SOAS Raided by Immigration Police
Published: Saturday 13 June 2009 09:12 by Imcist@
Neighbourhoods: soas westminster
Published by group:
Imc London Features
On Friday 12th, SOAS University was raided by immigrantion police, who rounded up several cleaners employed by ISS contractors amidst threats of immediate deportation. The detained persons are held at Old Street and Borough Immigration Centre and are set to be deported on Monday. SOAS staff and students have condemned the raids in a press release.
Updates Monday morning: A demonstration has taken place at SOAS at 8.30am, and another one has been called for the afternoon at 4.30pm, whilst the SOAS directors office has been occupied to demand the release of the 9 cleaners arrested on Friday.
Updates Friday eve: Following a call for solidarity, more than 100 people assembled at the steps of SOAS in the afternoon in an open assembly to discuss a response to the morning's raid, whilst a group of people made their way to Communications House to try and make contact with those detained. There are also reports that one detainee is set to be deported tonight, and the rest on Monday.
Call Out | Free SOAS Cleaners blog | Living Wage Campaign | Justice for Cleaners Campaign
At Mayday 2007 - photo by Guy
SOAS cleaners have been fighting a successful campaign for living wages. Today a rally had been called in support of the trade union activist Joseph Stalin Bermudez who had been sacked in March 2009.
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Against subcontracting!
Shouldn't the SOAS raid be the beggining of a campaing against subcontracting?
What happened at SOAS is sickening - it's a golden opportunity for a campaign against subcontracting in universities & everywhere, though too: the example of solidarity to cleaner Konstantina Kuneva in Greece.
The news coming in are sickening: Immigration police lock in a room(!) and round up, Gestapo-style, 9 migrant workers at the School of Oriental and African Stydies. Worse even, their employing company, the dubious ISS, where directly complicent to this sick operation.
When migrant cleaner and radical syndicalist Konstantina Kuneva was attacked with acid in Greece, a strong grassroots solidarity movement did instantly rise to the challenge and through solidarity to her, developed the demand for an immediate end to subcontracting. The administration of the Aristotle University, in Thessaloniki, was occupied for weeks with the demand that subcontracting ends. The admininstration has now promised that they will seek an end to subcontracting.
Let's rise to the challenge. Solidarity to the cleaners who were rounded up (and all the rest, in constant fear of being so) means stopping the deportations, but it also means to DEMAND AN END TO SUBCONTRACTING BY ALL MEANS POSSIBLE