Tell RAM - Stop Colluding with Racist Brutality!
Gambian Lesbian Bani Must Stay!
Not One More Jackie Nanyonjo - Ugandan Lesbian murdered by the UKBA
Shut Down Yarl's Wood!
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Lunchtime Demo @ RAM Office
Friday 3rd May 2013 - 1pm-2pm
Royal Air Maroc Office,
Gosfield Street WIW 6ED
(about 1 block from Great Portland st station)
Join us to tell Royal Air Maroc - Stop Colluding with Racist Brutality!
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On 19th April the MFJ inside and outside of detention and all of our supporters won a victory in stopping Bani's deportation flight: the cruel attempts to intimidate her failed, and the efforts of many supporters alerted the airline to the fact that they were being asked to collude with what could only have been a bloody deportation.
Since then Bani and the MFJ have been gathering evidence in support of her claim for asylum as a lesbian who faces persecution and forced marriage if she is sent back to the Gambia - evidence that it was impossible for her get when her case was rushed through the mockery of 'Fast Track' inside Yarl's Wood detention centre. The new evidence includes witness statements from an ex-girlfriend and a friend who has known her since childhood.
Right now the UKBA is thoroughly discredited, branded a 'shambolic' organisation - something known to asylum seekers already, but now exposed to the public in general. The UKBA is being SHUT DOWN - as MFJ has called for consistently. An Inquiry into the Asylum System with public meetings has had to be called to change what is dysfunctional, irrational and in breach of UNHCR guidelines, as MFJ has submitted [our submission here].
Bani's case is an example of what is wrong, which we must fight to change. While the discredited UKBA conduct their deplorable Fast-Track rush-jobs on lesbian and gay asylum claims, elsewhere the Foreign Commonwealth Office have raised serious deep concerns about the zero-tolerance of homosexuality at the highest political levels of the Gambia. Denying Bani time to gather herself and put her full case forward is a denial of justice.
"President Jammeh makes frequent calls for a crackdown on crime. His zero tolerance on homosexuality led to the arrest of 20 individuals for "attempting to commit an unnatural act".
Human Rights Report
Together we won an important victory which has strengthened the Movement for Justice Group in Yarl's Wood. Since we stopped Bani's 'removal' Amina's deportation has been stopped, Sirah from the Gambia has been released, and Elizabeth, a lesbian from Uganda who won her asylum claim in court but was still held in detention, beat down the UKBA's attempt to appeal further and was finally released.
When another of the Yarl's Wood women, Odunayo from Nigeria, was put on a charter flight last week it took 7 guards to overcome her resistance and she had to go to hospital when she got to Lagos with injuries to her neck and wrists and a fractured shoulder bone. Odunayo took the took the first opportunity to report what happened to the MFJ, including friends in Yarl's Wood, and she got photographs and a medical report so that she can expose the brutality of the UKBA and the Transcor guards and continue to build the movement.
Now the UKBA is continuing the psychological torture of Bani. They know that she has new evidence and so they are trying again to deport her before her fresh claim can go ahead. They want to send her back to the Gambia this Saturday 4th May - once again by Royal Air Maroc. It is a crime to be lesbian/gay in the Gambia; LGBT people face homophobic persecution and Bani faces a forced marriage arranged by her father even though she has told him she is a lesbian.
Bani has been given removal directions for
Royal Air Maroc Flight AT801 at 18.10 on Saturday 4th May from Heathrow Terminal 4
