In April 2010, CWT won a government contract to book seats on scheduled and chartered flights for immigration detainees due for deportation. The global booking agency, which specialises in business travel management, has been used by the UKBA to do what campaigners described as a “dirty business” since 2004. In the financial year 2004-5, the contract was worth almost £23million.

An online campaign against the company, called by the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, had already started in the morning, so all office doors were locked and protesters were met with rude and abusive attitudes by some CWT employees.

Having presented the company with the award, protesters went on to leaflet people working in the big office block, including CWT’s employees, during their lunch break. Some of them were shocked to discover that their company does not only deal with smiley business clients. After about two hours, police arrived but protesters had run out of leaflets and were about to leave anyway.

While priding itself on its ‘corporate social responsibility’, with an alleged focus on environmental issues, Carlson Wagonlit is making millions out of flying people to their possible death and torture.

The vast majority of forcible deportations are to countries devastated by wars, armed conflicts, repressive regimes and poverty. Many deportees have been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Many have had to change their identities or move again to avoid persecution. People’s lives are torn apart as they are split from their families and communities here and their right to freedom of movement is denied.

In light of its outstanding achievement in facilitating these crimes, Carlson Wagonlit does deserve to be added to the top of a growing list of deportation profiteers.”

On the 8th of May, in Calais, a protest was held near an official ceremony, celebrating the triumph over fascism in World War II. Activists wore white overalls with images of arrests of Afghan migrants and of some of the repeated raids on, and thefts at, “Africa House”, all perpetrated by French authorities.
Since the embarrassment of the ugly truth was too unbearable, the two activists wearing the display were promptly handcuffed and whisked away by the police. They also arrested the two activists documenting the events. All were released shortly after, as soon as the ceremony finished.
In the afternoon, NoBorders activists and a substancial number of migrants participated in a protest called by C’SUR collective in order to expose the terrible conditions and the harassment that the migrants have to face every day.
Following the demo, participants headed towards the site of daily food distribution. Three police vehicles soon arrived and officers poured out to try and arrest the migrants. They succeded in catching five of them, one of whom was on crutches and therefore unable to escape.
For more info
www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

On Thursday 15th at 2pm the BNP held a protest in
front of Lunar house – at a time when many families were waiting to
speak with staff in the Home office.

Monday 12th of April, activists of London NoBorders signed up for MP Meg Hillier’s twice monthly surgery at Hackney Town Hall. Meg Hillier is Member of Parliament for Hackney South and Shoreditch and Home Office Minister for Identity. With regard to the last 6 weeks hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood detention center, in February Hillier had written toall the MPs denying that the women were on hunger strike..

more infos
http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/4604

and
http://london.noborders.org.uk/

8/4/2010

At Africa house, in Calais (France), another day starts with a violent raid. The CRS were pretty violent to NoBorders activists that were trying to block them at least for enough time to let the migrants run away. CRS were violent also to the migrants inside, for example grabbing one man by his neck, throwing him to the floor and kicking and stamping on him five or six times just for asking if he could take his clothes before he was arrested. Usually CRS were cautious enough to avoid being too violent where activists and locals watching from the windows could see them. However, in the video one of the CRS policeman seems to explain to his colleagues how he was kicking someone many times inside the squatted house… they laugh and seem to have fun!

Calais is a city in France, where lots of migrants “sans papiers” stay for many months, waiting for the good chance to try and gain entry to England. Most of them come from conflict or unsafe areas, many are under 18 years old and have their families in the UK. for more infos

http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/

old street… recipe to build an iconic building:
take an iconic company of iconic architects
add lots of iconic builders
place tons of iconic steel
with millions of iconic slabs of glass
mix all with care…
when the mixture is ready rent to iconic corporation that will fill all the building with iconic offices (iconic computers, iconic employees, iconic budges, iconic business)
add heavily iconic security
sprinkle all with iconic cctv
the icon is better served together with plenty of iconic police wandering around enforcing anti-terror law