A call for migrant rights organisations to sign up to support the Tribunal and to submit evidence.

The London hearing of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), the international public opinion tribunal established in the 1970s to draw attention to human rights violations worldwide, is scheduled for early November. One of a series of hearings on violations of the rights of migrants and refugees (others have been held in Barcelona, Palermo and Paris), the London Tribunal will focus on the rights of migrants in the chain of labour, violations and resistance. In seven charges, the Indictment lays out the responsibility of the British government (in its own right and as a member of the EU) for neglecting the rights of the domestic workforce and for the creation of an underclass of super-exploited, disposable, deportable workers.

The Tribunal hearing is a massive opportunity for migrant and refugee rights organisations, trades unions, civil society support groups and others to lay out clearly the effects of restrictive visa policies, extortionate fees, the ban on work for asylum seekers, employer sanctions, the right to rent, as well as the virtual abolition of legal aid and of appeals, and all the other policies which make it impossible for people to remain without working and simultaneously criminalise work, forcing people into precarious and illegal work. It is also a platform for the celebration of resistance – the migrant-led strikes and the campaigns which have forced a retreat on some ‘hostile environment’ policies.

See the indictment for the London hearing here; the call for support here; and the call for evidence here.