In 2001, Abdullah Ramhatullah was an Afghan man from a working family of mechanics who lived in downtown Kabul. He was the youngest son, and his family sold their garage to get the money together to get him out. He walked and was trucked overland and, eventually he got into Britain on a lorry via Calais. When he claimed asylum, he was forcibly dispersed to the flats in Salford Precinct.
In the October of 2001 he came to RAPAR’s first meeting and he became a founding member of RAPAR.
In early 2002, Manchester Immigration Officers snatched him off the Salford Streets, kept him in Manchester Airport for 5 days, along with 14 other men and women who were there at the time, with no natural light and no natural ventilation. Then they deported him to Austria - which is where they had their first record of his fingerprints in Europe.
But we refused to let go of Abdullah.
When they took him off the plane in Vienna to transport him to a camp in the mountain, people in Vienna - who we had made contact with when he was snatched - managed to get a phone sim card into his hand as he was escorted from the airport terminal to the camp bus.
We never let go of him.
Our newly formed contacts - in Vienna - kept on visiting Abdullah and managed to get him transferred into the City. Abdullah Rahmatullah eventually became an Austrian citizen.
That was almost 15 years ago.
Now we are seeing hundreds and thousands of people like Abdullah, fleeing from everything and everyone they know and love. They are coming from countries that are in turmoil because of destructive forces that have been mobilised to protect the interests of global multinationals and a tiny ruling elite - the 1%. The push factors that create refugees and the push factors that create people who are labelled as economic migrants are essentially the same:
A history of occupation by colonisers who, when they eventually were forced to leave, failed to honour any of their promises to the countries they had occupied and ravaged
The ongoing systematic exploitation of natural wealth for profit - the blood diamonds of Congo for example.
The geopolitical value of where there country physically is in the world, so that Western dominators can have bases and launchpads and intelligence centres.
As we move forward together from today, stronger in the connections that we are making with each other through this movement’s Multicultural Manchester launch, it is vital that we continue to learn about, expose and challenge how the racism that is violating our human rights is being rolled out.
This is happening - using information technology - through:
the housing, children’s services, healthcare, policing and education that are being delivered through the media management of misinformation that tries to make us hate the stranger and - if we are in work - through laws being introduced that say we must become quasi immigration officials on top of everything else that we are supposed to do when we work. For example, financial incentives are being introduced for hospital trusts to identify people’s immigration status. They will be financially rewarded if they do finger people - and fined if they don’t.
WE SAY THAT THE REFUGEES WHO ARE ON THE BORDERS OF THE UK ARE WELCOME HERE,
and at the same time, in the same breath, we say
STAND UP TO THE RACISM THAT IS VIOLATING THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES WHO ARE ALREADY HERE.