Morning Star Features Weds 30 June 04Opinion: Niki Adams hails the role of women in the fight to repeal the Section 55 anti-refugee legislation. We all have rights Credit for David Blunkett’s defeat this week on Section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act must go, first of all, to women asylum-seekers who, with the support of grass-roots organizations, led fierce protests against this return to Dickensian pauperism. A determined, varied and largely hidden movement led by women emerged to tackle this insidious legislation, which denied housing and support to anyone who did not claim asylum immediately upon arrival on these shores. Community groups, many of which were founded through churches, sprang up from Lewes to Glasgow, providing clothes, food and survival money to destitute people. Many individuals took vulnerable asylum-seekers into their homes. Others helped to prepare legal appeals and to find good lawyers. Cases were won through the joint determination of those terrified of being sent back and those indignant at this sexist and racist denial of human rights. However, the abolition of section 55 does not mean the end of destitution. Of the several hundred women who have come to the All African Women's Group (AAWG), Black Women's Rape Action Project (BWRAP), Legal Action for Women (LAW) and Women Against Rape (WAR) for help in the last year, most will remain homeless and destitute because their asylum cases have been rejected. This is not because they are "bogus" - Home Office decisions systematically ignore or dismiss compelling evidence of rape and other torture. Rather, it is because, once women have been turned down, they are no longer entitled to housing or support and must depend on charities, friends or the kindness of strangers. Many are rape survivors, pregnant or mothers with young children and nearly all are sick from the effects of torture, hunger and lack of food, health care and other essentials. Several women have been raped by men who offered somewhere to stay when they were sleeping rough. You need a lawyer to pursue a new claim and legal aid cuts have ensured that there is now a disastrous shortage, especially of those who are reliable and not corrupt. Women have been asked for money or even sex by lawyers in order to take their case. New legislation proposes separating children from parents and making asylum-seekers work for nothing - otherwise known as slavery. Mothers from the AAWG have already been threatened with having their children taken from them because they have nowhere to live. The situation is more critical since the established asylum charities refuse to help. The public is never told that organizations like the Refugee Council, founded to defend the rights of some of the most traumatized and vulnerable people, are increasingly embedded with the Home Office. Its lucrative Home Office contracts are not for helping people who are made destitute, but commit it to "co-operate with the deportation process." The charities insist that people whose asylum claims have been closed must agree to be deported. Countless terrified women understandably refuse to sign and are thrown out on the streets by the people they come to for help. At a recent Refugee Week event, a rape survivor who was attacked when sleeping rough confronted the Refugee Arrivals Project employee who had turned her out of her hostel "I told everyone that this was the woman who put me on the streets at 3am in winter," she reported. Letebrahan Yohannes, persecuted as a, student activist in Eritrea, spells out why women asylum seekers have spearheaded opposition to section 55. "In war, earthquake, drought and flood, women and our children are first to suffer and die. We are the hardest workers and the main carers. "When we get to the UK, we are disbelieved and disrespected. This is the sexism women suffer and we are angry." Sara B from the Democratic Republic of Congo says: "If they stop selling arms, we would not be here." The UN estimates that 80 per cent of refugees and displaced people are women and children. Emigrating is rarely a choice, but a desperate last resort to escape the wars, poverty and ecological devastation caused by Western military and corporate interests. And while billions of pounds are squandered each year on death and destruction, asylum-seekers are scapegoated for cuts in benefits, wages, pensions and health care. The children of asylum-seekers are even accused of "swamping" schools. Our national gathering on Saturday will bring together asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants with legal representatives, social workers, health and other professionals, church people and other campaigners - all those who make up the movement to protect the rights of anyone affected by immigration legislation and policies, including antiterrorism measures. Among other things, we want to discuss how to combine legal work on individual cases with campaigning, what victories have been won in different areas, how legal and other precedents have been achieved and we want to ask how they can be used to win more. We want to evaluate the obstacles and problems that we all face, to see how we can overcome them or, at least, address them effectively. The defeat of section 55 can be the impetus for us to work out how we can come together to defeat the current two-tier apartheid system, which causes misery for asylum-seekers and undermines everyone's rights. Niki Adams is a spokeswoman for Legal Action for Women. LAW is holding a national gathering this Saturday July 3 entitled The World Belongs to All of Us - We AU Have a Right to Be Here. It takes place between I0am-5pm at the Trinity United Reformed Church, Buck Street London NWI. Prices for institutions £30, high-waged £I0, waged £3-£5, unwaged £3 and asylum-seekers free. Ring Legal Action for Women at the Crossroads Women's Centre on (020) 7482-2496 or email law@crossroadswomen.net for more details. ON THE INTERNET www.allwomencount.net
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