Harmondsworth

On Saturday over sixty people left the Bastille Day site and went to join the Close Harmondsworth Campaign in a picket outside Harmondsworth Detention Centre, one of the Immigration Service Prisons.

Around 100 people took part. People climbed onto the fence surrounding the centre and spoke to the refugees. They ignored police pleas to come down and stop damaging the fence.

The protest ended at 2:00pm so that friends and family would be allowed in to visit, but protestors promised to return the next day and visit the people they had met.

On Sunday, 12 people, armed with phonecards, propaganda and cherries, entered Harmondsworth to meet their new acquaintances. Security totally overreacted, confiscating literature and cherries, but they had to let the visitors meet the inmates. Visitors met refugees from Algeria, Kosova, Albania, Pakistan, India and other places, who welcomed them warmly.

Salim Rambo, a refugee from Zaire who fears for his life if he is returned there, was due to be deported to Germany on Tuesday. The German authorities had already refused his asylum application, so from there he would be sent straight to Zaire.

All day Monday was spent trying to get the deportation delayed. Phonecalls to solicitors, MP's and the Immigration Service itself established that there was a legal case to delay the flight. Immigration officials, however, were not interested, and the flight was due to leave at 7:15am the next day.