CLIMATE and migrant rights activists held a rally against hotel detention of asylum-seekers in Aberdeen yesterday, highlighting the connection between the climate crisis and forced displacement. 

About 50 activists from Climate Camp Scotland, a new group campaigning against expansion of the oil and gas industry north of the border, attended the protest with members of the Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment (More). 

The rally was held in the Castlegate area of the city, where the groups said that 100 asylum-seekers were being held in hotel accommodation without access to education and little or no financial support. 

Conditions in Home Office-procured hotels have been widely criticised, with campaigners raising concerns that prolonged stays in temporary accommodation and lack of autonomy can harm asylum-seekers’ mental health and wellbeing. 

Yvonne Blake of More said: “Some people have been detained in hotels for up to nine months and in that period have had to move between four hotels.”

Climate Camp Scotland spokesperson Duncan Harbison said: “For the UK to ignore problems it helped create and treat people who deserve support in such an inhumane way is completely unjustifiable, so we are here in solidarity with those experiencing hotel detention.”