City Strolls - events - meetings
Sunday, October 16, 2005
VUCAJ CHILDREN - THEY BELONG TO GLASGOW CAMPAIGN LAUNCH - ACTOR, DIRECTOR PETER MULLAN TO LEAD THE CAUSE
Public Meeting details: 6.45 pm, Thursday 20 October 2005, STUC Headquarters, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3. Speakers include: Peter Mullan, Robina Qureshi, Politicians, friends and neighbours and school friends of the Vucaj family. To confirm your attendance, email home@paih.org.Peter Mullan, Glasgow’s award winning actor and director, will lead the launch of a new campaign designed to return the recently deported Vucaj family back to Glasgow and Scotland.
Called “They belong to Glasgow” Campaign, Mullan will introduce a film and speak about his recent trip to Albania to meet the Vucaj family at a public meeting to be held at 6.45 pm on Thursday 20th October 2005 in the Scottish Trade Union Centre, Woodlands Road, Charing Cross, Glasgow G3.
Footage of the trip and an interview with 13 year old Saida Vucaj will be shown and Peter will be joined by politicians from across the political spectrum and young friends of Saida, Elvis and Nimet from Drumchapel, Glasgow.
The campaign objective is the safe return of the Vucaj family by any legal means possible.
Robina Qureshi, Director of Positive Action in Housing, who led the recent Albanian trip jointly with Peter Mullan on 9-12 October, said today:
“These children have lived in Glasgow for five years. Saida was only seven when she arrived. She is now 13 and her and her two brothers, Elvis (18) and Nimet (16) consider themselves Glaswegian and Scottish. We are determined to organise their safe return to our city where they were welcomed and educated. I plead to First Minister Jack McConnell and Scotland’s Parliament to help them to return. This is their home, not Albania. Saida, in particular, is in danger. Child trafficking for prostitution is rife in Northern Albania where they have been returned to. We need them back now before it’s too late.”
Peter Mullan added:
“Saida, Nimet and Elvis Vucaj belong to Glasgow. They think like Glaswegians, they talk like Glaswegians. They have been forcibly kidnapped from us and transplanted into a country that can best be described as pre-industrial. Their new home is an empty hovel on a Northern Albanian mountain that was ransacked in their absence and is the direct line of a major sex trafficking route leaving them unspeakably vulnerable. These young Glaswegian kids have been taken from us and abandoned to a life of unimaginable despair. One of the few men who remain of the village stepped forwards to the kids when we were with them and asked what they were doing there. The kids said they didn’t know - they were Scottish. He opened up a weird toothless smile and said “You must go. Stay here and you die”. All we ask is that these children are brought back to the only home that they know, Glasgow!”
Meeting details: 6.45 pm, Thursday 20 October 2005, STUC Headquarters, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3.
Bob, 13:45
