Petition Tag - asylum

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is an organization comprised of New African/Black people whose mission is to defend the human rights of our people and promote self-determination in our communities. We aim to fulfill our purpose through various programs and initiatives we do in our communities.

It is vital that we come together to support what is just and fair. If we don't stand up in support of one another's struggles, despite of our individual efforts we will not as a community, go far. We encourage you to check out our website www.mxgm.org to find out more about the work we do.

We are campaigning in support of a sister by the name of Assata Shakur. Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party who currently has political asylum in Cuba because of her political activity while she was in the United States. Assata Shakur stands as a symbol of freedom for many people in the US and we'd like to ensure that she remains unharmed. We are appealing to the Cuban Government because we know that they have the power to keep Assata safe.

This year marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, we'd like to celebrate Cuba's historic achievement while also gaining assurance that Assata will remain unscathed. Please read over our letter and join us in solidarity!

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Victor Hugo Yogane had a successful business in Cameroon selling music CDs and cassettes. He was arrested and tortured in 2006 when he sought a permit to sell a CD of political songs critical of the government. He fled the country leaving his daughter behind in the care of extended family members. He claimed asylum in the UK in 2006.

Madeleine Naka is Victor’s partner. She had already been detained and tortured for her political affiliations and had fled from the threat of further violence a year earlier. She arrived in the UK while she was six months pregnant and claimed asylum. Eventually Victor and Madeleine were reunited by the Red Cross. Their two sons were born here and have never known life in Cameroon. The family has begun a new life in Sheffield, where they attend church and have made many friends.

However, the Yogane family now live in fear of being forcibly removed from the UK to Cameroon, which is a dangerous country for people like them, active opponents of its corrupt government. They fear for their lives if they are deported.

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Peter Gichura is a committed disability rights activist who has lived in Croydon, UK, since 2001. Despite the difficulties Peter has faced as an asylum seeker, he has spent his time positively, successfully completing NVQ level 4 in accounting and doing voluntary work and activities with Payday men’s network, WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities), Leonard Cheshire Disability and his local church. Peter is an active and well-respected member of his local community, with many friends and networks in the UK.

Peter is from Kenya and was instrumental in establishing a disabled persons’ organisation, advocating for the rights of disabled street hawkers. He fled in 2001 to escape anti-Kikuyu persecution against disability activists. The situation in Kenya remains very volatile.

Whilst in the UK, Peter has made good use of his campaigning skills, by being involved in campaigns to improve access to public services for disabled people, including London buses.

Peter has made a significant contribution to the disabled people’s movement in the UK. As an asylum seeker, he was detained in Harmondsworth in 2006, without accessible washing and toilet facilities, not given the correct medication, and subjected to painful body searches. With the support of WinVisible and Payday, Peter challenged the Home Office and Kalyx, the company that runs Harmondsworth detention centre, using the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

In May, the Court of Appeal made a precedent ruling on his DDA case -- that all disabled people in custody before December 2006 do have the protection of anti-discrimination legislation. But the authorities’ liability over how he was treated is still to be decided. The case is likely to be heard in 2009. This is an important case that affects all disabled people in custody in the UK.

During the plane journey to the UK in 2001 Peter was manhandled, causing his spinal injury to worsen. He has gone from using crutches to using a wheelchair, and relies on medical treatment without which he would die. In 2006, he applied for asylum on that basis: "As someone with spinal injury I am vulnerable to chronic kidney infection and need sanitary living conditions to survive – but there is no running water where I am from in Nyahururu, Kenya. I cannot afford medical treatment – and there is no free healthcare." Expert evidence confirmed this but was ignored, and Peter’s claim was turned down.

Removal now would put Mr Gichura’s health and life at risk, while denying him the opportunity to provide evidence in the DDA case.

Above all, Peter has built his life in the UK, has contributed to society through his active commitment to voluntary and community groups. Peter has the skills and experience that will help him to build a career, and will thus be able to support himself financially if he is given leave to remain in the UK.

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A Call to Preserve: Remembering the Past, Investing in the Future

A Case for Preservation
In the process of collecting stories about life and work at Pennhurst, nearly everyone offers the same refrain: a memorial to the suffering, kindness, and the resiliency of the human spirit all played out at Pennhurst, ought to permanently remain on the site and in the landscape of our cultural memory. Preservation at Pennhurst is a fitting way to remember our past.

But also as an investment in our future, we must consider preserving as much of that once beautiful and theraputic campus as possible. There are real economic and environmental benefits for communities who require preservation as part of their development plans. Those benefits--and the options for adaptive reuse--increase exponentially the more we preserve.

According to Preservation North Carolina, for every $1M spent on preservation versus new construction, each of the following is true: Five to nine more new construction jobs are created; 4.7 new jobs are created elsewhere in the community; $120,000 more initially stays in community; retail sales in the community increase $34,000. As preservation is labor rather than materials intensive, preservation money goes to hire local workers and stays in the community, whereas new construction money is more likely to go to far-off manufacturers and leave the community.

Tearing down buildings as substantially constructed as those at Pennhurst is environmentally irresponsible. It wastes millions of dollars of energy and materials already embodies in the structures; it will require a huge expenditure of fuel to demolish and the debris will overburden our landfills with potentially toxic combinations of materials. The materials used in new construction are highly toxic and energy-consuming to produce. Their use is irresponsible if old matrerials can be reused. Lastly, Pennhurst incorporates design elements that are environmentally friendly and expensive to replicate in new structures.

Preservation techniques can abate or encapsulate hazardous materials as or more cheaply than can be done in demolition. While preservation does not offer a get-rich-quick opportunity, tax incentives associated with it make it an economically feasible option for developers.

For the Forgotten
Reared against a cloud-studded sky high above a graceful curve in the Schuykill River, a mysterious, hauntingly beautiful, seemingly forgotten place casts its shadow into the valley below. It is the fabled Pennhurst State School and Hospital. Its venerable administration building, a formidable Jacobean Revival monument, has presided over the sprawling campus for over a century. At its height, Pennhurst was a self-sustaining community, with its own farms, power plant, and fire company, all staffed in no small part by the school’s thousands of intellectually and developmentally disabled residents. Also a major local employer, Pennhurst’s population dwarfed that of surrounding towns.

The campus buildings have come to symbolize Pennhurst—not just as a public institution, but as the setting of countless private and deeply personal stories that tell the tale of how we as a people have treated those we have defined as “others.”

The now forlorn façades provide little to suggest that the eyes of the entire nation were once intimately focused on the campus sprawled out under the administration building’s watch. Through Bill Baldini’s 1968 NBC documentary "Suffer the Little Children" and subsequent Supreme Court cases, the nation saw in these red brick structures the dreadful plight of thousands of Pennhurst residents.

The architecture’s pampered detail disguised a systemic malaise and bureaucratic apathy imperiling generations of confined innocents. “Granite walls of ignorance and social blindness,” as Baldini called them, masked the neglectful decay of Pennhurst’s residents. They, like the campus on the hill today, were intentionally forgotten.

A Place of Hope Amid Despair
Yet Pennhurst was also a place of an American awakening. Originally known as the Eastern Pennsylvania Institution for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic, Pennhurst was once seen as a model institution. It was a product of a self-proclaimed “progressive” era when the solution to dealing with disability was forced segregation and sterilization. Since the 18th century—a similarly self-proclaimed age of enlightenment—people with illness and disabilities were labeled “defectives.” As late as 1820, such “defectives,” along with other dependent “deviant” groups such as aged paupers and the sick poor, were grouped together and sold to the lowest bidder. A similarly conceived philosophy of disposal at the lowest cost was played out time and again at Pennhurst.

If only slowly and person-by-person, a growing and maturing society reconsidered this philosophy. History written at Pennhurst demonstrated that what was once held out as the only right option was in fact hopelessly wrong.

In contrast to the narratives of intense and prolonged tragedy, Pennhurst’s largely untold stories of deep compassion and great character evidence a rise of kind conscience that inspires yet today. One Pennhurst staff member recalls how she and others would volunteer their time on Saturdays and Sundays to clean the residents—most of whom could not toilet themselves—since the state budget did not allocate for housekeeping services on weekends. Another describes sharing holidays at her home with Pennhurst residents whose own families had long since stopped visiting.

But, also as shared by a former employee, there is another, rarely considered aspect to the Pennhurst story that is perhaps its most important: the indomitable and unbreakable power of the human spirit displayed every day by the residents themselves.

Despite the obstacles institutionalization presented, many of Pennhurst’s residents found ways to prosper. “They lived lives of inner dignity and grace” in an ammonia-washed world designed to strip that dignity from them. “This was especially true of the individuals who made up the ‘working patient’ group. Day in and day out, they proved their worth helping to care for their worse-off peers by assisting the paid staff in nearly every aspect of life at Pennhurst. “Even the most severely disabled found ways to assert their individuality and retain their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanized them in a million different ways. Many people who were told for years that they could not succeed beyond Pennhurst's gates proved the ‘professionals’ wrong, going on to live independent lives of worth and value” in the community long after the administration building’s great oaken doors slammed shut for the last time.

Just as we remember the sadness, we need also acknowledge these quiet triumphs of the human spirit.

What Pennhurst has to Teach Us
In a time when sound bytes distill the human story to a trite near-falsity, Pennhurst offers a story of dauntingly rich complexity.

But the themes Pennhurst represents come clearly:

* the power of conscience-driven people to do the right thing against the odds;
* the cost of apathy and willful blindness;
* the danger of classifying those different from us as “other”;
* the resulting propensity to treat the “other” in a manner unbefitting of the common standards of human dignity;
* the fallacy of resignation that comes when we think we are incapable of curing ills larger than ourselves.
* and lastly, the true strength of the human spirit

We are the living beneficiaries of these lessons from the past embodied in brick and mortar at Pennhurst. As such, we have a solemn duty not only to remember these lessons but to pass them on.

Though the entire Pennhurst campus was deemed eligible for the National Historic Register, time, vandals, and vagrants have taken their toll. Recently, the property was sold and there are fears that what remains of the Pennhurst property will be sacrificed to the onslaught of suburban sprawl. The long endured policy of forgetting about Pennhurst—its residents, its story—cannot persist.

Join us in overcoming complacency and putting aside notions that preservation here is impossible. Preservation is very possible and we can do it if our efforts are concerted. We are presented with a variety of options for preservation. While there has been significant deterioration, the buildings are structurally sound. A program of adaptive reuse could offer profitable new life as well as provide a lasting, living memorial.

There is reason to believe the developer and the township are open to the idea of preservation. The developer himself has said he would like to find a use for the property of which local residents will be proud. Certainly, we can all be proud of a memorial annd adaptive reuse. However, to make it happen, we must channel our support and direct it to action. To that end, please consider signing the following petition.

Additionally, please consider sharing your Pennhurst stories by going to http://www.preservepennhurst.com or through the forum on this website.

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Jack came to the UK in February 2006 fleeing persecution in Nigeria. He applied for asylum, but was immediately put in immigration detention, even though he was under 18 years old.

At the time Jack was unable to prove his age or his claims that he was gay and his asylum claim was refused. After 11 months in detention, Jack was granted bail on the strength of a report from a medical expert from the Helen Bamber Foundation, which provided evidence that Jack has scars and other injuries consistent with his experience of torture.

When Jack was 16 he had a relationship with another boy of his age in Nigeria. The other boy was the son of a local chief. On learning of this relationship, the family of his lover threatened to have him killed. They also went to the police, who issued a warrant for Jack’s arrest for homosexual activity and widely publicised this in Jack’s home area. The police came to Jack’s house looking for him.

Jack went into hiding, but was discovered by a group of men who recognised him. He was abducted and severely beaten and tortured for several hours. The men left Jack for dead, but having survived this ordeal, he sought to escape Nigeria with the help of other gay friends.

According to the law, religion and culture in Nigeria, homosexuality is strongly criminalised. Homosexuality is outlawed in the Nigerian penal code and Muslim law. However, in northern states under Muslim law the punishment can be death; in the civil penal code homosexuality can carry up to a 14-year prison sentence. The Nigerian authorities have issued a warrant for Jack’s arrest. Re-locating to a different region in Nigeria is not an option.

A new law forbids same-sex marriage and prohibits gay people from assembling and petitioning the government. It also allows prosecution of newspapers that publish information about same-sex relationships and religious groups that allow same-sex unions. Those who violate this law can be sentenced to five years in prison.

Jack's removal to Nigeria would undoubtedly place him at risk of persecution and would lead to the abuse of his human rights and possibly even death.

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It all started at the beginning of November 1973 when a memorial service for George Papandreou turns into a massive demonstration against the military junta in Greece, which ends in beatings and arrests.

On November 14th the students at the polytechnic occupied the school. With them are lawschool students, workers and other civilians. The activist Nikos Xilouris went into into the occupied polytechnic to give courage and hope to the students. The police are present, but more and more civilians are entering the polytechnic and standing alongside the students. The students put together a radio transmitter and soon receive the help of radio-pirates so that the signal reaches all of Athens with anti-dictatorship messages, calling the people to fight with them.

It's Thursday November 15th 1973 and students have occupied Universities in Thessalonica and Patra. On Friday 16th of November the people around the polytechnic exceed 100.000 and are constantly increasing. Later in the afternoon Papadopoulos gives order for the police to strike. The police use teargas and bullets and kill many unarmed civilians and students. Builders and workers fight the police using whatever they can find in building sites, turn over heavy vehicles and set up roadblocks in the area.

At midnight on November 17th tanks fill the streets of Athens. Cranes remove the obstacles that had been left by the civilians. The polytechnic's radio station calls out to the soldiers saying: " Our brothers, how can you shoot at us? How can you help spill Greek blood when we all believe in freedom?" and sang out the national anthem. " People of Greece, you must know! You must know that right now your children are fighting! All of greece is fighting, and especialy the people of Athens are in the streets, in front of the tanks! The students request negotiations but the dictator is preparing a demonstration of power to silence the protestors.

The tanks and military close off the polytechnic.at 3 a.m. on Saturday 17th November the order is given and a tank demolishes the entrance of the polytechnic flattening whatever obstacle the students had left. Soldiers, police and secret agents storm the polytechnic. Thousands were arrested and tortured, but the message had got through, the days of the jounda were numbered. Many students and civilians escaped in any way they could, disappeared in alleys and sought refuge at the homes of friends and relatives. These are the fights that the students before us fought so that we could have the education we have today.

Now the goverment is trying to take back what is rightfully ours, and it's time to claim it. Article 16 of the Greek constitution should not be changed!

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June 8, 2006

Innocent Nkung, a teacher and human rights campaigner, arrived in the UK in May 2005 after fleeing for his life from the "Democratic" Republic of Congo where he had been demonstrating for free elections and for an end to the large-scale attrocities and human rights abuses that the Congolese people are currently facing.

He is being supported by local people who have helped him in his campaign to stay in the UK. We have been raising awareness of the issues in Congo by arranging Congolese social evenings for the community with traditional food and music.

Here we have discussed such topics as the reasons for the poverty in Africa and the refugee crisis and why globally we are all responsible. Innocent has given so much to our community in terms of devoting the majority of his time to volunteering for good causes and in providing unpaid french tuition to school children and we continue to support him in his aim to present 5,000 signatures to the UK Home Office to support his application for asylum.

He has also gained the support of our local media, our MP and the UK Respect Party. At present we have 3,000 signatures and we hope to reach our target by the end of July when we shall present them to the Government.

If we fail and the Government decide to ignore all the current evidence of what awaits those deported back to Congo, this warm and amiable man will certainly be murdered upon his return.

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BEHNAM AND FAMILY MUST STAY!

Behnam, an outstanding young artist and BA Hons Fine Art student at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London, his younger brother, a gap year student, both former students at Quintin Kynaston School, and their mother, are in urgent need of asylum in the UK. They have lived in London since 2002.

What Behnam and his mother face is deportation to prison, torture and likely death.

As a former teacher at the boys' school and now a close family friend, I have known Behnam since his arrival at the school in 2003. I vouch for the family's complete integrity and for the authenticity of their asylum claim.

Behnam is a delightful, popular young man, an excellent role model for young people. In recognition of his achievements under adversity he was Highly Commended at the Anne Frank Awards in 2007. In 2008 he was made an Ambassador for Refugees and Arts by the Refugees & the Arts Initiative. In June 2009 Behnam was invited to work alongside an established artist facilitating a day of workshops on Islamic glasspainting at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Much of Behnam's artwork reflects his open-minded approach to politics and religion and his strong opposition to the current theocratic regime in Iran. This, alone, would place him in great danger in today's Iran.

In 2008 Behnam held an exhibition "Visions of Freedom" at the Watermans Arts Centre, Brentford, his fifth solo art exhibition in London. His latest travelling exhibition, "Where is Their Vote?", was inspired by the courage of the protesters following the Presidential Election of June, 2009. He has also exhibited alongside other artists including at venues that include the Human Rights Centre of Amnesty International,St Ethelberga's Church of Reconciliation, Portsmouth University and the Free Word Centre. He and his family are an enormous asset to our society.

The image included is "Hope for Freedom" by Behnam, aged 16, depicting the view of a political prisoner looking out towards freedom. The doves and the Statue of Liberty are outlined in the colours of the Iranian flag. Around the image are representaions of the ancient Persian Human Rights Codes of Cyrus.

In April 2005 two of Behnam's friends were arrested at Behnam's family's home in Tehran for allegedly printing and distributing anti-regime literature.

Three days later Behnam's father was arrested on arrival at Tehran Airport. Beaten and interrogated about the whereabouts of his wife and older son, Behnam's father was released following the payment of money.

He warned his wife in London, that she and Behnam were wanted by the authorities and could not return to Iran. He was subsequently re-arrested and held in the notorious Evin Prison for 15 months until he was conditionally released.

The family claimed asylum in the UK, but their claim was rejected. It again failed on appeal and this was upheld at a reconsideration hearing. Shortly after receiving this news the boys' mother collapsed and was taken to hospital. This has happened on a number of occasions since this situation arose and is clearly related to deep fears.

The family sought to take the case to the Court of Appeal, especially as there is evidence which was not available at the earlier hearing, but their application was rejected.

A fresh asylum claim, based on substantial additional evidence, was submitted in April 2008. This time the family has a highly competent solicitor. For seventeen long months there was no response from the Home Office but there have now been indications that the Home Office is about to consider the fresh application.

Should the fresh application, however, be rejected, their position is one of great danger. Both Behnam and his mother have been tried and sentenced in absentia by a court in Iran on political charges. Behnam has been sentenced prison for 5 years, his mother to 7 years.

Even more shocking is that they have been warned that they will receive lashes, 70 in Behnam's case and 100 in the mother's. Knowing the people concerned we cannot see how they could survive such a brutal ordeal.

The Iranian regime has an appalling, and deteriorating, Human Rights record - including executions of minors, floggings, rape and other forms of torture. The already lamentable state of human rights in Iran has worsened even further following the phoney Presidetial election of June 2009, with groups such as students and artists being targetted.

We are completely dismayed and outraged by the suffering this delightful family are going through. They fell victim of serious malpractice by their previous legal representative.The family has so far been denied justice.

Should the fresh application be refused,the family is at real risk of deportation to Iran. This petition is part of a campaign to stop this.

Please sign the onlne petition if you have not signed the paper one. In all, over 11,200 people have so far signed the petition, demonstrating the enormous concern there is for this much loved, vulnerable family in such danger.

Included in a long list of prominent supporters of the campaign are Isabelle Allende, Michael Palin, Nicole Farhi, Katherine Hammett, Paula Rego, Mark Titchner, Ken Loache, Polly Toynbee, Yasmin Allibhai-Brown, Rory Bremner, Darius Campbell Danesh , Eva Schloss (Anne Frank's step-sister), faith and community leaders, MPs, Peers and MEPs.

THEY MUST NOT BE RETURNED TO IRAN TO BE TORTURED! THEY MUST BE ALLOWED TO STAY IN THE UK!

If you would like to get involved in the campaign please let me know.

On behalf of the family, thanks for your support.

Pauline Levis
Coordinator, Behnam & Family Must Stay Campaign
pauline.levis@btopenworld.com

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January 20, 2006

Startling revelations are surfacing in the "breaks in" news of the TBC radio.
We, a group of failed asylum seekers are living in the UK with fear of arrest and deportation to Sri Lanka at any time.

Mr.Ramraj assured us to obtain visas illegally using his association with the MP for Harrow west, Mr.Garath Thomas and the Councillor, Harrow Mr.Thaya Idaikadar.

In fear of returning to Sri Lanka, three of us barrowed from friends and paid him £5000 each in order to get the visa. However he could not help us in regularising our status as mentioned.

Therefore we asked him to refund the money. He started to threaten us to inform the Enforcement officials of the UK Immigration Service about our status in this country. He further said that we were from the LTTE and will inform to the UK Police that we were threatening him.

Despite this threat, we continued to pressurise him to get the money back. Then recently he asked us to wait in the midnight of 22nd of May 2005 in front of Domino Pizza, in Rayners Lane area. When we went there, he asked us to follow him. We went near a parked car (Metallic Green, R4 JRT) in the Warden Avenue. Then he gave us electronic equipments of possibly radio station and said that get your money from selling those equipments.

The Other day we heard the news that the TBC Radio Station was broken in. Later we got to know that he made a complaint at the Harrow Police Station that the LTTE suspects broke in his radio station.

In another interesting thing that the same Mr.Ramraj, one day had given money to one of another friends of us to buy a pay as you go sim card. Then Mr.Ramraj asked him to call to his Radio Station as well as to his mobile number using a phone with the same sim card frequently. Our friend was not aware as to why Mr.Ramraj asked him to do so.

Now we understand that the purpose of this is to manipulate and complain to the Police about the LTTE threat and to claim insurance falsely. In the recent news in his www.nitharsanam.net, www.vizhippu.net , the same phone number has been mentioned in relation to the "LTTE threat story".

We also learnt that he had a history of cheating the Insurance companies in the year of 2001 and 2003 respectively.

If the UK Immigration Service and the Police can give us guarantee not to remove us from the UK, we are happy to assist the Police or the relevant officials in this regard.

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This Petition was started to lobby for the change of prohibitive U.S. Policy that makes it virtually impossible for North Korean refugees, in particular the young orphaned children, who are currently living in fear and hiding in China, to seek asylum and resettlement in the U.S. Countless thousands of these young children live on the streets under the constant threat of hunger, exploitation, abuse, arrest and repatriation. Recent crackdowns by the Chinese, who treat these refugees as illegal aliens, have worsened the situation, and immediate action is critical to saving these fragile lives.

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This petition is ban Polish citizens from entering the United States on grounds other than the political asylum.
Republic of Poland is in strong violation of the basic right of emigration.

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Under the leadership of immigration minister Philip Ruddock, the government of Australia has turned a blind eye to all requests for a serious investigation of Australia's immigration policies and the mandatory detention of people who are legal asylum seekers under international law. These refugees are seeking legal asylum in Australia and are being held in violation of UN directives (which are the law in Australia). Conditions in detention centres must be investigated. Philip Ruddock must step down. Humans rights violations must result in trials.

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Refugees are people who are fleeing from serious danger. ie war, political persecution, famine, economic crisis or natural disasters. In the uk asylum seekers face difficulties and barriers: widespread, indiscriminate detention; poverty; poor housing; poor access to healthcare; lack of training and employment opportunities.
In housing, lower standards are applied for families seeking asylum than for other families. The vouchers refugee families receive are set at a lower value than Income Support levels and stigmatise asylum-seekers. Many children who have lost their families and seek asylum do not receive the same care that is routinely offered to other children in need. When the Government signed up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, they made an exception - refugee children. Asylum seekers come here because their lives and/or the wellbeing of their families and homes are in danger. They would not choose to leave there homes and families out of choice. They are the victims of war and famine and drought and poverty and they need our help. we are a country of plenty, and it is our responsibility as a civilised, developed nation and as human beings to give these people a home and a chance and treat them with compassion and respect.

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Refugees are people who are fleeing from serious danger. ie war, political persecution, famine, economic crisis or natural disasters. In the UK asylum seekers face difficulties and barriers: widespread, indiscriminate detention; poverty; poor housing; poor access to healthcare; lack of training and employment opportunities. In housing, lower standards are applied for families seeking asylum than for other families.

The vouchers refugee families receive are set at a lower value than Income Support levels and stigmatise asylum-seekers. Moreover, many children who have lost their families and seek asylum do not receive the same care that is routinely offered to other children in need.

When the Government signed up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, they made an exception - refugee children. Asylum seekers come here because their lives and/or the wellbeing of their families and homes are in danger. They would not choose to leave there homes and families out of choice. They are the victims of war and famine and drought and poverty and they need our help. We are a country of plenty, and it is our responsibility as a civilised, developed nation and as human beings to give these people a home and a chance and treat them with compassion and respect.

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