(larger photograph)
There is a comprehensive campaigning guide with model letters and campaign leaflets
on the NCADC website
Necfar is working in collaboration with Amnesty and the NUJ and recently organised a very successful networking meeting - and media training workshops.
An 'asylum-media-myth-buster' e-group has been established which now has over 60 members.
The aim of the project is to train asylum seekers, refugees and activists so that we can use the local media to challenge some of the myths around asylum seekers. We intend to use the letters pages and phone-ins and to develop a constructive dialogue with journalists in order to get positive stories across.
There has been some very positive coverage of asylum issues in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle recently (in contrast to previous myth-perpetuating pieces) which appears to have been a consequence of lobbying by members of the group.
A public petition asking the Home Secretary to allow the family to remain in Britain was presented in the House of Commons on 14th July 2003 by Nick Brown MP, who said
"I wish to present a petition on behalf of the friends and supporters of the Bamburac family. It asks the House to ask the Home Secretary to allow the family to stay in Britain, and not to deport them to Croatia. Mr. Bamburac is of Serbian ancestry.
The petition has attracted 1,411 signatures in just over a week. Most of the petitioners are my constituents—friends and neighbours of the Bamburac family. That is clear evidence that the family have settled into the life of our community in Newcastle. They have lived in Newcastle for the past five years; their daughter Sabrina is now 10, and has learnt English with an endearing Geordie accent, made friends, and settled into school. It is Sabrina who makes this case so special. She is an unusually gifted tennis player, with a talent acknowledged in public, nationally, by the Lawn Tennis Association. Her human rights, enabling her to develop that talent in the country that she has made her home, would be cruelly infringed if the family were deported."
Hansard Report
The deportation threat to the family was also covered by the BBC and by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle
BBC News item 11th July
Evening Chronicle article 11th July
About the Garza Family "Please don't forget me and my family"
Background Information (From Positive Action on Housing - Scotland)
Article about the Garza family by Terri Judd in The Independent 16 November 2002
"Tormented by skinheads" - deported family faces bleak future.
Slovakian Asylum-seekers want a safe future for their children away from the anti-Gypsy hatred of their homeland
Necfar members have done some work in schools, raising awareness of the issues affecting asylum seeker children and countering ignorance and prejudice
(See Links and Resources page for Save the Children Fund material)
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