Dear IRR News subscriber,

This week, a general election in Sweden saw big gains for the far-right Sweden Democrats, which now have forty-nine seats in parliament. Fascism is emerging as a European-wide problem. But what we certainly don’t need, argues Liz Fekete in a review of an American NGO’s report on a fact-finding mission to Hungary and Greece, is the manipulation of anti-fascism by those who want to promote a new Cold War agenda.

This fortnight’s calendar of racism and resistance documents, among other things, the death of Bangladeshi man Rubel Ahmed in Morton Hall immigration removal centre. On Friday 5 September, 26-year-old Ahmed was pronounced dead. His family was told by the Home Office that he had killed himself, but friends and fellow detainees suggested otherwise, claiming that, after cell doors had been locked for the night, Ahmed complained of chest pains and began banging on the door and asking for medical attention. His death is the twenty-second in immigration detention since 1989. Read the IRR’s monitoring of deaths in immigration detention here.

We are very sorry to announce the death of one of the IRR’s longest serving members and supporters, Valerie Allport, who helped us in many ways over four-and-a-half decades.

IRR News Team