Sat 26 July
Peace & Ecology Festival
St Luke's Church (bombed out church)
Top of Bold St, Liverpool
More gig info here
Alun Parry Blog
Escape From Campsfield
The escape of detainees from Campsfield Detention Centre has produced howls of panic from politicians and the media.
Not because asylum seekers and immigrants are locked away in these prisons by another name.
Not because the overwhelming majority locked up here have committed no crime and are not criminals.
Not because people are held there indefinitely with no idea when they may ever be released - our own mini Guantanamo Bay.
Not because the situation of those locked up inside is so desperate that they resort to hunger strikes and other desperate measures.
Not because indefinite imprisonment is known to result in mental breakdown.
No.
The howls from the media and the politicians are about poor security. Or at their most liberal, a cry that criminals should not have been put with those immigrants who have never committed a crime.
Well let me state the bleeding obvious here. How about demanding that nobody is imprisoned who has never committed a crime. Is that too radical in this day and age?
The Labour Party should be ashamed of it's zealous role in this scandal. There was a time a few years ago when this same government were locking up asylum seekers in criminal prisons. I know. I visited them there. I spoke with the immigration detainees and campaigned on their behalf. Many of them had already fled horrendous experiences only to end up in a foreign jail simply for being here.
Now they have set up their network of "Detention Centres" (nice euphemism!) so they have a purpose built way of imprisoning people instead.
There has been a long campaign to close down Campsfield, a campaign I fully support.
Immigration is a benefit to us - it is not an act of charity but an absolute necessity. All the serious studies show this to be the case. But the tabloids and the scaremongers want us to think different.
Typically, those with vested interests will always seek to create scapegoats to distract us from the real reasons why people suffer bad housing or poor prospects or low paid jobs. They don't want us realising who and what is really to blame.
So they point at the immigrant and asylum seeker instead.
It's an old and distasteful trick. Hitler pointed his finger at the Jews. The National Front in the 80's pointed at black people as "nicking our jobs" in order to try to explain mass unemployment.
And now the current lot of government, business, and media join up to point the finger of blame at the immigrant.
It's nothing new. The main difference on this issue between the NF in the 80's and the Labour Party of today is that the NF never managed to get any forced deportations (let alone brag about the number!).
The NF never managed to order in riot police to deal with asylum seekers.
The NF never managed to have prisons built for the purpose of locking up asylum seekers as if they were criminals.
The NF never managed to order the authorities to treat asylum seekers in such a way that hunger strikes are their only recourse.
The Labour Party, however, did and is still doing.
At least in the 80's it wasn't considered mainstream.
9:11 AM | Permalink
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Fair point.
It is with resignation that I am still dissapointed in our capacity to be unaware of social changes outside our 'shopping trolley' existance...
The '80's were a maelstrom that brought good political debate and dissent against Herr Thatcher.
The '00's bring us a new conservative generation brought up on texting and social ineptitude that stretches to lack of any moral fibre when it comes to right and wrong. A generation that have learnt 'political correctness' through schooling still know no better when comes to life outside.
We dumb down at our Peril.
xMDC
Posted by
Mark Da Costa |
Friday, August 10, 2007