Group to protest conditions faced by asylum seekers

A protest against the “dreadful conditions” faced by asylum seekers is to take place on Wednesday.

Stand Up To Racism will take part in a protest in Glasgow against the conditions asylum seekers have been living in since lockdown began.

On Friday, six people were stabbed by an asylum seeker at the Park Inn hotel, which the group has said was “an avoidable tragedy”.

In a statement, the anti-racism group wrote: “Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, asylum seekers, asylum rights activists, charities and others in civic Scotland have been warning about the dreadful conditions faced by asylum seekers who were forced to move, often at no more than half-an-hour’s notice, from their settled homes and into inadequate hotel accommodation.

“The asylum seekers had their paltry daily allowance of £5.39 removed.

“Unable to buy daily essentials or top-up mobile phones, they were isolated and often fed inadequate food.

“Many talked of feeling imprisoned in their hotel rooms.”

The group is calling for the allowance to be reinstated, as well as a move back into longer-term housing.

It added that the Home Office and Mears Group, the company paid to house refugees, had “serious questions to answer”.

The statement continued: “Many asylum seekers are living with trauma or long-term mental health problems associated with their harrowing life experiences.

“Transferring them to isolated hotel rooms beside strangers, without suitable vulnerability checks by either Mears or the Home Office was always a terrible idea.

“There has been an overwhelming response to the call by charity Positive Action in Housing and others for donations of clothing and other items for the asylum seekers who have had to be removed from the Park Inn Hotel.

“Offered inadequate care by Mears Group and the Home Office, once again, they have been assisted by the good people of Glasgow.”

The protest will take place outside the Home Office on Brand Street between 6pm and 7pm.