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Robina Qureshi was born in 1967 in Glasgow, Scotland and is a human rights campaigner. She is Director of Positive Action in Housing , a charity set up to fight racism and discrimination, particularly against visible minorities, new migrants and refugee communities.
Background
Qureshi's parents came to Glasgow as immigrants in the 1960s, where they raised Qureshi and her six sisters in Glasgow's multiracial Southside. Her father was a bus conductor and then later a shop keeper.
Human rights work
Qureshi is a notable critic of the UK's asylum policies and has campaigned to close detention centres for asylum seekers. In September 2005, Qureshi travelled to Albania with a film crew on a "fact finding mission" after taking up the case of the Vucaj children. The children were expelled to Kosovo in two dawn raids after living in Glasgow for five years as asylum seekers. Subsequently, she has been at the forefront of challenging dawn raids against Scotland's asylum seekers, taking part in protests at Home Office buildings with other high profile campaigners including Paddy Joe Hill of the Birmingham Six, Tommy Sheridan MSP, Sandra White MSP and actor Peter Mullan .
Malcolm Chisholm MSP, Minister for Communities in the Scottish Executive, joined Qureshi in citicising the "heavy-handed" immigration policies, describing her as "a very formidable campaigner and completely dedicated to the housing and other rights of visible minorities."
In 2003, she led a campaign to close down Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre, in Scotland, where families from refugee communities are incarcerated. She also called for an amnesty for asylum seeking families in Scotland.
Qureshi has been a vocal critic of UK policies on civil liberties, comparing the Government's attitude towards the threat of homegrown Islamic extremist terrorism and the subsequent impact on the Muslim community to the experience of the Irish community in 1970s and 1980s Britain. She stated that, "it has been made very clear that the Muslim community should expect to be singled out and stigmatised. People will feel they are being targeted as a potential terrorist, which is the wrong way to protect the community. Only this time the names will be Muslim, rather than Irish."
Between 1998 and 2000, Qureshi worked with with human rights lawyer, Aamer Anwar, to campaign on behalf of the family of murdered Indian waiter Surjit Singh Chhokhar. She also served on the Lawrence Steering Group. She has led campaigns to stop extreme far right groups from organising or gaining a platform in Scotland and is opposed to the American and British invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1995, Qureshi received the Ujima Pookar Award for "outstanding contribution to the black community". (pdf)
Controversy
In November 2005, New Labour politician Tom Harris MP, criticised Positive Action in Housing's stance on dawn raids, claiming the charity went too far in urging direct action to stop failed asylum seekers being removed. Harris had called for funding to the charity to be withdrawn because they "provoke violence against immigration officers" and circulate "rumours and innuendo as fact". Qureshi robustly defended her charity's campaign against dawn raids, claiming they acted "extremely responsibly ... to end dawn raids" and that the charity has "never in our lifetime been anything other than cross party political." .
On December 11, 2005, Respect MP George Galloway waded into Qureshi's defence in his regular column in the Mail on Sunday. Referring to Harris as a "lump of wood" Galloway said: "Harris, though you would not know it, is the MP for Cathcart who tried to have the funding of a Scots charity cut because it was campaigning to stop refugees and asylum seekers being rounded up in dawn raids for deportation". Galloway went onto compare Harris's attacks on Qureshi to the treatment of , the 83-year-old Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany dragged out of New Labour's party conference, claiming she was subjected to the "bully boys of New Labour. Robina, for Uncle Tom, had spoken out of turn, like Wolfgang, and so she too must be punished, by ending the Scottish Executive funding of her homelessness charity Positive Action in Housing. Now I doubt the Executive would be as thick as Harris and I don't expect it to happen, but what kind of party is it that is content to see itself being dragged into this kind of disrepute by its MPs?"
In July 2006, Qureshi was accused of verbally abusing News of the World sex-columnist Anvar Khan in relation to the journalist's alleged affair with former Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan. According to Khan's dubious version of events in the Sheridan v News International court case, Qureshi offered a written apology for the incident.
Film work
Qureshi has been in several films and television dramas, including American Cousins, Buried, The Key, Proof 2, and the controversial Gas Attack, for which she received a best actress award at the 2001 Cherbourg-Octeville Festival of Irish & British Film.
Personal life
In September 2006, Qureshi began a new relationship with the actor and filmmaker Peter Mullan.