Justice for Nabil - Stop the Borders Bill!

Nabil is a cross channel refugee from Sudan, he is a survivor of torture in his home country and survived torture and enslavement in Libya before making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. He was threatened with deportation in Germany, for Nabil deportation meant continued persecution and death, so he made the only choice he could to save his life. Along with some other Sudanese refugees he made a terrifying journey across the channel in the dead of night so they could seek asylum in the UK. That night the waves were high, their boat was taking on water, they were soaked and scared, he describes how he thought they might die. After a whole night on the sea they were rescued and taken to Dover the following morning.

Nabil is now facing criminal charges of "facilitating unlawful immigration" with a sentence of up to 14years, because he did what any of us would do in his circumstances, he made a decision to fight for his life, to survive, to seek a better and safer future. Simply because he purchased a boat and steered it so they could all survive the night.

Following the Court of Appeal case of Iranian asylum seeker Fouad Kakaei the Crown Prosecution Service started dropping the charges of cross channel asylum seekers who steered the boats. The continued prosecution of Nabil is clearly a politically motivated stunt by a government whose pending Borders Bill seeks to undo the Kakaei decision and criminalise ALL asylum seekers who make the decision to cross the sea to save their lives.

Nabil faces a lengthy and difficult trial in Canterbury Crown Court over the next 12-24 months. We want to ensure there is never a day in Canterbury where that court does not feel the enormous support that Nabil has. That means regularly booking coaches so that his friends and supporters in London can be there with him. It means a speaking tour across the UK for Nabil and other cross channel refugees to speak to audiences about the importance of this campaign for justice and mobilising a fight against this government racist Nationality and Borders Bill.

This fundraiser is for Nabils fight, but Nabils fight is also a fight against the most racist and draconian piece of anti-immigrant legislation the UK has ever seen, the Nationality and Borders Bill. That fight is one that must be made on multiple fronts. We MUST get the charges dropped against Nabil, if the government succeed in this prosecution it will strengthen their campaign to criminalise ALL asylum seekers.

Winning a fight against the Borders Bill means building a movement resisting every manifestation of that bill that already exists. Movement for Justice's resistance to the #Jamaica50 charter flight was also a fight against the Borders Bill. The Borders Bill proposes to impose visa sanctions on any country who refuses to co-operate with their racist mass deportation charter flights. Priti Patel has been sickeningly using her "summer of charter flights" as a publicity stunt for their Borders Bill, gleefully tweeting after every flight with a plug for the bill. Movement for Justice worked with 30 of the detainees scheduled for that flight in an act of collective resistance that saw only 3 of those 30 on the flight and only 7 people on the flight out of the 90 the government wanted. Patels tweets after the Jamaica flight were not so gleeful.

This fundraiser will support all of that work, help us build the kind of movement we need to defeat this Bill by making every manifestation of it unworkable in practice, by building a mass campaign of non-cooperation and resistance to this governments racist hostile environment.

Some things you will help fund...

1) coaches to Canterbury Crown Court for Nabils trial (immediately we need to raise £600 for a coach on Tuesday 31 Aug for his first preliminary hearing)

2) Travel money so that Nabil and other cross channel refugees can speak at meetings, colleges and in communities across the country.

3) Charter flight resistance, phone top ups for detainees, travel money to visit detention centres, general campaign costs

4) Materials and equipment for the many demonstrations ahead of us if we are to defeat this bill!