Monday, March 8, 2010

The tragic deaths of three Glasgow Asylum seekers is a sympton of the failure of political will to have a proper immigration policy













Dear All

Yesterday in Glasgow, two men and a woman died after plunging from the 15th floor of a tower block in an apparent triple suicide pact.

The three adults were found by a concierge lying at the base of the Red Road flats in the Springburn area of the city.

This is a terrible tragedy and unheard of in the City of Glasgow.

The three people who are thought to be asylum seekers tied themselves together and jumped.

A local woman, Elaine Sandford said;

"It is suicide central here. We are always waiting for the next one to jump. The problem is the area is so bad and there is such a mix of people that you can’t really build up a sense of community”.

Elaine Sandford highlights the problem that was created by Glasgow City Council flooding the area with asylum seekers in a deal struck between the Council and the Home Office.

As usual the Labour controlled Council’s motive was firmly fixed on London Labour policy and money, not on community of Springburn.

They turned part of Springburn in a holding area for people facing deportation and then left them without the necessary help and support.

The flats are owned and run by the Labour controlled Glasgow Housing Association who sublet to the YMCA for asylum seekers.

The Red Road tower blocks have housed a diverse mixture of asylum seekers and immigrants from Kosovo, Africa, Asia, the former Soviet Union, Iran and Iraq.

It is left to groups like Positive Action in Housing to step into the void that the Labour Government and Council created.

Robina Qureshi of the charity said talk of suicide was common among the charity’s service users who live in despair under the constant threat of deportation from the UK Border Agency.

She added;

“There is a great deal of mental strain and it is normal currency for many of our service users or volunteers to talk about ending it."

Many people are scared to talk about immigration and asylum policy for fear about being branded racist but there really needs to be a cross party consensus debate to sort out the mess that has been left to fester because of the Labour Party policy.

That debate also needs to be EU wide to encompass the political reality of exodus and movement within the European Union.

The deaths of the three asylum seekers are symptomatic of a wider problem that must be tackled.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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