Dear IRR News subscriber,

This week, Aisha Maniar shows how a recent parliamentary seminar to launch a new publication on the plight of political dissidents and refugees also drew attention to Europe’s complicity, via asylum policy and extradition requests, in repression in the Commonwealth of Independent States. We also publish a factfile of deaths that have taken place in UK immigration removal and short-term holding centres since 1989, as well as those who have died shortly after release from immigration detention.

In news from across the UK, Britain First has offered to send armoured patrol vehicles and ex-military volunteers to ‘protect’ UKIP’s Nigel Farage, saying he is being targeted by ‘leftwing thugs’. The homes of three Polish families in Belfast have been attacked and vandalised in a bout of violence that has been likened to ‘ethnic cleansing’ by a senior police officer. And two men in Bangor have been given prison sentences for a ‘vicious’ racist attack on an asylum seeker from Kuwait which left him with a broken nose. The victim has since said he is afraid to continue living in the area.

Finally, the IRR is co-sponsoring and speaking at the conference ‘How violent is Britain?’ at the University of Liverpool on 16 May 2014. A few tickets are still available. Book your place to hear discussions on how state, institutional and corporate violence should be tackled.

Jon Burnett

Assistant Editor, IRR News