Good news in the case of Veneera Aliyeva and her two children, Anna and Murat.
According to Keith Ross, of Asylum Justice, the family has returned to Swansea after being released from Yarl’s Wood detention centre.
“The family were released by the Home Office this afternoon ‘pending the outcome of the children’s judicial application’,” Keith explained.
The children, who are just 13 and 11, were supported by Maria Battle, Deputy Children’s Commissioner for Wales, who this week told me their detention at Yarls Wood was in breach of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child.
The family remains under the threat of forcible removal to Azerbaijan. Lawyers are currently seeking a judicial review into the case.
If that fails Veneera and the children could find themselves marked down for seats on another removal flight.
::I’ve been looking at the way airlines are used by the Government to forcibly return people to countries they do not want to go for Big Issue Cymru.
I believe it will be in the issue which comes out on December 27 – something to digest along with turkey stew, turkey sandwiches, etc.
Asylum Justice
This week’s Big Issue Cymru highlights the case of young mum Veneera Aliyeva who the government is trying to deport to Azerbaijan.
She is currently in Yarl’s Wood removal centre with her two children.
But campaigners in Swansea, where she has lived for more than a year, are trying to get her returned to South Wales.
According to Asylum Justice, 40-year-old Veneera (sometimes Venera) has been persecuted on two counts in Azerbaijan: because she is a Baptist and an Armenian.
During several years of persecution, she went through a series of horrific experiences, including being raped twice.
Asylum Justice, supported by Bethan Jenkins AM, is also trying to help another resident of Swansea. 
Zola Gidi has lived in the city for 16 years. She is described as “a wonderful neighbour”, “a loyal friend”, “an extremely hard worker” and “generally a good member of the community”.
All the same, she now faces forcible removal to South Africa.
The Debate
Should Green Arrow and his 82-year-old mother, a former Labour activist, vote BNP in the upcoming National Assembly elections?
I am trying to persuade them otherwise… http://whatiswales.blogspot.com/2007/04/race-to-may-poll.html
Feel free to contribute.
Race to the May Poll
The British National Party will launch its manifesto for the National Assembly elections tomorrow.
It is fielding 20 candidates on May 3 – its largest campaign so far in Wales.
Its teaser ahead of the launch is for a pledge to “tear down the Severn Bridge toll-gates, and in their place erect a monumental bronze statue of Rebecca to symbolise the right to freedom of movement in Wales”.
The action would, it says, act “as a reminder to all who pass, of the heritage of the Welsh people”.
The party’s continual references to heritage and tradition provide clues of its underlying obsession – race. The campaign might make it appear that the party has moved into the mainstream, but the unpleasantness remains.
However, the BNP seems confident that it will soon have a representative in Wales – not at the assembly, but perhaps following next year’s council elections.
Take a look at the new edition of The Big Issue Cymru, out from Monday, to see a breakdown of the history of the BNP in Wales – and an analysis of its future.
You won’t have a name when you ride the big aeroplane
“Send ‘em home!” one drinker shouted, turning to his mates as if he’d cracked the greatest joke in the world.
It wasn’t the greatest. The greatest involves necrophilia and I’m not recording it here.
The man had come to the door of a pub in the centre of Cardiff to see what the fuss was about. There was a bit of shouting and chanting, and a group of around 250 people or so turning into High Street.
At the head of the march was a banner with the words ‘Defend The Right To Asylum’ in English and Welsh.
Last week the UK government came a cropper with its policy of sending people back to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
But it is still returning people to other troublespots. Check the figures – they are easy to find on the net. In the first half of this year 515 asylum seekers were ‘removed’ to Afghanistan and 395 to Iraq.
The march was about stopping these deportations and repealing Section 9 of the 2004 Immigration Act, which removes the right to benefits for asylum seekers waiting to appeal.
People fighting for their right to asylum are being made destitute and having their children taken from them.
It’s a double whammy: make them seem like ‘scroungers’ while they are here so stop their benefits at the earliest opportunity (and starve them out of the country).
Then, to make it seem like foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq is working, return them to their ‘newly liberated’, ‘safe’ homelands.
The tribunal into the Zimbabwe deportations was shocked to find the Home Office could provide no evidence about the safety of the deportees.
They’d been sent home, alright. But to what?
Greg Lewis 