Hi Shiar,
I think you made a good point. we have removed the listing from the main page.
cheers, Leutha
Leutha,
I removed the Voice Forum's details from the groups' list because it is already listed in the Open Platforms bit. As a forum, I think it fits there better. It was only to avoid repetion, regardless of all this conflicts you're talking about. And please note that you've also put it on the Main Page under Resources. Too much publicising has a negative impact sometimes!
So, if you see this, and you're convinced, please remove it from either list, depending on how you define yourselves.
Shiar
"No Borders London" is causing us a number of problems.
On April 24th an e-mail was circulated saying:
"The hunger strike at Colnbrook Detention centre, near Heathrow, has now ended, apart from a few people . . ." i.e it had not ended.
This confusion was then consolidated with a posting to Indymedia which simply said
"The hunger strike at Colnbrook Detention centre, near Heathrow, has now ended."
(See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/04/338896.html) posted by london noborders - e-mail: noborderslondon@riseup.net 26th April 2006
In fact detainees we have been in contact have continued on Hunger Strike throughout.
It remains unclear why "No Borders London" should choose to undermine the position of people on hunger strike and promote the view that the strike had ended (unless this struggle simply got in the way of their mobilisation for the obnoxious and eurocentric "Euromayday" which they used the name to promote.
On account of our political differences with some of the peopel involved in No Borders London, we have not attended meetings for a while - as we thought we would get on with other work - supporting specific asylum seekers with their cases and campaigning around the situation in Malta. However we have found that nevertheless their behaviour has caused us problems.
At first sight it seemed that the demonstration outside Harmondsworth and Colnbrook might have had a good impact. However the organisers seem to have seen the demo as the end of the process rather than a beginning. When it sparked off a hunger strike, the necessary support and strategy were not absent, and after a couple of weeks, they seemed to have moved their priorities.
Of course the detainees do not enjoy such luxuries and struggle is a necessity for them.
Even prior to this, we had problems with eurocentrism, institutional racism of some of the key people involved in setting up No Borders London (Not the people from NOII, with whom we have our differences and indeed have posted a critique of their manifesto on the No Borders Forum). In fact these differences became particular intense when we raised concern about fascist infiltration of Peoples Global Action - an organisation which they are involved in. Their refusal to take our concerns seriously were shown up when the person staffing their Ukrainian info-point, Leonid Savin, was shown to be a leader of the Eurasian Union of Youth in Ukraine. (This is a Duginist group who have meetings with the BNP in Britain and attend fascist rallies in Russia.)
Despite their authoritarian and undemocratic way of dealing with the problem (a show trial) we tried to get a mediated resolution of the conflict. They refused and indeed one of their clique attacked one of us with an iron bar.
We are not sure of the best way of dealing with this right now - in fact we are concentrating on how to make visits to detainees in Colnbrook with doctors, solicitors and journalists as this is far more urgent.
However in the interim we feel that listing these people as the only No Border contact in London is detrimental to the development of No Borders.
Leutha 01:24, 11 May 2006 (CEST)