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Birmingham Women 'rescued' by police from massage parlour to be deported

Six of the 10 women 'rescued' by Birmingham police from Cuddles massage parlour last Friday, where they had been held aginst their will and forced into prostitution, are now being held in Yarl's Wood detention centre facing imminent deportation. Please make your opposition to this hypocracy and continued human rights abuse known.

Please send an email to protest against the deportation of the Birmingham women "rescued" from a massage parlour in Birmingham to Harriet Harman Solicitor General . Related messages to Tony McNulty Minister of State for Immigration,
Citizenship and Nationality or fax 020 7219 2417 and to Charles Clarke MP, Home Secretary

charles.clarke@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.

(possible model letter below from Prof. Julia O'Connell Davidson University of Nottingham)

Please circulate this to your networks.

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Dear Ms Harman,
I write to express my concern about the planned removal of women picked up by police during a raid on the Cuddles massage parlour, Birmingham,last Friday 30th September. Press coverage of the raid made much of the fact that the police went into the property to execute a warrant in human trafficking, and that they had 'rescued' and 'freed' nineteen women from ten countries who had been held at the premises against their will behind locked doors and an electric fence. It is therefore extremely disturbing to learn that six of these women were almost immediately transferred to Yarlswood Detention Centre, where they are
now once again behind locked doors and an electric fence, and face removal tomorrow. It seems highly improbable that in the space of four days, police and immigration officers have been able to gather sufficient evidence to accurately determine whether or not these women are 'victims of trafficking', and it is clearly impossible for the women to have accessed their internationally recognised rights to recovery, or legal redress and compensation in such a short period of time.

You recently stated that 'Human trafficking is nothing less than modern day slavery' and 'Our starting point must be that those who are trafficked are victims. It is not us who need protecting from them, but they who need protecting from the traffickers.' Recognising your sincere opposition to the exploitation and abuse of victims of trafficking, I would urge you to intervene immediately on behalf of these women and other potential victims to ensure that they have time to access the specialist legal advice and other support services that they undoubtedly require.

I look forward to receiving your assurance that these women will not be removed and will have their fundamental human rights protected here in
the UK.

Yours truly

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

and Ms Harman's e-mail address is....?

04.10.2005 22:09

petitioner

Harman's' email

04.10.2005 23:46

These women were kidnapped, raped and then raped again when they were forced to have sex against their will by different men, beaten and imprisoned. The police rescued them, but brothels like this in the UK, show that Tony Blair and Charles Clarke let sexual abuse continue. These women deserve counseling and protection. Under the UN Convention it is illegal to send people back to countries where people like these women can be harmed.

It was appalling when the brothel owners were allowed out on bail. It shows how sick the British legal system is.

Contact Harriet Harman
Email

harmanh@parliament.uk
Telephone 0207 219 4218
Fax: 0207 219 4877

http://www.harrietharman.labour.co.uk/ViewPage.cfm?Page=2108

Call the Labour Party as well to protest at how weak the laws and penalties don't protect rape victims. Stronger punishment as a deterrent is needed to protect children, women and men against sick sex offenders.
By email:

info@new.labour.org.uk
By telephone: 08705 900 200.

Labour Party regional office:
16 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP
Tel: 020 7802 1170
Fax: 020 7802 1266
Email:

london@new.labour.org.uk
Website: www.london.labour.co.uk

www.amnesty.org.uk
An Amnesty spokeswoman said there was no protection in law for victims of trafficking who were often classed as illegal immigrants and deported. Amnesty is also urging the government to sign up to the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which gives victims the right to temporary residence permits and other assistance.

Yarl's Wood detention centre is New Labour's Auschwitz where people are often detained without legal representation and deported to countries where they face torture and death. Another example of human rights abuses under New Labour.

Campaign to stop abuse

hmmm

05.10.2005 00:09

Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
However, this is ONE story that is sadly all too common, even in regimes well removed from Blair's. If you are an 'illegal' and you are caught up in a disreputable line of work, you are going to be heading home 'pronto'.

Sex-slaves??? Excuse me if I need a LOT of proof before I believe that. Unhappy, exploited workers- now THAT I will believe, but does this give them any rights to stay?

If they had been kidnapped (yeah, right) they would obviously want to return home immediately. If they took the risk of entering Britain with the assistance of criminals, in order to serve those criminals, well then they are, in all actuality, criminals themselves. It is SEXIST to say that we should forget this, just because they are women.

To be honest, I don't begrudge them their desire to try it on. If they then manage to build a life for themselves here for any significant period of time, I am all for allowing 'illegals' to stay. However, if people are caught illegally entering the country, with NO good reason, they are going to be detained, and they are going to be sent back. EVERY nation with a desire for border controls will do this.

Maybe one day, this Earth won't have countries, and won't have borders. However, even then, if too many people wish to live in any one city, some will always be disappointed.

I hope people will stay away from the exotic 'sob-stories', and stay focused on people with genuine need, when it comes to issues of asylum, and illegal immigration. There is good reason why Blair had his Mass Media give this DISTRACTION story such widespread publicity.

twilight

incredible

05.10.2005 09:10

I never thought I would agree with twatlight, but this time I have to, it is far too easy for those women to say they were kidnapped,raped and forced into protution as it means a one way ticket to indefinite leave to remain in Britain.
Sometimes it amazes me how "kidnapped" people is allowed to go shopping to the supermarket and they never escape.

rex

erm

05.10.2005 10:49

> Yarl's Wood detention centre is New Labour's Auschwitz

Just because something is wrong and bad, doesn't mean you have to compare it to something else to make that point - kinda misses the point.
And, to compare it to Auschwitz obscures what happened/happens in both places, both of which are/were wrong, but different. It's offensive to victims of Mengele's experiments etc etc.

Stronger punishment for abusers

05.10.2005 15:18

Rex and twilight (twatlight) I assume from your semi sympathic response to these women that you are men who have some sympathy but not empathy with these women. I'd like to say to men who trivialise sexual abuse and exploitation, think about yourselves being kept captive through physical and psychological fear. Then having men you have no attraction to doing whatever they want against your will to your body, and without wanting to be graphic invading your orifices. If you were them you'd feel fear, pain and revulsion, abuse is about humiliation by the abuser. Any normal human being with a sense of self worth is traumatised by this.

Some of the women the police rescued were locked in. They weren't all able to go to the supermarket. The police often look the other way where brothels exist and that’s the problem. The police must have raided this one on a tip off. Why wasn't the brothel raided sooner?

Because the most powerful jobs in Parliament are held by male politicians, and their laws show they don’t care about protecting women. It’s because they're not likely to be threatened with rape. Given the figures on abuse, some MPs could be pedophiles and rapists. Is it because some masons cover up other masons crimes? Lenient laws with trivial punishments, if the perpetrators are punished at all, are the reason abuse is so common.

Men stop trivialising the trauma these women go through.

Stop abuse

Ignorance and inhumanity

05.10.2005 17:47

Twilight

You display your ignorance and inhumanity in equal proportions in the above comment.

Ignorance, in that you obviously know very little about the trafficking system and how it works.
Women from eastern europe are tricked by men, usually from their countries of origin, and often from their home town, with offers of work in the West who sell them to international criminal networks. They have their papers stolen and are usually beaten and frequently raped. They are told that if they try to escape their family will face retribution and violence. Sadly for many women. even if they do escape and make it home, many families will reject their daughter once they learn of her 'shame'.

To dimiss their plight as 'exotic sob stories' is callous in extreme, unless, of course, you know nothing about the issue you're commenting on.

You say your for letting people without papers, 'illegals' as you call them, stay - but not people who come in for 'NO GOOD' reason - they should be detained and sent back according to you -
so tell me, do tourist have good reasons? did the europeans when they landed in their tens of thousands in the 'new world' have good reasons?- and who are you to decide what constitutes a good reason - don't you think that given the risks involved in trying to get to Britain for people without papers, that they probably have very good reasons?

Just because some nations, who as you note 'desire border controls', treat people inhumanly doesn't make it alright. People who don't share the accident of your birth or circumstances that gives you the privilege to reside without question in the UK, are not any lesser human being

So please take think to think, to do some investigation and learn something, before you start pontificating on this subject , as you do on so many subjects on this newswire.

no one is illegal

prostitution

23.10.2005 10:44

I have e-mailed my MP Michael Wills expressing alarm at the prospect of these poor women being deported.
I have also said its time the sex industry was legalised and controlled...

david glaholm
mail e-mail: david.glaholm@ntlworld.com

Feminist sexism

28.11.2005 03:59

Yes, the prostitution industry should be legalised and controlled. However:

"Because the most powerful jobs in Parliament are held by male politicians"

You may recall we had a woman Prime Minister for 11 years. Idiot.

"Women from eastern europe are tricked by men"

Sometimes the case but not always. A recent Channel 4 documentary showed a Russian woman and a Ukrainian woman who actively tricked women from Eastern Europe into sex slavery in Turkey.

The young Russian woman stated that she would wanted to kill one of the prostitutes in order to get rid of her as the girl was too difficult to manage. The Ukrainian woman stated that it would be very embarrassing for her if her criminality came to light as her daughter was training to be a lawyer!

Think about where the money to train your feminist solicitors came from, the next time you screech about the Patriarchy you feminist moron.

Not a feminist

UK Indymedia