Saturday morning saw a windswept protest at Glasgow's Brand Street Immigration and Nationality Directorate offices against the detention and threatened removal of Zahra Byansi. Despite the early hour and the horrific weather, 70 people (according to the BBC) turned out - I didn't count but it seems a fair estimate.

BBC coverage is available in text and video, I refrain from putting my 45 min video online both due to filesize and the atrocious quality (never used a camcorder before) although I may look into video editing software and start a new hobby. I'm sure there'll be other, less mainstream, coverage as well. (at Positive Action in Housing: here and here.

Zahra was moved to Yarls Wood detention centre, which is in England, i.e. further away from her home, but also closer to the airport from which she and her two children is to be removed to Uganda in just two days. This also means that the lifeline of the mobile phone link to her has been cut. Some campaigners suggested to go to Yarls Wood for protests, and a petition has collected close to 400 signatures in just one week. Hope dies last and I try not to give in to a realistic assessment of Zahra's situation. It doesn't help that the Home Office is in the news for quite a different story today, and are keen to be seen as hardliners to make up for the mess created at the other end of their offices.

All the more striking the injustice that convicted murderers get away without any monitoring, while innocent victims of war and repression, whose only "fault" is not to have been believed by the asylum judges, are locked up behind prison walls alongside their children. Rahim, 5 year old son of Zahra, asked for a message to be passed on to his schoolmates, that he was on a holiday, while his mom asked not to be given her belongings from her flat which she had to leave behind, because she will need to travel light, having to travel with two young children on her own.

She is a strong woman, but how can one cope with being locked up with your kids without having committed a crime, being taken from education and a home, having to leave everything behind yet again, to be sent back to an unstable government where the family will not enjoy any form of protection at all. In my mind her words echo when she tearfully spoke about her efforts to create a cosy, comfortable, nice and welcoming home, only to be taken to detention with her children in a dawn raid last time around, to be treated like a criminal when all she tried was to create a sense of normality and belonging for her children and herself.