campaigns > action matters!
Welcome to the second edition of Action Matters, an online bulletin that will keep you up to date with Refugee Action's campaigns, advocacy and awareness raising work. We want to share with you the diverse ways in which Refugee Action, and its supporters and volunteers, respond to and influence public debate, and work to ensure that refugees' voices are heard. With your help, we do make a difference.
Help us get the government talking
Sell out show returns by popular demand
Should the UK protect people fleeing war?
Refugee Action in debate about "The Uninvited"
Help us get the government talking
Condemning the world’s worst human rights abusing regimes, but deliberately starving people into returning to them.
It doesn’t make sense.
Sign our open letter to the government today.
Refugee Action is asking the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary to talk to each other. We’re asking them to stop using destitution as a tool to try to make people return to terrifying situations of war or human rights abuse.
The government uses strong words to denounce human rights abuses. David Miliband, Foreign Secretary, “utterly condemned” violent action by the Zimbabwean government against peaceful protestors in July 2007, calling it “completely unacceptable”. In September 2007, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown attacked “human rights abuses” by the Zimbabwean state, boycotting a meeting which President Mugabe was to attend.
And yet refused asylum seekers from Zimbabwe, terrified of returning home, are subjected to utter destitution in the UK, in the misguided assumption that this may make them return.
We’re calling for asylum seekers in these situations to be granted a protected status that will allow them to live productively in the UK until it’s safe for them to return.
We need as many people as possible to support our call. Please pass the message on to your friends!
Saturday 15 March 2008 Motherland
Following a sell-out show at London's Young Vic on Mothers Day, Sunday 2 March, a unique and powerful event is returning for 2 final performances on Saturday 15 March.
On Mothers Day, Juliet Stevenson and her daughter Rosalind Brody, along with Harriet Walter and other leading actors, brought to the stage the stories of asylum seeking mothers and children including Cennet and Meltem Avcil.
Meltem was locked up in Yarl's Wood detention centre for 3 months last year, when she was just 13. Juliet visited her there, and when she heard the shocking story of how Meltem had lived quietly in the UK for six years and was then arrested at dawn, Juliet was determined to bring this story and others like it to life in the theatre. She has worked with the writer Natasha Walter and actors including Harriet Walter and Paola Dionisotti to create an extraordinary, moving evening.
Refugees and asylum seeking women told their own stories at the event and were honoured with a standing ovation from the 350-strong audience.
One audience member described the evening as "inspiring, empowering, and enraging". Demand for tickets was so high that the same cast is performing again in two final performances on Saturday 15 March. Tickets for the 3pm and 7.30pm performances can be booked at www.youngvic.org.
Refugee Action supported the event, and encouraged attendees to sign a special card to asylum-seeking women in detention, and a campaign card which will be presented to Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equalities.
It's not too late to add your name to the campaign statement.
Join figures such as Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Helena Kennedy, Corin Redgrave, and Michael Morpurgo in calling for asylum seeking women to get a fair hearing.
Should the UK protect people fleeing war?
A new test case set to come before EU judges could decide whether people fleeing war zones should be given asylum in Britain.
Holland’s highest Administrative Court has asked for clarification from the European Court of Justice on the question of whether EU states should offer sanctuary to people fleeing generalised civil war and armed conflict.
At present, such people are often refused asylum in the UK because they cannot prove that they have been - or will be - singled out individually for persecution.
But in a recent case concerning the refusal of refugee status to an Iraqi national, the Dutch courts have been forced to consider the implications of the EU Qualification Directive, which sets out the minimum obligations of European states toward refugees.
Article 15(c) of the Directive states that protection should be offered in circumstances where there is a “serious and individual threat to a civilian's life or person by reason of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict”.
The European Court will have to decide whether or not Article 15(c) adds an additional duty of protection, or merely complements existing obligations under Human Rights law.
Article 15(c) was incorporated into the UK Immigration Rules in 2006.
Refugee Action understands that it could take up to two years before this issue is clarified by the European courts. In the meantime, there may be grounds for legal challenges in the UK on Article 15(c) grounds - particularly if attempts were made to forcibly remove people to highly unstable areas such as Mogadishu or Baghdad.
Thursday 17 April 2008: The Uninvited
Refugee Action will be taking to the stage again in an aftershow discussion following a unique performance piece - ‘The Uninvited’.
‘The Uninvited’ tells the extraordinary stories of refugees and exiles, from all over the world, past and present. Poems, writings and testimonies are woven into songs – Spanish, Filipino, Farsi, Bosnian – sung both in original language and in English translation. The sung and spoken narrative is interwoven with Articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Elizabeth Mansfield, Olivier Award nominee for ‘Best Actress’, performs this celebration of the courage, humour and dignity of people who have been forced to flee their homelands at the Rich Mix, Bethnal Green on Thursday 17 April at 7.30pm.
Following the performance, representatives from Crisis, Skylight, the NHS Refugee Health Team and Refugee Action will debate the issues, answer any questions, and discuss how audience members can get involved.
Tickets are available from www.richmix.org.uk or by calling the Box Office on 020 7613 7498.
Don't forget!
Take action today:
- get the Home Office and the Foreign Office talking
- demand a fair hearing for refugee women
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