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UK urged to halt deportation flights

Amina Taylor
Press TV, London

Campaigners want the British government to stop a planned deportation charter flight to the Caribbean island of Jamaica due to depart next week. With dozens scheduled to be forcibly removed, supporters say many of the numbers came to the country as children and are being used as examples to push through new anti-immigrant legislation.

‘We want human rights…’ 

A tinny voice from inside a British immigration removal center, hoping that he and dozens of others like him, will not occupy the seat the Home Office has reserved on a charter flight to Jamaica come November 10th. Campaigners outside the Jamaican High Commission in the British capital are urging the government to halt not just this particular flight but rethink their entire deportation and immigration strategy.

The Home office says all those removed would have had their cases fully reviewed. This might explain why on the last deportation flight to Jamaica in August there were just seven onboard after 43 given last minute reprieve. Campaigners warn there are individuals slated for deportation who have not committed any crimes, those with minor offences and those who were victims of trafficking. The punishment they argue, does not fit the crime.

Campaigner are urging Jamaica - a former British colony- to reject cooperation in this matter by refusing to accept the deportees. So far, it’s a move Kingston has been unwilling to make.

After the Windrush scandal that saw families ripped apart by forced separation, it seems the UK government is not afraid, campaigners say, to play politics with the lives of minority communities.


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