CAMPAIGNERS in Swindon have pledged to stop teenager Inna Haville being deported to the Ukraine.

The Save Inna Campaign was launched this week, with a promise to blockade any attempt by officials to remove the 19-year-old from her home at Sevenhampton, near High-worth.

"We will not let her be taken," said group chairman Andy Newman, of Swindon Trades Union Council.

Mark and Melanie Haville rescued Inna from a run down orphanage three years ago but have now been told she must return home.

The Save Inna group was formed on Tuesday and its first assignment is to organise a petition in support of her family's fight to keep her in the UK.

They also plan to lobby both of the the town's MPs, Michael Wills and Julia Drown.

Michael Wills has already lent his support but could not be at the meeting because he was at the House of Commons.

Encouragement also came from the Bishop of Swindon, the Rt Rev Michael Doe.

At the moment Mark and Melanie have not been given a deadline for Inna's deportation and they say the knock on the door could come any day.

But now, with the birth of the official campaign, they see a glimmer of hope and feel they are no longer fighting alone.

Mark told the group that Inna cries herself to sleep at night because she is so frightened of the future.

He said she suffered from separation anxiety disorder.

"It is because the rejection and abandonment at such an early age still affects her," he said.

The Home Office has been given medical reports which advised that if she was taken away from her family there was a risk she would become suicidal, but has dismissed the family's concerns, he said.

The response had been that there are adequate hospital facilities in the Ukraine.

Mark agreed that there are if you are rich or a member of the Mafia and he said before Inna had been brought to the UK she had undergone an operation to remove her adenoids without anaesthetic.

"Their hospitals are horrendous," he said.

Joanne Thomason-Hyde, of Swindon Prayer Web, who is backing the petition, is confident people in the town would sign.

She said: "This is, supposedly, the most compassionate time of the year."

Andy Newman urged members to get the support of as wide a range of people as possible.

He pointed out the success of the campaign in the mid 1990s to stop grandmother Mumtaz Begum from being deported to Pakistan.

"What we are hoping is that in a few months' time we will have had two campaigns in Swindon and won both of them," he said.

He said that even if Home Office officials arrived to deport Inna, the campaign wouldn't end.

There have been cases where deportations have been halted by demonstrations even as people were on the aircraft.

"It isn't over until the plane takes off," he said.

Campaigners will be out in Swin-don town centre on Saturday afternoon asking local people to sign the petition calling for Inna to be allowed to stay in the country.

Tina Clarke