Glasgow Council appoints an asylum-seeker co-ordinator

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'These people will kill again. Is it really any better here than Iran?'

David Aaronovitch: Blame the residents of Sighthill, not their victims

Glasgow Council, dismayed at the portrayal of the city as a "hell on earth" for refugees, has appointed a senior official to co-ordinate asylum-seekers' services and to improve communications between refugees, the council and residents on the violent Sighthill estate.

The move comes after the fatal stabbing at the weekend of the 22-year-old Turkish Kurd, Firsat Dag – also known as Firsat Yildiz – during an unprovoked attack by two men in Sighthill housing estate on Glasgow's north side, and the stabbing of an Iranian, Davoud Naseri, 22, on Tuesday, by three white men on the same estate. Mr Dag, like Mr Naseri, was an asylum-seeker.

Asylum-seekers believe that both crimes, for which police are still seeking perpetrators, were racially motivated. Mr Naseri was called a "black bastard" by his attackers.

There have been scores of attacks on asylum-seekers since 1,200 of them were moved in May from the South-east to the run-down Sighthill estate as part of the Government's national dispersal policy.

In response to criticism that Glasgow Council did nothing to prepare the residents of Sighthill for the arrival of so many refugees – and was then slow to respond to the violence – the council's leader, Charles Gordon, is promising that the newly appointed official will have "instant access" to his office. "I think the ordinary Glaswegian feels like a helpless spectator watching as this nightmare unfolds in their city and seeing it portrayed in the national media as some hell on earth," Mr Gordon said.

Negotiations to persuade other Scottish councils to take a share of asylum-seekers continue. While there is disagreement over whether Glasgow Council took on 5,000 asylum-seekers for compassionate reasons, or to solve its own problem with empty, unlettable properties, it is the only Scottish council to have taken in asylum-seekers. The Scottish Deputy Community Care Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, said three councils – understood to be Fife, West Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire – are on the verge of agreeing to take refugees to ease pressure.

A small demonstration was staged yesterday outside the offices of the Daily Record, by asylum-seekers and refugee support groups who claim that the tone of the paper's coverage is inciting violence.