source: Migrant Media

first published: 20 June 2023

Image Credit: Zenia at www.Pexels.com

From all of our hundreds of Remembrance Calendar entries, we particularly feature certain cases that were of notable historical significance.

Joy Gardner

Migrant Media and a host of other campaign and social justice organisations are to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Joy Gardner.

Joy was brutally killed by the Metropolitan Police during a deportation attempt alongside immigration officers in 1993. This event will honour the struggle for justice by her family.



Download or view event flyer here >

Graeme Burke was five when his mother died after police bound her head with tape. It was early morning when five men and women burst into 5-year-old Graeme Burke's home.

Officers cornered and grabbed his mother, crashing through the furniture, forcing her face down on to the floor. They sat on her body, they bound her hands to her side with a leather belt and manacles, they strapped her legs together and wound yards of surgical tape round her head.

At some stage, one officer took Graeme into another room - but he could still hear his mother's cries.

He never saw her alive again.

After a trial, the officers involved were reinstated and not disciplined. The Police Complaints Commission investigation file remains a secret. 

Joy's and other families, along with representatives of the organisation INQUEST which examines deaths in custody, met Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, to press their case.

Joy's Mother, Myrna Simpson said;

"They may want us to forget what happened. But we won't. I will fight for

justice till the day I die."

Read full article here >

Other News:

Joy Gardner: killed in police custody

3 July 2020

IRR Report : Justice delayed is justice denied

8 August 2013

YouTube Videos:

• TRUE CRIME: The Death of Joy Gardner in UK Police Custody
• Police Deaths In Custody pt3 — Use of overwhelming force