While executives dined on luxury three-course meals at the Park Plaza Hotel in central London, thousands of migrants were – and still are – suffering
Sam Björn
The Independent Voices
Last night, in protest of the involvement of commercial airlines in deportations, myself and other activists from the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSMigrants) crashed the Airline UK Annual Dinner 2019 – attended by over 250 representatives across the airline sector and the government’s aviation minister, Baroness Liz Sugg.
Why did we ruin their three-course dinner? Because commercial airlines like British Airways enter into contracts with the Home Office to carry out what are, in our view, inhumane, often violent, and unjust deportations.
Disguised as guests, we infiltrated the venue and then proceeded to distribute 200 sick bags used on flights that carried the message “deportation contracts make us sick”. The 14 of us chanted that deportations are brutal, tear families and communities apart, and have been linked to deaths (in 2010, Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan migrant, died on a British Airways flight of a cardiac arrest after being restrained on the plane).
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Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, UK