Immigration - new material (49)
01 September 2000
European Race Bulletin. Institute of Race Relations, no 33/34 (August) 2000, pp60. Due to the implementation of dispersal programmes in the UK and Ireland, this issue includes a special report on the link between the rise of xenophobia and racist attacks in areas of dispersal and the experience of the Netherlands and Germany. A fact sheet focuses on the FPÖ's entry into a coalition government in Austria last February. In France, police killings have risen to 18 since 1993, in Germany, African embassies are asked to collude in deportations and Italy is seeing increasing resistance towards detention centres. Available from: IRR, 2-6 Leeke Street, King's Cross Road, London WC1X 9HS, Tel: 0044(0)20-7837-0041, Fax: 0044(0)20-7278-0623.
Auf dem Weg nach Schengen-Europa (On the way to Schengen-Europe), asylkoordination, 2/2000, pp12-16. The Berlin based Research Centre for Flight and Migration (Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration) has conducted extensive research on immigration and Eastern Europe. In this article, they argue that the EU's imposition of border control requirements on its eastern European neighbours has not only led to harsher treatment of refugees and migrants attempting to cross the EU's external borders but also to the creation of unaccountable detention centres with no access to an independent asylum procedure. Under scrutiny here is the Czech detention centre of Balkova, which was set up in November 1998 after pressure from Germany. It holds up to 300 detainees, 60% of whom were picked up by the German border police and sent straight back to the Czech Republic under the 1994 readmission agreement. Investigation into the "reception" centre in Cerveny Ujezd revealed the eastward extension of Europe's asylum prison regime and large-scale refoulement (sending asylum seekers back to unsafe countries of origin) through chain deportations, all of which are contravening European and international asylum and human rights instruments. Available from: Asylkoordination, Schottengasse 3a, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
Domestic Bliss? Helène Mulholland. The Big Issue 9.10.00, pp16-17. This article deals with hidden slavery in the form of domestic labour in Britain today. It quotes extensively from the experiences and campaigning activities of the domestic labour rights group Kalayaan. Of 74 people (the majority of whom are immigrant women), which Kalayaan saw in August alone, "nearly half reported they had no bed to sleep in, over half lacked regular meals, and an equal number had been physically abused". Kalayaan can be contacted on Tel: 020 7243 2942.
Campsfield Monitor. Campaign to Close down Campsfield, Issue 15 (September) 2000, pp8. This issue gives news from inside Campsfield immigration detention centre regarding medical treatment, racism and visiting conditions. Also includes a list of new detention centres in the UK, protests against them, media racism towards refugees and asylum-seekers and useful contact addresses. Available from: Campaign to Close Down Campsfield, 111 Magdalen Rd., Oxford OX4 1RQ, UK, 0049-1865-558145, asylum@sable.ox.ac.uk.
Infodienst des Bayerischen Flüchtlingsrates, Bavarian Refugee Council. No 75 (September-October) 2000, pp39, DM5. Includes articles on the third anti-racist border camp held at the German-Polish border earlier this year and a damning critique of the conditions in the Zentrale Aufnahmestelle für Asylbewerber (Central Reception Centre for Asylum-seekers) and its adjacent deportation prison in Eisenhüttenstadt. The Bavarian Refugee Council strongly criticises the decision by the regional administrative authority in Landshut to deport a father of a newly born baby to India with the reasoning that "an infant does not need his father anyway". Also includes information on Germany's current asylum policies and assessments of countries of origin such as Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq. Available from: Bayerischer Flüchtlingsrat, Valleystr. 42, 81371 Munich, 0049-89-762234, bfr@