[noborders-brum] Fwd: No Deportation! No Cover-up!

Tue Apr 18 21:28:43 UTC 2006

----- Forwarded message from Refugee Forum <voice_refugee_forum at dalitstan.org>
-----
    Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:50:12 -0700
    From: Refugee Forum <voice_refugee_forum at dalitstan.org>
Reply-To: voice_refugee_forum at dalitstan.org
 Subject: No Deportation! No Cover-up!
      To: eric.allison at guardian.co.uk, rewm at rewm.org.uk,
contactus at west-midlands.police.uk, rose-road at west-midlands.police.uk,
jonathan_walker at mrn.co.uk, mark_cowan at mrn.co.uk, andy_richards at mrn.co.uk,
steve_dyson at mrn.co.uk

>From Voice Refugee Forum, Limehouse Town Hall, 646 Commercial Road, London E14
7HA
020 7987 0655

No Deportation! No Cover Up!

16th April 2006 Romeo Dzamba is currently being held in Colnbrook Detention
Centre. He is one of the protestors recently on hunger strike. On Tuesday 18th
April, he is facing being "spirited away" by the immigration service, without
proper access to legal representation. Premier Detention Services who run
Colnbrook have been keeping him on a segragtion unit (solitary confinement) and
have refused him phoine calls. He was part of the recent hunger strike taking
place in Colnbrook. Looking deeper into his circumstances gives a very
disturbing picture. 
Romeo is a relative of Pascal Lissouba, the former president of the Congo, who
was violently deposed in 1997. Romeo has seen three members of his immediate
family murdered, but this did not stop his involvement in the Christian peace
movement in the Congo. He was imprisoned five times before coming to the UK to
seek Asylum. That was back in 2002. 
His problems here started when he was in Newcastle in 2003. At the National
Ayslum Seekers Service {NASS} hostel he was asked to share a small room (2m x
2m) with another person. When he objected to this, the police were called, he
was attacked with Mace and arrested. No charges were made and he was released.

He was soon living in Birmingham in Kendal Towers, B17 and was perfectly legal,
able to draw benefit, when he was re-arrested and taken back to Newcastle.
However by the time he appeared in court, the magistrate explained that it was
all a mistake, and that he should not have been arrested. Mr Dzamba filed a
complaint. 
Shortly after this, the police arrived at his address and proceeded to search
the premises, despite not having a search warrant. When they found a bank card
belonging to a friend of his, he was arrested for fraud, although the card had
not been reported missing nor had there been any fraudulent transactions. His
frienmd had left the card at his flat by mistake. He had also been writing to
Tony Blair about his situation and discovered that the police had removed all
his correspondence concerning this. He was released without charge. 
At this time there was no question of him not having a bona fide legal status,
indeed he had just received confirmation that he was going to be given
permission to work. Yet when he was caught up in the police dragnet which
followed the community tension last October, the police from Rose Road Police
Station, Harborne, were quick to assert that he was an illegal resident, and he
was speedily dispatched to the Immigration Removal Centre, first at
Harmondsworth and then Colnbrook. As it was the same police from the same
police station who were dealing with him, it is clear that something fishy is
going on. They knew he was not an illegal resident, that on the contrary he had
valid papers and furthermore had filed a complaint against them. So, we have to
ask Does Rose Road Police have a policy of arranging illegal deportations for
anyone who makes a complaint against them? 
Romeo has been kept in detention now for nearly six months and faces illegal
deportation. He has not been given proper access to legal support whilst in
Colnbook, and recently has been held incommunicado by the authorities there.
The reason for this is that he has stood up to police harassment by filing a
complaint and taken up the issue with the authorities. 
We should not let our concern as to how Romeo is being treated by the police and
other authorities blind us to the fact he faces the real threat of persecution
if he is deported to the Congo. But his case also shows up the murky side of
harrassment and racism in Rose Road Police Station, Birmingham. Asylum seekers
who show such initiative and intelligence and who refuse to be intimidated are
a threat to a system which always seeks to dehumanise them. 
Stopping this deportation is doubly important as it also stops the cover up at
Rose Road Police Station. 
No Deportation! No Cover up!
Telephone: Chief Superintendent Ian Dodd, Rose Road Police Station 0845 113 5000
to complain. 

Or attend
Asylum and Immigration Tribunal,  Harmondsworth
Colnbrook Bypass
Harmondsworth
Middlesex
UB7 0HD

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