Maryam Namazie

Maryam Namazie is a political activist, campaigner and blogger

New Year resolution

Maryam Namazie
Published in Hambastegi English
January 8, 2000

While we celebrate the New Year and make resolutions on changing our lives, many have died trying to do just that:

* Around 50 asylum seekers, including from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran and Afghanistan, died in a shipping accident in the Mediterranean Sea near southern Turkey on New Year’s Day.

* A Zimbabwean was killed while trying to sneak into the United States from Canada by clinging to the underside of a Greyhound bus.

* A young Bulgarian woman died of cold while crossing Mount Belles from Bulgaria, a passage used by many for entry into Greece.

* A two-year-old Afghan was killed when a lorry crowded with Afghan asylum seekers overturned in southeast Iran.

* Viliami Tanginoa, a 52 year old Tongan, died after jumping head-first from the top of a basketball ring at Maribyrnong detention center in Australia on the Friday before Christmas to escape deportation.

* A stowaway died after plunging from a plane at Gatwick airport in London hours after the body of another stowaway was found nearby. The man who died on Christmas Day fell from the undercarriage of a British Airways jet just after it had taken off.

* A 52-year-old Colombian woman who was denied entrance into Japan fell to her death from the fourth floor of a hotel while trying to escape Japanese immigration officials along with her three-year-old granddaughter, who was slightly injured in the fall.

* Three Iraqi Kurd asylum seekers drowned after being forced off a smuggler’s boat into frigid, choppy waters off Italy’s southeastern coast. One man’s body was washed ashore while another man and a woman, said to be two months pregnant, were reported missing and believed drowned.

* At least three asylum seekers were missing and feared drowned, off Australia’s remote northwestern coast.

* Two young Albanian asylum seekers travelling in the trunk of a car from Greece’s northern border were burnt alive after their vehicle crashed and burst into flames.

* A 30-year-old Cameroonian asylum seeker died as he was being expelled from Budapest airport.

* Slovenian police shot dead a man transporting Iranian asylum seekers….

While we remember them and countless other victims of vile regimes and Fortress Europe/West in this New Year, let’s add one more resolution to our list – to fight uncompromisingly for the right to asylum and movement.

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