Editorial
Jack Straw has blood on his hands
Soon after the horrendous deaths of 58 Chinese refugees, who suffocated to an agonising end in a sealed lorry from the continent, 7,000 people marched in London to demand rights for asylum seekers.
Many more have attended a series of local meetings up and down the country to protest against the racist backlash from media and politicians.
It is hard to imagine greater hypocrisy than that of the politicians who shed crocodile tears for the 58 victims of the recent tragedy, while proceeding to call for tighter laws to deter asylum seekers. Jack Straw said the episode should be "a warning" to any other potential asylum seeker.
It is precisely the existence of these brutal, racist laws which has created the booming trade in human traffic, offering vast profits to unscrupulous gangs who promise to smuggle desperate people through illegally.
With the issue now constantly in the headlines as Labour and the Tories each strive to seem more hostile to refugees than the other local campaigns are developing in some areas and existing ones being regenerated in others.
All this is vital, because what we are facing is the greatest threat to the right to asylum since the Geneva convention was agreed in 1951.
Home Secretary Jack Straw has gone so far as explicitly to propose at the EU Interior and Justice Ministers meeting in Lisbon earlier in June that the Convention itself should go, attempting to cloak his reactionary stance in the pathetic excuse that Geneva was drafted before mass air travel and was therefore not relevant today. The reality is of course more sinister.
In a world in which the free movement of capital is seen as sacred, the free movement of labour is something different entirely. Human beings, according to the neo-liberal bible, are only allowed to move when this is in the interests of profits - so alongside the immigration clamp-down, bosses scour the world for people with skills which are in short supply, or for which capital feels it is paying too much. These skilled workers are still encouraged to come over here and shore up company profits.
In reality most people who leave their country of origin flee to other poor countries - that is where the greatest number of refugees end up on either a short or long term basis.
Those places already impoverished by the ravages of the World Bank and the IMF somehow manage to find resources to deal with what may be a sudden influx of people fleeing war or natural disaster.
If these refugees receive any financial or material support from international agencies at all, it only for the brief time that the media is present and is far from sufficient to cover what is spent - let alone what is needed. But you would never know any of this from what the Western media say.
This situation has been further exacerbated by tougher immigration restrictions imposed by wealthy nations. The crackdown in Fortress Europe is mirrored by higher barriers in the United State, Australia and elsewhere.
In February this year, junior Home Office Minister Barbara Roche was party to a scandalous development at the Lome Convention, in which African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACPs) were bribed into signing an agreement which will force them into accepting "stateless persons, nationals of other countries and anyone deemed to have entered the European Union illegally."
Ostensibly the convention centred on the signing of an œ8.5 billion trade agreement between the European Union and the ACPs - but tough clauses had been smuggled into the text without consultation with the ACPs who felt they had no choice but to agree to it.
None of this had been debated in the European Parliament or in any of the national states. Nor has it been debated since.
These developments highlight the importance of campaigning on these issues on an international basis - which is why initiatives such as the September conference on Barbed Wire Europe called by the Close Campsfield campaign (see page 6) are so important.
To fight Straw's challenge to the Geneva convention, we must recognise that it is a part of a broader onslaught.
Other issues also need to be raised. We need to fight against the outrageous measures already in place such as the voucher system which keep asylum seekers penniless and dependent, and the government's developing plans to disperse them around the country.
We need to support the existing campaigns against detention centres like Campsfield, and move into action when plans come through - as is very likely - to open new ones or expand existing centres.
The UK's Immigration Service has announced plans to speed up the deportation of asylum seekers after their applications are rejected. It aims to remove nearly 60,000 people a year by 2004, compared to 12,000 this year. The total of deportations is expected to rise to 30,000 between 2001 and 2002, and to 37,000 the following year. then to 57,000 by 2004.
A key part of the new plan for change would see more detention centres built or converted . There are currently around 1,000 detention spaces in the UK for asylum seekers but officials are proposing that 4,000 be created.
We of course reject the fallacious distinction made by the Home Office between detention centres like Campsfield and so-called "reception centres" such as at Oakington in Cambridgeshire.
All those who are held in centres, whatever their title, are detained under the 1971 Immigration Act and have the same lack of rights.
On all these issues and more the mobilisations of the past few weeks have been a positive start - but they need to be developed and extended as a matter of urgency.