Abeer Awooda has been released from Yarl's Wood and is back in the community where she belongs. Campaigning will continue until the Home Secretary faces up to the fact, that Abeer needs refugee protection. Which will allow her to spend her remaining life in peace and security in the UK.
Removal of Abeer Awooda - Stopped by European Court of Human Rights
Waging Peace are very pleased to tell you that after a heroic effort by her legal representatives, the European Court of Human Rights have granted the Rule 39 submission for a stay on Abeer's removal - ordering that the UK Border Agency Do Not Remove Abeer to Sudan, just 2 hours before she was due to be returned.
Thanks to those who wrote to their MPs and took other action!
Abeer has requested that people continue to make public noise about her case and pressure the Home Office, not least to highlight the issues affecting women in her position still in Sudan.
With best wishes,
Sophie and the Waging Peace team
Email: sophie.mccann@wagingpeace.info
Second attempt to remove Abeer Awooda
As you all know Abeer, resisted removal last Monday, UKBA will attempt another forced removal tomorrow Thursday 17th February @ 15.40 hrs on BMI flight BD997 departing London Heathrow bound for Khartoum.
We have the contact details for BMI and would ask recipients of this message to make this their first priority. Airlines are vulnerable to public opinion, they have backed off before in the face of public hostility, get that done and if you are minded, get on to May and Clegg.
Background information for Abeer Awooda - further down page
1) Email/Fax/Phone Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, Chief Executive Officer BMI. Request that as CEO he does not allow BMI to facilitate UKBA's immigration enforcement policies. UKBA themselves are clear it is up to the airline who they carry, and that the captain of the flight is the ultimate authority on who can board.
Download model letter AbeerAwoodaBMI.doc is attached. You can copy, amend or write your own version - if you do please remember to include the following: Abeer Awooda an unwilling passenger being removed against her will on Thursday 17th February @ 15.40 hrs on BMI flight BD997 departing London Heathrow bound for Khartoum.
Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, Chief Executive Officer BMI
BMI Ð British Midland International
Donington Hall
Castle Donington
Derby
East Midlands
DE74 2SB
Pho: 01332 854 321 Option 6
Fax: 01332 854 875
wolfgang.prock-schauer@flybmi.com
BMI online Concern page - go here . . . .
2) Email/Fax Theresa May, Home Secretary
Ask her exercise her discretionary powers to stop the forced removal of Abeer Awooda. Download model letter AbeerAwoodaTM.doc. You can copy, amend or write your own version - if you do please remember to include the following: Abeer Awooda, Home Office Reference: A1435223, is currently in detention @ Yarl's Wood IRC and due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Thursday 17th February @ 15:40 hrs.
Rt. Hon Theresa May, MP
Secretary of State for the Home Office,
2 Marsham St
London SW1 4DF
Fax: 020 7035 4745
Emails:
mayt@parliament.uk
Emails: Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
UKBApublicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk
"CIT - Treat Official" <CITTO@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk>
3) Email/Fax Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister: Ask him to intervene with the Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the forced removal of Abeer Awooda. Download model letter AbeerAwoodaNickCleg.doc. You can copy, amend or write your own version - if you do please remember to include the following: Abeer Awooda, Home Office Reference: A1435223, is currently in detention @ Yarl's Wood IRC and due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Thursday 17th February @ 15:40 hrs.
Nick Clegg - Deputy Prime Minister's Office
Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AS
Correspondence Section:
Tel: 020 7276 0527
Fax: 020 7276 0514
pscorrespondence@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
Background: Tuesday 15th February 2011
Abeer Awooda, Still Here Refused to leave Yarl's Wood
Yesterday Abeer Awooda, in a magnificent act of resistance, refused to leave her room at Yarl's Wood IRC and accompany UKBA escorts to the airport, for her flight at 15:00.
A judicial review and a separate injunction were lodged at the court in Bradford early yesterday morning. The judge rejected both the judicial review and the injunction.
UKBA told her today, that her removal has been rescheduled for Thursday 17 February at 15.40 hrs.
Nominated flight carrier is British Airways.
We are working with another lawyer to try and see if there are any other legal avenues to try and cancel her deportation and submit a fresh claim.
Failing a new legal avenue, may have to ask you all to tomorrow to start lobbying again, I will keep you all updated.
Thanks to everyone who Emailed/faxed/rang on Abeer's behalf.
Sophie McCann on behalf of Abeer and Waging Peace
sophie.mccann@wagingpeace.info
Fighting in south Sudan last week left some 200 people dead, officials say - double the previous estimate.
Sudan: Mass Arrests of Journalists, Fears for their Safety
The Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International protests the wave of arrests of journalists in Sudan during recent street protests calling for democratic change in Sudan. In particular it is concerned by the incommunicado detention of at least 12 journalists, 11 of whom were arrested between January and February 2011. The WiPC considers these detentions to be in violation of the journalists' right to freedom of expression, and calls on the Sudanese authorities to disclose their whereabouts and bring about their immediate and unconditional release.
Read more here . . . .
Background: Monday 14th February 2011
Ms Awooda is a 26 year old journalist writing for a Sudanese newspaper called Al Ayaam, who has been heavily involved in the student activist movement against the regime in Sudan. She has also been seen by the NISS wearing trousers in Sudan , which is illegal under Sudanese law. Between 2008 and 2010 she has been imprisoned and tortured in Khartoum numerous times as a result of her activism.
Ms Awooda arrived in the UK six months ago, her asylum claim was rejected, she appealed the decision. Yet last Wednesday she was shocked to be taken into custody at Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire, where she was told that a flight taking her back to Sudan had been booked for 15;00 hrs today. She has appealed and has since been declared a high suicide risk by a psychiatrist.
This imminent deportation is of great concern as Ms Awooda is an outspoken opponent of the Sudanese government and a victim of torture at the hands of the Sudanese regime and will almost certainly be imprisoned, tortured and possibly killed if returned to Khartoum.
Several hundred people have been killed in Sudan since the start of the year. The Khartoum regime is on high alert right now because of events in Egypt and Tunisia. It has already opened fire on protesters and arrested hundreds (many were journalists) in its attempts to stem dissent in recent weeks.
Abeer Awooda is a member of the Berti ethnic group, which is recognised to be a tribe from Darfur that has been targeted by the Sudanese government and therefore will be at great risk if sent back to Sudan.
Sudan a failed state, 3rd worst country in the world
A state having little or no governance, endemic corruption, profiteering by ruling elites, very poor Human Rights, the government cannot/will not protect the population from others or itself, massive internal conflict, forced internal/external displacement, institutionalised political exclusion of significant numbers of the population, progressive deterioration of welfare infrastructure (hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses) not adequate to meet health, needs, progressive economic decline of the country as a whole as measured by per capita income, debt, severe child mortality rates, poverty levels.
Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is the only sitting head of state wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity
Sudan ranked as one of the worlds most corrupt states by Transparency international.
Sudan, Africa's biggest country and a former UK Colony, has faced constant conflict since independence from Britain in 1956.
Speaking to The Independent from her room in Yarl's Wood yesterday, a tearful Miss Awooda said she feared being killed by the state police, who in 2009 murdered failed asylum seeker Adam Osman Mohammed. He was gunned down in front of his wife and children days after returning to Darfur following his deportation from the UK.
Waging Peace an international Human Rights group are supporting a campaign to keep Abeer in the UK.
Please let Waging Peace know of any Emails/faxes/phone calls:
Waging Peace
105a Westbourne Grove
London
W2 4UW
Email: sophie.mccann@wagingpeace.info
Website: www.wagingpeace.info
Torture victim fights decision to deport her back to Sudan
By Rob Hastings, Monday, 14 February 2011 |