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Robina Qureshi (born 1967 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a human rights campaigner.
Qureshi's parents were from Pakistan and came to Glasgow in the 1960s. She is Executive Director of Positive Action in Housing, a charity which aims to challenge racism and discrimination, particularly in refugee communities.
Qureshi is a notable critic of Britain's asylum policies and has campaigned to close detention centres for asylum seekers. She has been at the forefront of challenging dawn raids against Scotland's asylum seekers, taking part in dawn raid protests and shutting down Home Office buildings with Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six and actor Peter Mullan. She has been in several films, including the controversial Gas Attack, for which she won a best actress award.
In September 2006, tabloid newspapers revealed Qureshi was in a relationship with actor and film maker Peter Mullan.
Talking about growing up within in the muslim community in Glasgow, Qureshi said:
"I remember growing up we felt like outsiders, the minority group.It was difficult to just be a part of something where labels and racism were so strong, and then at home we weren't quite Pakistani Muslim. I wanted to be free from the constraints of my family's expectations but also white society's with its assumptions about particular form of oppression I was supposed to be suffering. And I never wanted to sell out - to either side! So how could you win? It drove me to a nervous breakdown when I was 19 and confronted with the prospect of a regular forced arranged marriage, suicide seemed like a good idea, the pressure was so intense. My breakdown was a reprieve from all the pressure. I literally checked out and daydreamed 24/7 for 2 months or more."
Qureshi clearly relishes her work, despite its stresses and frustrations, because it is about empowering people through groups and that's where her strengths lie.
"Increasingly," she says, "our work is regarded as political, which I don't care much about as a definition cos what we are doing is frontline humanitarian work and highlighting the injustice and inequality of it all. We are now having to give money to asylum seekers who are destitute, food and shelter and money to buy basic toiletries and ask people to let them into their homes for two or three days a week. We are dealing with people who are left voiceless by government policies and practices. How can you talk about equal opportunities when the people that need equal opportunities the most are the ones that are totally invisibilised and ignored?
"There was a time when England was leading on anti-racism issues but now Scotland is taking the lead in working with and campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers. The media in Scotland is quite good in that it is prepared to challenge negative stereotypes about asylum seekers to an extent that just doesn't exist in England. It means that we are better able to put pressure on the government here.
"What's good that has happened here is that the refugee and asylum seeking community has been placed in the worst housing, being put in places with poor white people who initially were very hostile to them, but then they became neighbours and mainly good neighbours, because of their dignity, who wanted to take care of the place they were living in and the children wanted to get educated. So these communities lifted standards in the neighbourhood and at school as well. I have met many of these poor white people who have said that before the refugees arrived there was no sense of community. Now their children mix, they talk to each other, they mingle; they share each other's problems. This government is trying to rip these people out of their community, because they haven't met the immigration criteria, yet they have spent years living here rebuilding communities that once had no hope at all. That's an amazing thing to watch"
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