Glasgow's Brand Street Immigration Centre, centre of the "Dawn Raid" asylum abuse scandals, was the target of another early morning protest today.

"No Dawn Raids Today ?!"

The Home Office building at "Festival Court" on Brand Street in Ibrox is the place where asylum seekers are forced to sign on weekly with their family to receive a pitiful living allowance. Each time they enter the building and meet with officials (no legal or other support to ensure fair treatment is allowed to be present) they don't know whether they will be coming out the front door or the back door. If it's the front they have to make the same journey next week and the week after that forever. If they go out the back door it's into an unmarked blue van on a journey to Dungavel, Yarl's Wood then back on to the tender mercies of the state they fled from. Or anywhere they stopped in before reaching Britain. It doesn't matter to the Home Office. Outrage over cases like that of the Vucaj family and countless others who haven't made the news has spread across Scottish society, reflected in an extraordinary alliance of protesters. Around 30 Anarchists, Christians, Communists, Clowns, liberals, Muslims, pagans, refugee support workers, socialists and people of no particular allegiance descended on Brand St at 5am with the aim of preventing a dawn raid for one day at least. Once there, they found a number of police stood in the road preventing access to the gates and an informal candlelit vigil was held outside. Placards proclaiming "Jesus Christ was an Asylum Seeker" and "Scar on Scotland's Conscience" contrasted with the Orwellian "Building a Safe, Just and Tolerant Society" on the Home Office. After an hour of quiet vigil-ing some especially keen child-snatchers began arriving for work. Moved from the road, protesters wondered aloud at the spectacle of police ("building safer communities") facilitating the abduction and terrorising of children. After a while, a distraction of clowns arrived and the mood lightened a little. They declared themselves to be from Elsewhere and attempted to turn themselves in for deportation to Denmark, Jamaica, any country more sane than this one. Around 8.30 the protesters left, satisfied that no raids would or could take place that day but determined to continue and grow resistance to this inhuman practice. Judging by the unprecedented alliances this campaign is generating, it's very unlikely that those responsible (or pretending no responsibility) will be having a Merry Xmas or a Happy New Year. And quite fucking right too. The next protest at Brand Street takes place this Saturday (the 17th) at 10am, complementing the weekly vigil there. The venue is easily reached by the Underground or any bus via Paisley Road West.

Related

http://www.openborders.org.uk

http://scotland.indymedia.org/newswire/display/2391/index.php