Protesters up in arms over flight
PROTESTERS descended upon an immigration detention centre yesterday to join detainees in opposing the Government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda.
In the emotionally charged scenes at Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick airport in West Sussex, a crowd forcefully banged the building’s gates while chanting ‘No to Rwanda’.
The demonstrators were also seen carrying placards with messages including ‘It’s inhumane’ and ‘We stand with you’.
Dozens of activists shouted ‘we are with you’, ‘set them free’ and ‘deportations no more... Britain is a racist state’.
Many of the building’s occupants, separated from the crowd by two sets of gates, were outside in a sizable group and responded with arms waving in the air and loud chants too.
In unison with protesters, people inside appeared to chant: ‘No Rwanda.’
The building is housing some of the migrants who have been told they face deportation to Rwanda, including on Tuesday’s flight.
Christian Hogsberg, 42, a history lecturer at the University of Brighton, said he was at the protest to ‘show solidarity with refugees who are facing the danger of deportation to authoritarian regime Rwanda at the hands of a Tory Government that is playing the race card in the most shameful manner’.