wall has had -- to cause people to die, No 
Border Wall activist Scott Nicol told the Express-News.


http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/14/10342/

Published on Monday, July 14, 2008 by Associated Press
Paddlers Protesting Border Fence
Boaters Don't Want Lower Rio Grande Blocked
by Christopher Sherman
MISSION, Texas - The federal government's border fence plans in South Texas 
have been attacked by property owners, wildlife advocates and land 
conservationists. The next wave of opponents could come from the water - and 
they're carrying paddles.
Kayakers and canoeists will descend on the lower Rio Grande for events this 
fall aimed at raising the river's profile as a recreation hub and at drawing 
attention to the impact the border fence could have by blocking access to 
the river.
The Rio Grande forms Texas' 1,255-mile border with Mexico from El Paso to 
the Gulf of Mexico. But most of the river, with the notable exception of Big 
Bend National Park, is forgotten by the state's tens of thousands of 
recreational paddlers. Those who do use the river share the water with 
Border Patrol agents patrolling in bulletproof vests and with smugglers of 
drugs and people.
In a recent letter to Roma Mayor Rogelio Ybarra, the president of the Texas 
Rivers Protection Association expressed his support for a planned river 
festival and his concern about the border fence. But perhaps most telling 
was the clear illustration of how novel the idea of using the lower Rio 
Grande was even for people dedicated to the state's rivers.
"It has come to our attention recently that the Lower Rio Grande is indeed a 
safe and legal place to paddle, and that rights for all U.S. citizens to do 
so are guaranteed by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo," association 
president Tom Goynes wrote. "It's ironic that we only learned that the 
resource was available to us as a result of the government's plans to take 
it away."
Los Caminos del Rio, a nonprofit group based in McAllen, recognizes that its 
Healthy Living Festival planned for Nov. 1 - to capitalize on any attention 
the border could receive before the national election three days later - is 
unlikely to affect the 85 miles of border fence slated for completion in 
Texas this year.
While not backing off its fence plans, the Border Patrol supports Los 
Caminos's efforts to get more people on the river.
"The more eyes we have out there, the better job we can do," said Dan Doty, 
spokesman for the local Border Patrol sector.
For Los Caminos del Rio, more legal activity on the river - kayaking, 
canoeing, fishing - will discourage the illegal smuggling activity. 
Executive director Eric Ellman says Friends of Santa Ana National Wildlife 
Refuge have been giving canoe tours for years without incident, and his own 
group has had hundreds on the river in the past couple years without 
problem.
Mexicans have a tradition of using the Rio Grande for recreation.
Already, anyone traveling the river is more likely to see people on the 
Mexican shoreline - fishing, swimming, boating. There are more public access 
points and someone has even opened a water skiing academy upriver from 
Mission on the Mexican side.
Aleida Flores Garcia is trying to get something going on the U.S. side as 
well, but the border fence could kill it.
She and her husband, Jorge Garcia, have been working on their property along 
the river in Los Ebanos for years. They've cleared brush, put in a park and 
built a boat ramp. They plan to build a large thatched pavilion and hold 
fishing tournaments and dances. Garcia recently incorporated her business as 
the La Paloma Ranch Retreat.
But the federal government has sent her a condemnation letter. The border 
fence is planned to run across her property, leaving most of it in the no 
man's land between the fence and river.
Garcia has a lawyer and is fighting the government, but other challenges 
have so far been unsuccessful.
"I need to fight for this little town," she said. "The nature itself is just 
too beautiful to be blocked by a wall."

http://www.projo.com/news/content/ILLEGAL_IMMIGRANT_ARRESTS_06-14-08_2SAGV9G_v25.372f5f0.html

Advocates protest immigration raids that ne42
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 14, 2008
By Karen Lee Ziner

Journal Staff Writer
NEWPORT - Community advocates yesterday denounced a two-day immigration 
sweep on Aquidneck Island as an inhumane and deliberate effort to spread 
fear, and they said the raids on Wednesday and Thursday had already pushed 
people into hiding.
At a news conference in Washington Square, half a dozen speakers said agents 
for Immigration and Customs Enforcement had gone into restaurants, stores 
and apartments during the sweep, but in some cases appeared to be targeting 
people because they appeared foreign and were driving landscaping trucks.
"This is nothing less than Gestapo tactics, and it has to stop," said Alison 
Foley, a Providence lawyer. She said she and others are trying to get legal 
aid and other assistance to detainees and their families.
Immigration agents, assisted by state and local police, arrested 42 people 
from Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico in Newport and Middletown, according to 
Paula Grenier, spokeswoman for ICE in Boston.
She said 21 had ignored final orders of deportation, 12 had illegally 
re-entered the country after being deported, and 9 others were determined to 
be in the country illegally. Grenier said the agents are members of ICE's 
Rhode Island Fugitive Operations Team.
Bruce E. Chadbourne, field office director for the ICE Office of Detention 
and Removal in Boston, said the agency "is committed to restoring integrity 
to our nation's immigration system, and one way to do that is to ensure 
removal orders are carried out."
Chadbourne said, "The United States welcomes law-abiding immigrants, but 
foreign nationals who violate our laws and who commit crimes against those 
in our communities will not be allowed to stay. Rest assured, ICE will use 
all available resources to remove from the country those not legally allowed 
to be here."
But the Rev. Raymond Tetreault, pastor of St. Teresa D'Avila Church in 
Providence, called for hiatus.
"They should call for a cessation of deportations right now, until Congress 
passes immigration reform," the priest said. "They shouldn't make the raids 
to begin with." Tetreault acknowledged that the detainees were in the 
country illegally, "but they are coming to work. They're supporting the 
economy. They're doing what we want people to do."
Carlos Escobedo, consul general for Guatemala in Providence, said he has 
asked ICE for a list of detainees, and their whereabouts.
"I will ask to visit them," Escobedo said at the news conference. "We are 
worried about the families, especially about the children. Somebody told me 
there are six children without protection." (That could not be confirmed). 
Escobedo said he wants to ensure that eligible detainees get their rightful 
hearing before an immigration judge.
Francesco Hernandez, who owns a landscaping company, said one of his 
employees alleged that ICE agents took down the license plate number of his 
truck, when they happened upon it at a local gas station. He said the truck 
has his company's name on the side.
"A worker for me was driving the truck, and he was putting gas in the truck 
at the Shell station," Hernandez said. "ICE came to put gas in their car, 
too." Hernandez said his worker told him that when the agents spotted the 
truck, they got into an argument over trying to figure out "who is illegal" 
in the vehicle. That's when one of the agents copied the plate number, 
Fernandez said.
"I was thinking they are going to come to my house," Hernandez said. "But I 
have nothing to hide."
The news conference on the steps of the Newport Old Colony House was just 
blocks from St. Joseph Church, which hosted forums two years ago in which 
immigrants complained they were being targeted by police and federal agents.
Yesterday afternoon, the church's pastor, the Rev. Hugo Carmona, predicted 
that the latest sweep will force people underground.
"People are going into hiding. People right here don't feel comfortable," 
Carmona said. "Some families are completely broken. They feel very scared. 
People are not going to come out. They're not going to go to work. They're 
staying home."
Zoila Valladeres, who owns a convenience store on Broadway that sells 
Guatemalan and Mexican products, said she learned about the immigration 
raids from a customer when she opened the store Wednesday morning.
"He was as pale as a piece of paper," said Valladeres, of the customer. "He 
said, 'Do you " at a nearby store? "And I'm like, know Immigration is over 
there' 'Where?' And he's like, 'Yeah, they've got several of my friends.' He 
was so nervous."
Valladeres said another merchant on her block told her that ICE agents had 
asked what time her store would be opening.
"Maybe they thought I was hiding?" she said. "If they want to come in, let 
them."
Rosanne Sieglar, a Newport artist, said she was supposed to attend the 
wedding next week of a friend she's known for 10 years, but she learned the 
ICE agents had arrested and detained him. "He was supposed to be married," 
she said. "He has a masonry business. He worked so hard. He used to work at 
the Black Pearl [restaurant]."
Sieglar said the man's relatives "are terrified. They're hiding out 
somewhere."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/06/21/20080621arpaiosigning0622.html

Arpaio book signing draws supporters, protesters
by Astrid Galvan - Jun. 21, 2008 05:54 PM
The Arizona Republic
A book signing by Sheriff Joe Arpaio turned rambunctious Saturday after a 
few protesters made their way from the 110 degree-plus outdoors into a 
Barnes & Noble.
About 45 people gathered outside the Scottsdale bookstore on Shea Boulevard 
near Loop 101 on Saturday around 1 p.m., an hour before the sheriff gave a 
speech about his latest book, "Joe's Law."
They held signs on sidewalks of the busy Shea and Pima intersection that 
read things like, "No human being is illegal" and "Arrest real criminals."
Chris Fleischman, a retired engineer from Phoenix, said he's been protesting 
against the sheriff since last fall.
One of the reasons he opposes Arpaio is because of the sheriff's 
well-publicized immigration sweeps.
Fleischman said the sweeps were racist and did not make cities any safer.
He also said the sheriff lies about his approval ratings and about the 
number of arrests made by his office.
"It's gonna hurt our safety and our prosperity," he said.
Jorge Gonzalez, of Phoenix, said he protests against Arpaio because he feels 
the Hispanic community is being persecuted.
He said the heat wont' stop him from protesting against the sheriff.
"Where ever he is, I will be," Gonzalez said.
Many of the protestors said they were not representing a particular group, 
but instead convened as individual citizens.
The crowd was significantly smaller then the hundreds who demonstrated at 
the Board of Supervisors meeting on Thursday, where the Maricopa Citizens 
for Safety and Accountability, a new group, rallied for better monitoring of 
public money spent by the sheriff's office.
Inside on Saturday, the sheriff entertained at least 100 supporters who 
showed up to his book signing.
He acknowledged the protestors outside, noting they follow him "everywhere" 
he goes.
"I hope they're gonna buy a book," he said. "Think they'll have enough money 
to buy it?"
Some protestors made their way into the bookstore, often interrupting 
Arpaio's speech.
One protester got in front of the sheriff but was escorted out shortly 
after. Angry supporters yelled at him to leave.
Arpaio kept his cool, reminding spectators of the protestors' freedom of 
speech, but his supporters were visibly irked by the interruptions.
Nancy Bechtold, of Scottsdale, has been a supporter for 10 years.
She said she thinks Arpaio is the only elected official who has a backbone 
in law enforcement, and she wasn't too keen on the protestors.
"They show themselves to be what they are: ignorant," she said.
Jim Bagg, a Phoenix resident and long-time Arpaio supporter, said the 
demonstrators "irritate" him because he thinks they should be pressing state 
representatives who have more power to solve immigration issues.
"Joe is only doing his job," Bagg said.

http://www.workers.org/2008/us/tucson_0807/

Activists protest racist sheriff, shock jock
By Paul Teitelbaum
Tucson, Ariz.
Published Aug 2, 2008 7:47 AM
On July 10, arch-racist Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio came to Tucson to 
promote his new book at a local Barnes & Noble. He was met by a protest of 
100 people whose continuous marching and chanting outside the bookstore 
disrupted his book signing and live radio interview. As part of this protest 
an empty piñata with the likeness of Sheriff Arpaio was smashed to bits by 
local youth.
Arpaio bills himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff." Not only is he racist 
and xenophobic but inhumane and cruel as well. Arpaio has erected a tent 
city jail in Phoenix where temperatures have been reported as high as 150 
degrees in the summer.
Arpaio reportedly serves inmates green bologna for their two meals daily and 
shackles them into chain gangs for eight hours each day. Approximately 70 
percent of the jail population is awaiting trial, which means they have not 
been convicted of any offense. No wonder his jails have been condemned by 
Amnesty International. Arpaio is currently named in over 1,500 lawsuits, 
many of them for wrongful death.
On July 11, Tucson right-wing radio talk show host "Jon Justice" of 104.1 FM 
"The Truth" launched a rabidly racist campaign to have immigrant rights 
activist and Tucson May 1st Coalition leader Isabel Garcia fired from her 
position as a Pima County Legal Defender. Beside the lies and fear-mongering 
that he spews on-air, Jon J posted a YouTube video of himself with a piñata 
with Garcia's likeness, fondling and caressing it and making sexist comments 
about "wanting to take it home with me" and racist comments about "chorizo" 
and "viva la raza."
Tucson activists led by Derechos Humanos, the organization that Isabel 
Garcia co-chairs, launched a Stop Hate Radio campaign to show support for 
Garcia and denounce the racist lies and bigotry that stations like 104.1 FM 
spew. The radio station is part of the Journal Broadcasting Group which owns 
52 newspapers, 35 radio stations, 12 television stations and 121 on-line 
media services throughout the country. It owns an ABC-affiliate TV station 
and four radio stations, including 104.1 in Tucson alone.
Activists compiled a list of the sponsors who run ads on the Jon Justice 
show and called them, requesting that they withdraw their advertising. Many 
businesses were unaware that their advertising package with the Journal 
Broadcasting Group included 104.1 FM. Enough sponsors withdrew their 
advertising that the YouTube video was taken down and Jon J no longer 
screams for the firing of Isabel Garcia on his morning show.
By joining together in solidarity, the progressive community here managed to 
wound a tentacle of a giant media corporation. The Stop Hate Radio campaign 
will continue until racists like Jon Justice and the right-wing radio 
stations that reward him are driven out of business. The campaign will be 
raised at the Tucson Stop War On Iran action Aug. 2nd where it will be 
linked as part of the war at home to the war abroad.
More information on the Stop Hate Radio campaign is available online at 
derechoshumanosaz.net.

http://www.kpho.com/news/16835379/detail.html?rss=pho&psp=news

Protestors To Disrupt Arpaio Broadcast
POSTED: 2:02 pm MST July 9, 2008
UPDATED: 2:26 pm MST July 9, 2008
PHOENIX -- Open border activists are encouraging protestors to disrupt 
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's live radio broadcast from Tucson on 
Thursday.
Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, a grassroots organization that opposes the 
"militarization" of the southern U.S. border, has demanded that Arpaio stay 
out of Pima County.
"We will not permit hatred and xenophobia in our community," the group 
announced on its Web site.
Arpaio said he is aware of the group's plan but he will not be deterred by 
its actions.
This is the second time the group has protested the sheriff's appearance in 
Tucson. The first time was when Arpaio visited the city to support Mitt 
Romney's presidential candidacy.
The sheriff plans to discuss his stance on illegal immigration enforcement 
on air before holding a book signing to promote his second book, "Joe's 
Law."
Recently, protestors disrupted Arpaio's book signing at a Scottsdale Barnes 
and Noble bookstore.
Previous Stories:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/07/11/20080711arpaiotucson0711.html

Arpaio's appearance at Tucson bookstore draws protesters
339 comments by Blake Morlock - Jul. 11, 2008 12:00 AM
Tucson Citizen
About 100 protesters worked to disrupt Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's 
appearance Thursday at a midtown Tucson bookstore.
Arpaio co-hosted a radio show and then signed copies of his new book, Joe's 
Law: America's Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs and 
Everything Else that Threatens America, at a Barnes & Noble Booksellers 
location.
Demonstrators outside the store challenged Arpaio because of his decision to 
crack down on illegal immigrants in the Phoenix area.
"He's a racist," said Carlos Parma, a 16-year-old Pueblo High School senior. 
"He discriminates against brown people."
The protesters marched in a circle while chanting. They also pummeled a 
piñata meant to resemble Arpaio.
Christina Moodie, 56, a retired Sun Tran driver, said she has long opposed 
Arpaio's get-tough, media-grabbing style and policies.
The Rev. John Fife, former pastor of the South Side Presbyterian Church and 
a longtime immigrant-rights advocate, called the demonstration a show of 
democracy.
"Our basic message is that our Hispanic community in Pima County is valued," 
Fife said.
Arpaio's crackdown on illegal immigration, typically left to federal 
authorities, is about enforcing the law and not racism, the sheriff said.
Conservative radio host John Justice showed up to support Arpaio.
"He's such a symbol of people in Tucson, how they wish immigration was 
handled here," Justice said. "He's enforcing the law."
Inside the bookstore and toward the end of the radio show, Arpaio was faced 
with protests and hecklers.
Fred Davis, a 65-year-old truck driver, stewed as he watched the protesters 
interrupt Arpaio.
"They're un-American, and they're rude," Davis said, holding a copy of 
Arpaio's book. "He's not racist. He's enforcing the law."
Arpaio shrugged off his critics.
"Every time they blast me, my polls go higher and higher and higher," he 
said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/07/23/20080723protest0723.html

300 protest Arpaio's immigration sweeps
Jul. 23, 2008 10:48 AM
The Arizona Republic
A group of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's critics gathered inside and 
outside the Maricopa County Supervisors meeting this morning to protest the 
sheriff's stance against illegal immigration.
More than 300 people attended the meeting in hopes of keeping pressure on 
the supervisors to change Arpaio's immigration policy, including his crime 
suppression sweeps that have resulted in many arrests of illegal immigrants.
This morning's protest saw more than 200 people inside the meeting and 
almost 100 splintered off to gather near the Wells Fargo building in 
downtown Phoenix, next to Arpaio's office. That group eventually returned to 
the supervisors meeting to call a press conference.
Arpaio has said that he will continue to arrest illegal immigrants 
regardless of what critics say or do.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200804250072.html

Kenya: Internal Refugees Protest At Lack of Food

The Nation (Nairobi)
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
George Munene
Nairobi
More than 150 internal refugee families are camping at a district officer's 
offices in Kirinyaga District complaining of hunger and lack of shelter.
The starving victims stormed the Mwea administration office compound in 
Ngurubani Town on Wednesday evening and spent a night in the cold.

They want the Government to provide them with food and resettle them as soon 
as possible to end their suffering. The victims, who included children and 
elderly women, said they had not eaten anything in the last two days. They 
said good Samaritans who had been accommodating them since December 29 last 
year after they were kicked out of their homes were now chasing them away. 
"We are suffering from hunger and the Government seems to have forgotten 
us," Peninah Njeri, a mother of two from Nakuru, said.
Thursday, the area District Officer, Ms Ronda Rono, said she was shocked 
when she got to work in the morning only to find the hungry families 
protesting as administration police kept guard.
Eject them
The victims told the Nation that they had been harassed and intimidated by 
APs who threatened to eject them from the compound.
They said they would not to leave until their grievances were addressed. The 
DO tried in vain to convince the victims to disperse to their respective 
areas as the Government looks for a means of feeding and resettling them. 
"Plans are at an advanced stage to resettle all those who were displaced by 
post-election violence and you should disperse," she said. They had been 
residing at Murubara, Nguka, Thiba and Kerugoya areas after they fled their 
homes in Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western provinces due to the post-election 
violence.

By the time of going to press, the DO was struggling to get food from 
well-wishers to feed the victims, who looked weak and exhausted.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/397380.html

Immigration Reporting Centre is blockaded to protest forced deportations.
d.loch | 24.04.2008 05:20 | Migration
The Immigration Reporting Centre, Northumberland House, Norfolk Street, 
North Shields has been blockaded today in protest at a recent spate of 
brutal raids by immigration "snatch squads".

Outside the Immigration Reporting Centre, Northumberland today.

Local people have used chains to blockade the car park of the Reporting 
Centre in an attempt to prevent the unmarked vans used by immigration snatch 
squads from leaving the car park.

The snatch squads carry out brutal raids on the homes of vulnerable families 
and individual asylum seekers and migrants who have sought a safe home in 
Newcastle.

Residents in other parts of the region are also joining in with actions in 
key locations around the city.

Sophie Ray, a resident of North Shields said, "Families are being taken from 
their beds at 5am, often after immigration snatch squads have kicked down 
their door. They are dragged into vans and taken to detention centres before 
being forcibly deported. I can't believe this happens to vulnerable people 
who have come to seek refuge in this country".
d.loch

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/751/38804

United States: Protests against immigration raids

David Bacom
16 May 2008

@intro = Two hundred protesters from churches, unions and community groups 
marched and picketed outside the office of the Bureau of Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement (ICE) in downtown San Francisco on May 5.
On May 2, the day after marches took place across the country for 
immigrants' rights, immigration agents arrested 64 workers at Los Balazos 
taquerias throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of the employees had 
no criminal records, and were arrested for the crime of working to support 
their families.

On May 6, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums joined unions and community groups at 
Stonehurst Elementary School after ICE agents showed up earlier in the 
morning. Dellums and others protested the ICE activity in Oakland, which is 
a self-declared "sanctuary city" for "illegal" immigrants, just days after 
marches took place across the country for immigrants' rights. Dellums talked 
with concerned parents, as worried children left school at the end of the 
day.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080519/NEWS/805190324/1001/

Protesters show support for families of detainees
By NIGEL DUARA . nduara at dmreg.com . May 19, 2008
Waterloo, Ia. - Hundreds of people gathered here Sunday to show their 
support for families affected by last week's immigration raid in Postville 
and to protest the federal enforcement action.
Local clergy and immigration-rights advocates joined about 70 friends and 
family members of detainees, who were bused in from Postville, at Queen of 
Peace Parish. They protested a U.S. immigration policy they said is flawed 
and unfairly punishes immigrant workers.
The event came in the wake of the largest single-site immigration raid in 
U.S. history at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville.

"This is not the America I knew about growing up," said Kathleen McQuillen 
of the American Friends Service Committee, who compared immigration policies 
to the segregation laws before the 1960s civil rights movement.

The speakers called the raid a "tragedy," and McQuillen advocated a "new 
civil rights campaign" to change immigration policy.

After the speeches, about 300 people marched the 2miles from the church to a 
protest in front of the National Cattle Congress grounds, where detainees 
were initially held after the raid. They chanted, carried signs and held 
American, Mexican and Guatemalan flags.

"We're here to stay," some chanted in Spanish on the march. "If they send us 
out, we'll return."

The sign's messages included pleas - "Let my dad go" - and accusations - 
"You are criminals for leaving kids without parents. Free us."

The rally was preceded by a similar gathering in Minneapolis last week, when 
about 50 immigration-rights advocates rallied in a heavily Hispanic 
neighborhood to protest the raid.

The issue of immigrant detainees' rights has grown in prominence since the 
New York Times reported May 5 that 66 immigrants were known to have died in 
federal custody between 2004 and 2007.

At the rally, the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk of St. Bridget's Catholic Church in 
Postville questioned the commitment of the governor and Iowa's U.S. senators 
to aiding those who were left jobless or whose family members were detained 
in the raid.

"We have waited too long," Ouderkirk said. "I am tired. We have been pushed 
around for too long."

Ouderkirk said the governor and Legislature had been "silent" on the issue.

Gov. Chet Culver last week appointed a multi-agency task force, headed by 
Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, to address human services needs and other issues 
related to the May 12 raid.

Elmer Gehovany Hernandez Lopez, 17, said he was detained in the raid and 
released on Wednesday.

"They didn't believe I was a minor," Lopez said, until he showed officials a 
birth certificate.

Now, Lopez said, there's no work for him in Postville, although he said no 
one from Agriprocessors has contacted him to say whether he still has a job.

As the youngest member of his family in Guatemala, he said he is expected to 
provide for his parents. After the raid, with his income cut off, Lopez said 
he'll probably leave Iowa in search of work elsewhere.

When he was released, Lopez said he called his parents. "They were crying," 
he said. "They said, 'Thank God they let you go.' "

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=111078

Hundreds protest migration raid in US
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
  Hundreds protest migration raid in US
  Led by 43 women with electronic tracking bracelets on their ankles, 
hundreds of people from around the country marched down main street Sunday 
to protest the biggest immigration raid in U.S. history at a kosher meat 
plant that has split this tiny Iowa town asunder. The demonstrators marched 
through Postville's tree-lined streets, drowning out the shouts of about 100 
anti-immigration protesters with chants of "No more raids!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/us/28immig.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1219263236-hbsOnTcx6KElwxq1rJ3+Mg

Iowa Rally Protests Raid and Conditions at Plant

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: July 28, 2008
POSTVILLE, Iowa - About 1,000 people, including Hispanic immigrants, 
Catholic clergy members, rabbis and activists, marched through the center of 
this farm town on Sunday and held a rally at the entrance to a kosher 
meatpacking plant that was raided in May by immigration authorities.

Matthew Holst for The New York Times
In Postville, Iowa, people protested working conditions at a kosher 
meatpacking plant that was raided in May by immigration authorities.

Matthew Holst for The New York Times
Rabbi Harold Kravitz, from Minnetonka, Minn., addressed a rally on Sunday in 
Postville.
The march was called to protest working conditions in the plant, owned by 
Agriprocessors Inc., and to call for Congressional legislation to give legal 
status to illegal immigrants. The four rabbis, from Minnesota and Wisconsin, 
attended the march to publicize proposals to revise kosher food 
certification to include standards of corporate ethics and treatment of 
workers.
The march drew a counterprotest by about 150 people, organized by the 
Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes illegal immigrants 
and proposals to give them legal status.
At one point, tension surged as the two sides shouted slogans at each other 
through bullhorns from opposite sidewalks of the main street of this town 
with a population of about 2,200. The marchers said, "Stop the raids!" 
Protesters across the street responded, "Illegals go home!"
No incidents of disorder were reported by the police.
The debate over kosher standards has intensified since the May 12 raid at 
the plant, in which 389 illegal immigrants, the majority from Guatemala, 
were detained. Reports by many of those workers of widespread labor 
violations in the plant have been prominent news in the Jewish media, 
provoking discussion of whether Jews should buy meat and poultry products 
made there.
Agriprocessors, owned and operated by Aaron Rubashkin and his family, is the 
largest kosher plant in the United States. Its products, sold as Aaron's 
Best and Rubashkin's, among others, dominate the nation's market for kosher 
meat and poultry.
The plant had been cited for state and federal labor violations before the 
raid, including inadequate worker safety protections and unpaid overtime. 
Since the raid, immigrants under 18, the legal age in Iowa for working on a 
meatpacking floor, have said they worked long hours at Agriprocessors, often 
at night.
Agriprocessors' beef and poultry are killed and packaged using procedures 
specified by strict Jewish dietary laws, and are certified by rabbis who are 
recognized authorities on kosher food.
In 2006, after reports in The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, of harsh working 
conditions at Agriprocessors, a commission of inquiry organized by 
Conservative Jewish leaders criticized the plant's operations and called for 
more safety training and increased inspections by state labor officials.
A member of that commission, Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., 
proposed a new system of kosher certification that would include 
consideration of working conditions in plants where the food is produced.
Rabbi Harold Kravitz, from the Adath Jeshurun synagogue in Minnetonka, 
Minn., said on Sunday that the health and safety issues raised by the 
commission did not appear to have been addressed. Speaking to the rally on a 
dusty driveway in front of the plant, Rabbi Kravitz said that Jewish laws 
governing the kosher processing of animals should not be separated from 
Jewish ethical principles.
"Proper business conduct and treatment of workers also are important Jewish 
values," Rabbi Kravitz said.
He and several Jewish community activists met on Sunday morning here with 
Chaim Abrahams, a top manager of the plant. Aaron Goldsmith, a Postville 
resident who participated in the meeting, said Mr. Abrahams reported that 
about 360 of the arrested workers had received all payments that they were 
owed and that Agriprocessors was making weekly deliveries of food to about 
30 immigrant families in Postville.
Although Agriprocessors executives have largely avoided speaking to the news 
media, Getzel Rubashkin, 24, a grandson of Aaron Rubashkin, emerged from the 
plant and approached the rally.
"There's no argument here," said Getzel Rubashkin, who said he works in the 
plant but was not a representative of Agriprocessors and was speaking for 
himself. Agriprocessors managers, he said, "treat their workers well and 
they pay their workers well and there is no other policy."
"The company is not on the other side of any of these people," he said, 
referring to the immigrants lined up behind banners across the street from 
the plant.
Getzel Rubashkin said a large number of illegal immigrants had been hired 
because they presented identity documents that he called convincing 
forgeries.
"The high number of illegal people who were working here is more a testimony 
to the quality of their deceit, of their papers," Getzel Rubashkin said. He 
said the company did not criticize immigration authorities for the raid.
"Obviously some of the people here were presenting false documents," Getzel 
Rubashkin said. "Immigration authorities somehow picked it up and they did 
what they are supposed to do, they came and picked them up. God bless them 
for it."
On Postville's main street, the protesters opposing the immigrants' march 
praised Iowa federal prosecutors, who convicted 297 illegal immigrant 
workers from the plant, most on criminal document fraud charges.
"It's a felony when you take someone's identity, and we think that needs to 
be out there when you talk about the supposed injustices against 
undocumented workers," said Susan Tully of the Federation for American 
Immigration Reform, an organizer of the counterprotest.
Like the marchers, the protesters were also angry at Agriprocessors 
managers. To date, the only managers arrested were two floor supervisors, on 
immigration harboring charges.
"It's cheap labor, that's what they're getting away with," said Ruthie 
Hendrycks, 48, of a group called Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform. "I 
want to see these employers that hired children and illegal aliens do 
serious jail time."

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080727/NEWS/80727023/1001/

Protesters gather in Postville
ASSOCIATED PRESS . July 27, 2008
An immigration rally has kicked off in Postville with protesters shouting 
"Si se puede," translated in English as "yes, we can."

Hundreds of people marched through the small Iowa town of about 2,200 today.

Busloads of people from Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul and other nearby 
cities came to protest a federal immigration raid of the Agriprocessors 
plant in May.
The march, which kicked off with a religious ceremony, is expected to reach 
the plant on the outskirts of town.

Marchers were met by a counter-protest of about 75 anti-immigration 
activists.

Nearly 400 people were arrested during the raid of the plant.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080726/NEWS/807260340/1001/

Postville rally to protest claims of worker abuse
By TONY LEYS . tleys at dmreg.com . July 26, 2008
Several busloads of demonstrators from as far away as Minneapolis and 
Chicago are expected to arrive in Postville on Sunday to protest alleged 
treatment of immigrant workers by the Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant 
and federal immigration authorities.

Several local Christian leaders, including Catholic Archbishop Jerome Hanus, 
are scheduled to appear. Many of the out-of-state participants are being 
recruited by Jewish groups that have raised concerns about the treatment of 
workers who process kosher meat, which is purchased by many observant Jews.

Nearly 400 workers, mostly from Guatemala or Mexico, were arrested during a 
federal raid at the plant in May. The raid uncovered numerous allegations of 
mistreatment of workers, including long hours, poor training and use of 
underage employees. The company has denied the allegations, but Jewish 
groups are debating whether their members should buy food produced at the 
plant.

The organizers of Sunday's event expect several hundred participants. Vic 
Rosenthal, executive director of the Minnesota group Jewish Community 
Action, said organizers are trying to avoid overwhelming the small town. 
"We've actually been trying to not have everyone and their mother show up at 
this," he said.
The group has stopped short of calling for a boycott of Agriprocessors' 
products, Rosenthal said, but it wants to show that many Jews are concerned 
about the treatment of workers who produce kosher meat. "What we're saying 
is the Jewish community, like any community, has a lot of sides to it," he 
said.

The participants from Chicago are being recruited by the Jewish Council on 
Urban Affairs. Jane Ramsey, the group's executive director, said her 
contingent wants to show support for reform of the country's immigration 
laws. She said current immigrants are similar to the ancestors of many 
American Jews. Today's immigrants face more restrictions, she said. "Now 
they are thanked by being arrested and separated from their families," she 
said.
Ramsey said her contingent of demonstrators will include some Hispanic 
residents. It will also include Jews from an array of traditions, including 
a few from the Lubavitch wing of Orthodox Judaism, which is the group to 
which the plant's owners belong.

Ramsey said the demonstration's organizers have asked to meet with plant 
leaders, but she wasn't sure if the request would be granted. When The Des 
Moines Register asked a company representative if the meeting would take 
place, the reply was unclear.
"Agriprocessors will selectively meet with leaders of the community at a 
time and place of its choosing," the representative, Menachem Lubinsky, 
wrote in an e-mail. He would not give more specifics.

The demonstration is scheduled to come a day after a visit to Postville by 
members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The delegation, which is to 
meet with workers and their families today, is to be headed by Rep. Luis 
Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100017_15/05/2008_96591

Leros child migrants in protest
Dozens of immigrant children who arrived on the island of Leros from 
neighboring Turkey just over a week ago are refusing food to protest their 
housing conditions, a medical charity has told Agence France-Presse.
The 121 would-be migrants, mostly Afghans aged between 10 and 16, have been 
accommodated in a hotel and another building but the conditions are 
"wretched," an official of Medecins du Monde (MDM), also known as Doctors of 
the World, told AFP.
"For the past week the 121 children have been accepting food once every 
three days," MDM board member Philippos Olympitis was quoted as saying. 
Olympitis said that the children's health was not in danger.
The children are part of a large wave of migrants - some 860 - to have 
arrived on the island since the beginning of the year.
The charity appeared to defend efforts by local authorities. "(They) are 
doing all they can but the rapid increase in immigrant arrivals - and 
particularly unattended children - on Greek shores demands urgent 
mobilization," Olympitis told the agency.

http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2008/5/15/hundreds-of-indonesian-fishermen-stage-protest-at-darwin-detention-center/

05/15/08 07:32
Hundreds of Indonesian fishermen stage protest at darwin detention center

Brisbane, (ANTARA News) - More than 200 Indonesian fishermen detained in the 
Darwin Detention Center, Australia, on Wednesday protested the action of 
Australian officials for having captured their fishing boats in Indonesian 
territorial waters.

Their protest was disclosed by Indonesian Consul in Darwin, Harbangan 
Napitupulu, to Antara by phone from Brisbane on Wednesday afternoon.

Napitupulu said he along with two staff members of the Indonesian Consulate 
in Darwin met the fishermen to find out what had really happened to them, 
and their protest amont other to Australian fishery management authority 
director Peter Vensloves and the authority of the detention center.

Due to the unfavorable situation whereas some of the fishermen failed to 
control their emotion and banged the table, the meeting with the Indonesian 
consular staff had to be stopped at the request of the detention centre 
director and the Indonesian consul, he said.

Napitupulu said the protest staged by the fishermen was a follow up of their 
meeting on Tuesday evening (May 13).

On Wednesday morning, they unfurled a banner protesting the confiscation of 
their fishing vessels by Australian patrol boat as they were still in 
Indonesian territorial waters, he said.

"The Australian authority plans to continue the interview with the skipper 
and fishermen of the fishing vessels on Thursday, while Indonesian consular 
officials will act translators for the fishermen in the interview," he 
said.(*)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/08/europe/immig.php

Clandestine workers step forward in French protests

By Katrin Bennhold and Caroline Brothers
Published: May 8, 2008
NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE, France: The Café La Jatte is in many ways a typical 
Parisian eatery. It has a menu full of culinary promise, a sumptuous wine 
list and a handful of illegal African immigrants working in the kitchen.
It also has a rather atypical former customer: President Nicolas Sarkozy, 
known for his tough stance on illegal immigration, was a regular when he was 
mayor of this leafy western suburb until 2002.
Café La Jatte has become a symbol for an unusually public campaign by 
clandestine employees in France demanding work permits. Recent kitchen 
strikes here and at other restaurants have mushroomed into a broader protest 
movement touching several sectors and spreading fast outside of Paris.
Since April 25, when France's largest labor union, the CGT, filed a request 
to legalize 900 restaurant employees, construction workers and cleaners, 
hundreds more have lined up to join the initiative.
The movement has highlighted an uneasy dilemma facing France and other 
Western governments: The hard line on immigration that helped leaders like 
Sarkozy to get elected is increasingly at odds with economic realities.
For the first time, the demands of France's illegal workers are backed by a 
growing number of their employers. Construction and cleaning companies say 
they cannot get enough legal workers to fill the available jobs. The 
employers' federation of the restaurant and hotel business has called for 
the legalization of 50,000 workers in that field alone. And Konex, a 
technology cabling firm, has rallied dozens of employers to form a lobby 
dedicated to the matter.
"This is a problem of political hypocrisy," said Gilles Caussade, one of the 
two owners of Café La Jatte, as he glanced from his restaurant's sprawling 
outdoor terrace to the apartment building where Sarkozy used to live.
"The economic needs are real," he said. "Manpower is no longer assured by 
those who are born in the country, and these are jobs that they do not want 
to do."
Every time Caussade advertises a job in the paper, only Africans and Sri 
Lankans respond, he said. The 10 Malians now working in Café La Jatte's 
kitchen have all been there at least two years - one of them, who started as 
a dishwasher and is now a cook, since 1994.
Employed on work permits borrowed from friends and relatives, they have been 
earning standard industry wages and paying taxes like regular employees.
"That's the irony," Caussade said. "They are completely part of the system 
and yet, officially, they don't exist."
Caussade said he had not known that his employees were illegal and had been 
caught by surprise when his staff started a five-day strike on April 19.
But their battle has become his, he said, recounting how he personally took 
their applications for work permits to the police.
"Now I just have to learn their real names," Caussade quipped. "Baba is no 
longer Baba, he is Abdouramane. Samba becomes Moussa."
Caussade is no exception. At a recent conference organized by the human 
resources departments of some of France's biggest companies, executives 
urged the government to make it easier for immigrants to get work permits. 
Sylvie Brunet, head of human resources at ONET, a company in Marseille that 
provides cleaning services, said her business could not function without 
ample immigrant labor.
"Even French high school dropouts don't want the jobs we offer," she said. 
Stéphane Vallet of Bouygues, the construction company, concurred.
The French Immigration Ministry estimates that there are 200,000 to 400,000 
undocumented immigrants in France; reports in the French press suggest that 
as many as three out of four of them are working.
But as employers lobby for the legalization of their workers, the police 
continue to round them up for expulsion, often targeting train stations in 
the early morning and late evening, when cleaners and builders commute.
The issue is a headache for Sarkozy, who has ordered police chiefs across 
France to fulfill a strict deportation quota of 26,000 this year but who has 
also promised to help business alleviate labor shortages.
In a high-profile television interview on April 24, Sarkozy defended his 
policies and accused company bosses employing illegal immigrants of being 
"hypocrites."
"Don't tell me, whether you are the boss of a small company or not, that you 
have to find yourself a poor illegal worker when there are, among the 
immigrants who we do welcome and who do have papers, 22 percent unemployed," 
Sarkozy said, without elaborating on the statistic.
The fact that employers have increasingly found themselves the target of 
criticism may be one reason they appear to be more sympathetic to the 
current campaign.
The movement has been gathering momentum with isolated strikes since July 
2007, when Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux issued a decree obligating 
employers to verify the legality of their workers with the police. Since 
then, two further sets of guidelines have been issued, opening the door to 
legalizing some staff in specific regions and sectors.
This has raised hope among workers at a time when surging food prices have 
often made families in the immigrants' home countries even more dependent on 
their remittances.
The government has ruled out legalization on a mass scale, saying that only 
a few hundred of those who have applied for papers in the current movement 
will get papers, on a case-by-case basis.
Critics said that only adds to the confusion and that it could result in ad 
hoc decisions by prefectures, the regional police authorities charged with 
authorizing migrants to work.
"Going case by case is not a policy; it is like saying to the prefectures, 
'Work it out yourself,' " said Laurent Giovanonni, secretary general of 
Cimade, a nongovernmental organization that works in the detention centers 
where migrants without papers are held.
In the case of the Café La Jatte workers, there has been some progress. As 
of Wednesday, 7 of the 10 La Jatte illegals had received three-month work 
permits; the other three hope to get such papers on Friday.
"This has changed our lives," Abdouramane Sarr, the 42-year-old 
dishwasher-turned-cook, said Thursday in the steaming restaurant kitchen. No 
longer afraid of police controls, he is planning his first trip to Mali in 
10 years.
But at Passion Traiteur, an upscale caterer in the nearby suburb of 
Colombes, 3 of 20 striking workers have been ordered to leave the country.
And the movement is spreading.
On Wednesday, illegal workers occupied the premises of Adecco and Triangle, 
two job-placement companies in Creteil, southeast of Paris. In Nanterre, 
west of Paris, a dozen workers are on hunger strike.
Meanwhile, a march of illegal workers that started in Lille several weeks 
ago will arrive in Paris on Saturday, when the abolition of slavery will be 
commemorated.
One of the more colorful protests is taking place in central Paris, where a 
few hundred mostly African workers have been occupying a union building for 
a week.
Anzoumane Sissoko, a Malian organizer of the protest, said that in his 15 
years in France he had seen clandestine workers come out of the shadows 
sporadically, but never to this extent and with such self-confidence.
"There is something different about this time," said Sissoko, himself 
illegal until last year. "People really think something could change for 
them."

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/05/22/politics/politics_30073693.php

Hmong refugees protest against repatriation bid
By Supalak G Khundee
The Nation
Published on May 22, 2008
More than 30 Hmong refugees are staging a hunger strike in Phetchabun's Ban 
Huay Nam Khao camp against repatriation plans, a refugee at the camp said 
yesterday.

The protest began in the middle of May after a Hmong leader Lee Xue was 
detained for giving information of forced repatriation to the international 
media, accusing the Thai military which oversees almost 8,000 refugees in 
the camp. Lee Xue told the US-based Radio Free Asia that a group of 67 Hmong 
returnees had been forced by the military to return to Laos recently.
The military has denied the accusation claiming that everyone in the group 
volunteered to return.
The 33 protesters have been admitted to a field clinic in the camp run by 
Medecins san Frontiers, the single medical service on the site, after they 
collapsed.
"We will continue our strike until the Thai authorities agree to process 
resettlement in third countries, or at least allow us to live in Thailand," 
said the Hmong via a phone interview from the camp.
The military, under the supervision of the Third Army Region, has refused to 
allow journalists or observers from outside to enter the camp.
Thailand has sheltered the Hmong since late 2004. Some claim they were 
associates of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret fighters who fought 
against the Communist movement in the 1960's and 1970's - and fled from 
suppression in Laos.
Laos has rejected the claims and together with Thailand considers most of 
the group as illegal migrants who were helped by human trafficking gangs to 
seek better lives in Thailand and perhaps have a chance to resettle in third 
countries.
Thailand has continued to repatriate them.


http://www.bangkokpost.com/230608_News/23Jun2008_news08.php

Monday June 23, 2008

FORCED REPATRIATION

Hmong forced to return to Laos after big protest march
Despite recent legislation in the US aimed at stopping the forced 
repatriation of Hmong people from Thailand to Laos, local authorities forced 
a large group of the minority hilltribe people to return yesterday.
The forced repatriation by Thai officials happened after about 5,000 Hmong 
marched out of the Huay Nam Khao camp in Phetchabun on Friday, attempting to 
walk to Bangkok to draw international attention to their plight.
Sources in the North said some leaders of the march from the refugee camp 
were forcibly returned to Laos yesterday, along with a group of Hmong wanted 
by Lao authorities.
The sources said another 800 Hmong will be deported to Laos today _ some 
allegedly against their will. However, many have accepted money from the 
government to return to Laos after being in camps in Thailand for several 
years.
United Nations refugee officials were denied access to the camps.
The army forcibly broke up the protest march on Saturday and 500 to 600 
Hmong have been locked up in provincial jails.
Army officers kept reporters away from the stand-off between their troops 
and the marchers.
The Hmong were blocked by riot police and troops on a road about 5km from 
the village of Khet Noi and forced to spend the night in the open.
The repatriation of the Hmong comes only weeks after the US government 
introduced legislation in Congress in an attempt to prevent them being 
forcibly returned to Laos.
The Hmong claim refugee status _ which they have been denied in Thailand _ 
and claim they fled persecution in Laos because they were part of a 
CIA-backed force that fought the communists in the 1960s and 1970s. The 
government insists the Hmong in Phetchabun are economic migrants.
About eight families were reportedly taken to Nong Khai by truck yesterday 
and then sent to Laos. Another 832 Hmong were put into buses and taken to 
Nong Khai for deportation.
A source said some in the buses were crying and shouting because they did 
not want to return to Laos.
Aid workers at Huay Nam Khao said about 1,600 people, or a third of those 
who marched out of the camp, had failed to return.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/06/24/2003415588

Thailand sends 800 Hmong back to Laos after protest

AFP, BANGKOK
Tuesday, Jun 24, 2008, Page 5
Thailand has sent 800 members of the Hmong ethnic minority back to Laos, an 
official said yesterday, despite international concern that the hill tribe 
could face persecution back home.
Colonel Somchai Chaipanich, from the northern region where the Hmong are 
detained, said the group was deported on Sunday after thousands of Hmong 
tried to march out of a makeshift camp in Phetchabun Province.

"Those 800 Hmong volunteered to return to Laos themselves. They wanted to go 
home," Somchai said, adding that the latest repatriations left about 6,000 
Hmong in the camp near the border with Laos.

The Bangkok Post newspaper said thousands of Hmong marched on Friday to 
highlight their plight, but riot police blocked their path, put up to 600 
Hmong in jail and forcibly sent some of the rally leaders back to Laos.

Somchai confirmed that about 4,000 Hmong marched out of the camp, but he 
refused to give any other details about the incident.

He said the next group from Huay Nam Khao camp, which once was home to about 
8,000 Hmong, would likely be sent back to Laos next week.

The Thai government insists the Hmong are economic migrants using Thailand 
as a base to seek refugee status and travel to rich countries.

But Hmong activists, international human rights groups and the UN refugee 
agency, UNHCR, have warned that some of the Hmong could be at risk of 
persecution in communist Laos.

US lawmakers this month introduced legislation asking Thailand to suspend 
repatriation of the Hmong and to provide UNHCR access to those seeking 
asylum.

The Hmong fought alongside US forces in the 1960s and 1970s when the Vietnam 
War spilled into Laos. After the war ended in 1975, many fled to the jungles 
fearing the communist authorities would hunt them down.

Last month a fire at the camp in Phetchabun destroyed hundreds of makeshift 
homes. At the time, Somchai said the fire could have been set by Hmong 
trying to avoid repatriation to Laos.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/400067.html

Nottingham Protests in Support of Detained Resident
Notts IMC | 03.06.2008 00:35 | Migration | Repression | Social Struggles | 
Nottinghamshire
The detention and imminent deportation of Amdani Juma, a well-known and 
widely liked local activist, has generated considerable anger in Nottingham. 
There have been two well attended demonstrations in the Market Square, one 
on Saturday 31 May and a second on Monday 2 June. The latter was 
particularly successful at generating media interest, going out live on 
Central News.
The anger felt by many at Amdani's detention was only compounded by police 
intimidation of participants in the first demonstration that they should 
have sought permission and would be expected to do so for the second. This 
suggests a worrying ignorance of the law on the part of the Sergeant 2471. 
He told protesters that Section 11 of the Public Order Act 1986 required 
that they obtain permission for any assemblies, despite the fact that that 
section clearly relates only to processions and marches and not to static 
assemblies. When it came to it, the police presence on Monday evening was 
minimal, although a Community Protection Officer with a CCTV camera attached 
to his head was prominently visible.
Campaigners dubbed both protests major successes. The second attracted a 
number of high profile supporters including Alan Simpson MP and a 
(noticeably quieter) Jon Collins. On Saturday there was little conflict with 
the many passing shoppers. Monday's protest attracted a more varied response 
with a few hecklers and one "Send him back" banner, although the owner of 
said article was engaged in an extensive and hopefully fruitful discussion.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/06/03/ot-adams-080603.html?ref=rss

Wife of deported imam protests on Parliament Hill
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 3, 2008 | 1:35 PM ET Comments14Recommend9
CBC News
Nancy-Ann Adams said she is struggling to care for three children on her 
own. (CBC)
The wife of a controversial Muslim cleric deported to Tunisia in October is 
protesting in front of the Parliament Buildings in an effort to push the 
federal government to allow his return to Canada.
Nancy-Ann Adams arrived on Parliament Hill Monday with the couple's 
six-month-old son and said she will remain there until her husband, Said 
Jaziri, gets temporary authorization to return.
Jaziri, who headed the Al-Qods Mosque in Montreal, was granted refugee 
status in 1998, but had that status revoked in 2006 after the Immmigration 
and Refugee Board said he presented false information to get into Canada and 
lied about having a criminal record in France, where he served jail time.
While in Canada, he vocally supported the creation of faith-based Shariah 
law for Canadian Muslims and has publicly denounced homosexuality as a sin.
Adams said she is hoping to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper about 
her situation. She said she is in poor health and struggling to care alone 
for her three children, including a sick daughter and an infant son.
She said paperwork was filed in February requesting authorization for her 
husband's return and for a temporary visa for him, as the legality of his 
deportation has been called into question.
However, she said she felt a need to act, as the process did not seem to be 
progressing.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/400467.html

Video of today's protest against the deportation of Mako and her children
Tyneside Community Action for Refugees (TCAR) | 07.06.2008 03:44 | 
Anti-racism | Migration | Social Struggles | Leeds Bradford
A video of today's protest against the deportation of leading TCAR member 
Mako is online at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcCB-qbafBA , together 
with some other background footage that was hurriedly put together. A 
further protest will take place at the Government Offices (opposite St 
James's Park Metro) in Newcastle on Monday from 9.30-11am, please come along 
if you can.

Despite hostility from the Government Offices and four police vans turning 
up including cops armed with tasers (which now seem to be standard issue in 
Newcastle for responding to non-violent refugee protests), protestors 
occupied the lobby until they had been put on the phone to the regional 
immigration director at Leeds. Asylum seekers, refugees and supporters 
showed today that they will not be silenced by intimidation and will not 
have their means of protest determined by the British state.

Many thanks to everyone who came along to today's protest and who sent 
messages of protest to Jacqui Smith. Mako's solicitor is making fresh 
representations partly on the basis of this show of support, so please keep 
the messages coming. Mako has played a leading role in TCAR in standing up 
for the rights of other refugees, and she deserves all of our support.

Hope to see you all at the Northern Conference Against Racism on 21st June.

Fight Labour's racist immigration laws!
Together we are stronger - Together We Will Win!
Tyneside Community Action for Refugees (TCAR)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-27-border_N.htm?csp=34

Mexico plants trees to protest U.S., Mexico border fence

Posted 6/27/2008 11:16 PM
By Guillermo Arias, AP

Overlooking Tijuana, Mexico, a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle stands guard along 
the border fence dividing Mexico and the U.S.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) - The first of 400,000 trees are being planted 
to form a "green wall" in protest of the fence the U.S. is building along 
the border with Mexico.
The treeline will eventually stretch for 318 miles along the border between 
the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas.
Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira Valdes says "our wall is of life, and it 
competes with shame and hate."
The U.S. government says the fence is critical to security. Critics say it 
fuels animosity between the two countries and raises environmental and 
private property concerns.
The mayor of a Texas border town attended the tree planting in Piedras 
Negras. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster opposes the ongoing construction of 670 
miles of border fence.

http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2008/6/24/28430/Haitians-to-protest-in-front-of-Dominican-consulate-in-NY

24 June 2008, 1:33 PM
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A protest by Haitians in front of Presidential Palace, Port au Prince.
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NEW YORK. - Dozens of Haitians are being organized to mobilize in front of 
the building housing Dominican Republic's general consulate to protest 
against the alleged discrimination and mistreatment of immigrants from that 
country on July 3, one day before the United States celebrates its 
Independence, newspaper Diario Libre says.
The Haitian Roots Solidarity Committee and the Dominican-Haitian Solidarity 
Network, both based in New York, are organizing the gathering with the 
support of some Haitian and Dominican organizations in the city, community 
organizations, clubs, Christian and Episcopal churches, and recognized 
activists among them.
Diario Libre said the protest is to take place form 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., hour 
in which the Dominican consular offices in New York are closed.
"We are calling to all the progressive and fair people to join the protest 
in front of the building of the Dominican general consulate on July 3. The 
United States celebrates the 232nd anniversary of July 4 their Independence 
and we're going to denounce the Dominican authorities' anti-immigrants 
policies," says a note sent by the Network.
Similar protests have been orgazined in previous years in New York, Miami 
and even in Paris, during the showing of the documentary 'The price of sugar'.

http://www.worthynews.com/news/jpost-com-servlet-Satellite-cid-1214132688698-pagename-JPost-JPArticle-Printer/

Messianic Jews to protest 'discrimination'
Jun. 26, 2008
Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST
A contingent of about 300 Messianic Jews from the US will protest this 
weekend against what they call Israel's discriminatory immigration policy 
against Jews who believe that Jesus is the messiah.
The Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, an umbrella body for about 80 
US congregations, is holding a three-day conference in Jerusalem that starts 
Thursday.
During the conference a number of issues will be discussed - including the 
recent public burning by haredim of New Testaments distributed by 
missionaries in Or Akiva, a bomb attack that seriously wounded the son of 
well-known Messianic Jew in Ariel and the attempt to disqualify a Messianic 
Jewish high school girl from this year's International Bible Quiz for Jewish 
youth.
"We are planning to call on the Israeli government to address the problem of 
discrimination against Messianic Jews who wish to make aliya," said Rabbi 
Russ Resnik, executive director of the US-based Union of Messianic Jewish 
Congregations.
"Messianic Jews see Israel as the place of our past, from the earliest visit 
by Abraham to the modern rebirth of the Jewish state. And it is the place of 
our future, which will culminate in the messiah's return," Resnik said.
"We are avid supporters of Israel in the present, and that's why we brought 
our conference here. But we are also concerned about recent expressions of 
violence against Messianic Jews."
Messianic Jews include all people with Jewish ancestry who identify as 
Jewish but who believe that Jesus is the messiah, Resnik said.
Like Reform Judaism, Messianic Jews recognize both matrilineal and 
patrilineal descent. Orthodox Judaism recognizes only matrilineal descent.
There are an estimated 12,000 Messianic Jews living in Israel, most of whom 
made aliya under the Law of Return. There are about a quarter of a million 
Messianic Jews living in the US.
According to the Law of Return, anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent 
is eligible for automatic Israeli citizenship. The law was designed to turn 
Israel into a safe haven for any Jew in the world who would have suffered 
persecution under the Nazi regime's Nuremberg racial laws.
In principle, the Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to all 
descendants of Jews, regardless of religion.
Nevertheless, in 1962 the Supreme Court ruled that Daniel Rufeisen, a Polish 
Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite monk, could not be 
granted citizenship under the Law of Return. The court based itself on 
"common sense" criteria, assuming that the average person would agree that 
Rufeisen was not Jewish.
The Chief Rabbinate argued at the time that Rufeisen should be considered a 
Jew since according to Halacha a Jew can never repudiate his or her 
Jewishness.
Since then the Supreme Court has ruled that Messianic Jews whose mothers are 
Jewish can be denied Israeli citizenship. In contrast, those who are Jewish 
solely through their fathers cannot be denied citizenship. This is based on 
an interpretation of a 1970 amendment to the Law of Return.
"An absurd situation is created in which Messianic Jews have to prove they 
are not Jewish in order to make aliya," said Calev Myers, a Messianic Jewish 
attorney who specializes in immigration cases. "The Law of Return as 
envisioned by David Ben-Gurion was originally created to ensure that if you 
are Jewish enough to die in Auschwitz you are Jewish enough to be granted 
automatic Israeli citizenship. But that is no longer true."
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ataret Yerushalayim Yeshiva and a leading 
religious Zionist leader, said Messianic Jews should not be considered Jews.
"It is true that a lot of righteous people were persecuted and murdered by 
the Nazis," Aviner said. "But that does not make them Jewish."
He said that Messianic Jews living in Israel should be marginalized and 
distanced from Jewish communities.
"Those people are proselytizers. They should not be allowed to have an 
influence on Jews who might be too weak to resist," Aviner said.
Resnik admitted that he wanted to spread the word about the "good news of 
the messiah" among the Jews.
"People need to hear that message. But just because it is such a vital 
message does not mean that everything goes. Our way is by showing solidarity 
with the Jewish people, by being part of the people," he said.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/other/2008/07/19/166189/Vietnam%2Drefugees.htm

Vietnam refugees protest in Cambodian capital

Reuters
Saturday, July 19, 2008

PHNOM PENH -- Ethnic minority asylum seekers protested in the Cambodian 
capital on Friday against the forced return of their friends and relatives 
to neighboring Vietnam.
Around 60 Montagnards, the mainly Christian tribespeople from Vietnam's 
Central Highlands, stormed out of their refugee camp in Phnom Penh to stage 
the demonstration triggered by the repatriation of 28 refugees. The 
four-hour protest ended when 40 riot police armed with automatic rifles, 
batons and shields arrived on the scene and threatened to break up the 
rally.
"We do not want to go back to Vietnam because they will imprison us. Some of 
our friends are dying in Vietnam's jails," Kosal Xuan, 21, told Reuters. The 
group, including children and woman carrying babies, shouted, "Freedom, 
freedom!" One of their banners said: "Demonstration! We have the right to 
ask for freedom and justice."
Vietnam's government, accused of rights abuses against the Montagnards who 
sided with the Americans during the Vietnam War, has given assurances that 
returnees will not face discrimination. Some 450 Montagnards are in United 
Nations holding centers in Phnom Penh while their refugee claims are being 
processed. A spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said 28 had been 
repatriated to Vietnam early on Friday.
"They are upset that their friends have to go back to Vietnam," UNHCR 
spokesman Toshi Kawauchi said at the scene of the protest.
The Montagnards fled to Cambodia in 2001 following anti-Vietnamese 
government demonstrations in the Central Highlands over their ancestral 
lands and religious freedoms.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/404297.html

Protest against the abuse of asylum seekers in Leeds.
Leeds No Borders | 21.07.2008 13:18 | Migration | Leeds Bradford
A demonstration was held outside Waterside Court Home Office Reporting 
Centre in Leeds on Friday in response to a report published on Monday 14th 
July outlining 300 cases of abuse by immigration staff.

The report 'Outsourcing Abuse' provides vast amounts of evidence 
highlighting the violence used against asylum seekers by UK immigration 
staff. The medical Justice website states that the report 'describes an 
alarming number of injuries sustained by asylum deportees at the hand of 
private "escorts" contracted by the Home Office. It reveals evidence of 
widespread and seemingly systemic abuse of vulnerable people who have fled 
their own countries seeking safety and refuge, and that assault claims have 
largely been brushed off by the Home Office'.

Dianne Abbot MP has described it as "one of the most shocking reports about 
our immigration system that I have seen in 20 years as a Member of 
Parliament. The report "Outsourcing Abuse" catalogues the frightening 
state-sponsored violence that happens to asylum-seekers when they are being 
deported"

The protest coincided with a PCS Union strike among Immigration Staff 
calling for more pay (to facilitate dawn raids, detention and forced 
deportations?). No members of the Union however picketed their work place so 
it was left to our demonstration to highlight the abuses that take place on 
a daily basis at Waterside Court.

Asylum seekers coming to Waterside face the prospect of being torn from 
their families, friends, partners, schools and colleges. They face being 
held indefinitely in 'Removal Centres that are becoming synonymous with 
inhumane treatment and high levels of self harm.

The majority of asylum seekers have no access to adequate legal support. 
They are denied the right to work, are forced to live in inadequate housing 
and face the prospect of dawn raids, detention, deportation and destitution.

All are welcome to join our regular protests outside the Home Office on 
Kirkstall Road.
Leeds No Borders
e-mail: leedsnoborders at riseup.net

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080612-142334/One-dead-in-migrant-centre-riot-in-Turkey----report

One dead in migrant centre riot in Turkey -- report

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 21:28:00 06/12/2008
ANKARA -- A Somali man died of a gunshot wound and four people, among them 
two police officers, were injured during a riot at a Turkish center for 
illegal immigrants, Anatolia news agency reported Thursday.
The migrants at the center in Kirklareli, in northwestern Turkey, began 
rioting overnight, attacking and stealing the guns of two police officers 
trying to quell the unrest, the province's deputy governor Zeki Kocberber 
was quoted by the agency as saying.
The officers locked the rioters in their ward and called in police and 
paramilitary troop reinforcements, he added.
The victim broke down the door and rushed out firing his gun, Kocberber 
said, adding that security forces fired a warning shot when he refused 
orders to stop and tried to escape.
"Despite this, (the man) began climbing to the top of a phone booth and fell 
to the ground. An examination at the local hospital revealed that he died of 
a gunshot wound," the deputy governor said, without elaborating.
The local prosecutor has launched an investigation.
Turkey lies on a major people-smuggling route from Asia to western Europe 
and illegal migrants are detained on an almost daily basis.
Turkish security forces have come under fire from rights activists over 
allegations of mistreatment and failing to provide proper accommodation as 
migrants await deportation in state-run centers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1026508/Robocop-prison-squad-called-riots-flare-immigrant-centre.html

'Robocop' prison squad called in as riots flare at immigrant centre
By Jason Lewis and Barry Wigmore
Last updated at 9:01 AM on 15th June 2008
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A special prison service riot unit known as the Tornado Team was sent into a 
controversial detention centre yesterday to quell a violent stand-off 
between staff and illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.
The 50 elite officers - dressed in Robocop-style black boiler suits and 
helmets and carrying batons and shields - marched into the Campsfield centre 
near Kidlington, Oxfordshire, after an initial disturbance when several 
fires were started.
Crews from 15 fire engines tackled the blazes which caused thick black smoke 
to billow from one of the detention buildings.
The Tornado Team was supported by about 50 police officers - some, equipped 
with riot gear and dogs, entered the camp while others secured the perimeter 
as a police helicopter hovered overhead.
All the 200 inmates were herded into the camp's exercise yard while fire 
crews took two hours to put out the blazes and make the area safe.
But the detainees, all men, then refused to return to their buildings - 
creating another stand-off.
At one point the illegal immigrants could be heard violently hammering on 
the 25ft high steel fence that surrounds the yard.
A senior prison officer said outside: 'No one in there is going anywhere.'
The Home Office said last night: 'The UK Border Agency asked police for 
assistance and officers have secured the perimeter, which has not been 
breached.
'Specially trained prison officers known as a Tornado Team have been sent to 
the site in riot gear.'
Last August, 26 detainees escaped from Campsfield after a fire was started. 
But last night all the men were believed to have been accounted for.
Tornado Team members are picked from serving prison officers and undergo 
four months of specialist training.
Their boiler suits are fire-resistant, as are their padded gloves and 
steel-capped Army-style boots.
Extra protection comes from plastic protectors on their forearms and shins.
Every officer carries an American-style PR-24 sidearms baton. It can be used 
for defence, held along the forearm, or to attack by using a protruding 
metal attachment which can be spun round in confined spaces such as cells or 
corridors to keep assailants at bay.
As an additional precaution, squad members wear face protectors to stop 
flames spreading under their protective suit.
They use personal radios to contact their head at the scene, who is known as 
Silver Commander.
He in turn takes orders from a Gold Commander, in charge of the overall 
operation and based at the Prison Service headquarters in London.
Campsfield has been dogged with controversy since it was converted from a 
youth detention centre to handle illegal immigrants in 1993.
Last year alone, there were two other disturbances not including the 
breakout.
It is run by the UK subsidiary of American company the GEO Group, which 
signed a five-year contract in March, 2006.
The Home Office said all the detainees were being escorted back to their 
accommodation blocks by 7.30pm.
A spokesman added: 'The situation has calmed down. There has been no 
resistance from the detainees to going back to their rooms. The operation is 
being wound down at the site.'
A GEO spokesman was unavailable for comment last night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/15/immigration?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews

Police use dogs and helicopters to control rioters at detention centre
Mark Townsend
The Observer,
Sunday June 15 2008
Riot police were called to one of Britain's most controversial immigration 
detention centres yesterday after detainees set fire to the complex in a 
fresh protest over conditions. Smoke was seen billowing from Campsfield 
House, near Oxford, following another disturbance among the 200 asylum 
seekers there.
The riot is understood to have been started in protest over allegations from 
detainees that they were being treated like 'criminals'.
More than 10 fire engines, 12 police vehicles and a police helicopter were 
at the scene last night. Baykal Suruk, a solicitor representing six asylum 
seekers inside the centre, said: 'I have spoken to a couple. The detainees 
didn't think the conditions were good and they think that they were being 
treated like criminals which they are not..'
In March last year, nine people were hurt in rioting and five months later 
26 asylum seekers escaped from the detention centre after a fire was started 
at the site. Eight are believed to be still on the run. Another 120 
detainees rioted in December.
Last night a police cordon had been set up and dog handlers were patrolling 
the perimeters.

http://networks.org/?src=stuff:4490963a12

Myanmar detainees riot at holding camp
Reuters | Tuesday, 22 April 2008
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Detainees from Myanmar rioted at a Malaysian holding camp yesterday, 
torching a building, after hearing they had been denied asylum in a third 
country, authorities said.
Some 72 Myanmarese, who were being held at a camp just outside the capital 
Kuala Lumpur, forced their way into an administrative block and set it 
ablaze, the Immigration Department's head of enforcement, Ishak Mohammad, 
said.
"They were disappointed on hearing the UNHCR (the UN Nations High 
Commissioner for Refugees) couldn't get a placement for them in a third 
country," he said.
Malaysia considers them to be illegal immigrants. Police said the rioters, 
who were unarmed, would be charged with arson. No one was injured.
"They set fire at the ground floor causing damage to office furniture and 
computers," the local Star newspaper quoted Osman Abdullah, the police chief 
in the southwestern Negeri Sembilan state, as saying in its online edition.
The camp is located at Lenggeng in the state.
The camp, housing some 800 illegal immigrants including Bangladeshis and 
Indonesians, would be closed temporarily, the immigration department said.
Malaysia is home to around 3 million foreign workers, 1 million of whom are 
working illegally, Home Minister Syed Albar said at the weekend.
The country currently has about 39,000 refugees registered with the UNHCR, 
the body said.
Of the total, about 13,000 are members of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority 
and another 12,000 are members of other Myanmar minority ethnic groups.
The Rohingyas came in the 1990s from Myanmar, but the government there 
disputes their origin and refuses to let them return.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/21/nation/20080421154128&sec=nation

Monday April 21, 2008
Myanmar riot at detention camp, building torched
By SARBAN SINGH

SEREMBAN: Sixty Myanmar nationals were involved in a riot at the Lenggeng 
detention camp for illegals near here, apparently after they were told that 
their application to move to a third country was unsuccessful.
The rioters, believed to be political refugees, also torched an 
administrative building and threatened Immigration and Rela personnel with 
injury in the 10am incident on Monday.
State police chief Datuk Osman Abdullah said the rioters gained entry into 
the two-storey administrative building which was located in the middle of 
four blocks housing some 820 male illegals.
"They set fire at the ground floor causing damage to office furniture and 
computers. We were fortunate that the Fire and Rescue team arrived quickly 
to put out the flames," he said when met at the centre.
Osman, who said losses had yet to be estimated, said the authorities were 
not able to determine who told the rioters that their applications had been 
rejected.
"The group had gathered outside their block first and tried to bring down a 
parameter fencing about 8am. The authorities tried talking to them but a 
short while later, they turned violent and then gained entry into the office 
and set it ablaze," he said.
Osman said although there were 218 male Myanmar nationals at the centre, 
only 60 were involved in the rioting. He said illegals from several other 
countries living at the camp were not involved.
About 100 police and Federal Reserve Unit personnel and another 100 Rela 
members were called in to bring the situation under control. Also on duty 
were some 40 Immigration officers.
Personnel from the Civil Defence department and the health services were 
also on standby. However, Osman said there were no reports of injuries.
Asked if the rioters were unhappy with the treatement at the centre, Osman 
said preliminary investigations did not point to this.
"We are still investigating the cause, but at this point in time, all I can 
say is that they were unhappy because they heard that their application to a 
third country had been rejected," he said.
The camp, which also housed 280 female illegals, was handed over by the 
Prisons Department to the Immigration Dept in January.
Osman said the Immigration and police personnel had begun investigations to 
establish the leaders involved in the melee.
"We will conduct a thorough probe and act against those involved in the 
arson as well. They will be charged under the relevant laws," he said, 
adding that the rioters were not armed.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/22/nation/21019585&sec=nation

Tuesday April 22, 2008
Illegals riot at Lenggeng detention facility
By SARBAN SINGH

SEREMBAN: Sixty foreigners, mostly Myanmar nationals, rioted at the Lenggeng 
detention camp for illegals apparently after they were told that their 
application to move to a third country was unsuccessful.
The rioters torched an administrative building and threatened the 
Immigration and Rela personnel with injury in the 10am incident on Monday.

Alert status: Security personnel keeping an eye on some of the detainees at 
the Immigration facility yesterday. - Bernama

State police chief Datuk Osman Salleh said six Myanmars, six Indonesians, a 
Vietnamese and a Cambodian have been arrested.
He said the rioters gained entry into the two-storey administrative building 
located in the middle of four blocks housing some 820 male illegals.
"They set fire at the ground floor causing damage to the furniture and 
computers. We were fortunate that the Fire and Rescue team arrived quickly 
to put out the flames," he said when met at the centre.
Osman said the authorities were not able to determine who told the rioters 
that their applications had been rejected.
"The group first gathered outside their block and tried to bring down a 
perimeter fencing at about 8am. The authorities tried talking to them but a 
short while later, they turned violent and gained entry into the office and 
set it ablaze," he said, adding that the rioters were not armed.
About 100 police and Federal Reserve Unit personnel and another 100 Rela 
members were called in to bring the situation under control. Also on duty 
were some 40 Immigration officers.
Personnel from the Civil Defence Department and health services were also on 
standby. However, Osman said there were no reports of injuries.
Asked if the rioters were unhappy with the treatment at the centre, Osman 
said preliminary investigations did not point to this.
"At this point in time, all I can say is that they were unhappy because they 
heard that their application to go to a third country had been rejected," he 
said.
Osman could not confirm if the rioters had started a hunger strike on Sunday 
for alleged poor treatment by camp authorities.
The camp, which also houses 280 female illegals, was handed over by the 
Prisons Department to the Immigration in January.
When contacted, a Myanmar Embassy official said they had no knowledge of the 
incident.
"We can't say anything because the police have not sought our assistance and 
we are not aware of what happened," she said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7380656.stm

Friday, 2 May 2008 16:30 UK
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Detained migrants riot in Belgium
By Oana Lungescu
BBC News, Brussels

Migrants at a detention centre in Belgium have rioted after an illegal 
immigrant from Cameroon was found hanged there on Thursday.
Detainees at the centre broke down doors and set fire to TV sets, the 
director of the centre told the BBC.
The migrant's lawyer said the man had been mistreated by the police during a 
failed repatriation attempt last week.
It is the latest case raising concerns about the treatment of illegal 
immigrants in Belgium.
EU rights ruling
The 29-year-old man from Cameroon was discovered in a toilet hanged with his 
bed sheets.
Police failed in their attempt to put him on a Brussels Airlines flight last 
Saturday.
A passenger who protested against the repatriation was temporarily arrested 
and banned from flying with the airline for six months.
The director of the detention centre, in the northern town of Merksplas, 
would not confirm the Cameroon man's identity but said he had been seen by a 
doctor after the failed repatriation attempt.
An inquiry is under way to determine if the police used violent means to 
restrain the man onboard the flight.
A spokesman for the airline told the BBC that involuntary repatriations were 
a regular occurrence on flights to Africa and illegal immigrants often 
screamed to attract the attention of other passengers.
Belgium is very sensitive to accusations involving deportations after a 
young Nigerian woman, Semira Adamu, was suffocated by the police with a 
pillow 10 years ago to stifle her cries.
Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Belgium to pay 
more than $20,000 (£10,000; 13,000 euros) to two Palestinian asylum-seekers 
for what it called inhuman and degrading treatment while they were waiting 
to be deported at detention centres.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/406701.html

ISS hits migrant tube strikers; protestors hit ISS
presente | 14.08.2008 11:10 | Migration | Workers' Movements
Yesterday lunchtime around 30 protestors turned up at the Greenwich offices 
of multinational cleaning company ISS to protest against the letter sent out 
by the company to dozens of tube cleaners requesting they come in for a 
'document check' that day.

It is clear to the cleaners' union RMT that this is part of the reprisals 
against the tube cleaners for the 3-day strike in support of a Living Wage 
which they held in late July. Activists and reps among the cleaners have 
been targetted, with a view to break union organization.

A lively picket of the 15 Park Vista office was held with people from a 
variety of groups and unions brought together under the the banner of the 
Campaign against Immigration Controls. At the same time a number of 
concerned citizens entered the foyer of the premises in case the ISS 
managers were unable to hear the message properly. However the managers lost 
their cool and called the police, while refusing to allow in union reps, who 
had arrived separately. They argued that the picket was upsetting the 
neighbourghood peace and quiet, while demonstrators argued back that the 
detentions and deportations and union busting their paper checks cause is a 
bit more upsetting. One protestor was arrested and is currently out on bail.

Undeterred the cleaners will be on strike again from 21 August at 5.30 am 
till 23 August. This time support is expected from cleaners in Unite-T&G and 
coincidentally engineers on Tubelines will be on strike at the same time.

A public meeting on these and all current tube disputes is to be held by the 
RMT union at Friends House Euston Road on Tuesday 19 August at 6pm.

http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/newsbriefs/setimes/newsbriefs/2008/05/12/nb-09

Seasonal workers stage new protests in Greece
12/05/2008
ATHENS, Greece -- Hundreds of seasonal farm workers, mostly immigrants, 
demonstrated on Sunday (May 11th) in Nea Manolada and Vardas, in the 
southern part of the island of Peloponnese, demanding "humane working 
conditions". There were similar rallies in early April, when workers in the 
region staged an unprecedented three-day strike. The immigrants, supported 
by the Greek Communist Party, protested miserable and unsafe working 
conditions. Clashes that erupted between the immigrants and farm owners 
injured three. The workers, most of whom are illegal immigrants from 
Albania, Bangladesh, Bulgaria and Romania, also demanded an increase of 
daily wages from 23 euros to 30 euros. (AFP, Focus, Makfax, DPA - 11/05/08)