Dear IRR News subscriber, This week Frances Webber reports on news that Capita has been wrongly telling people to leave the UK and we also republish an article (from the Slough Times) on a vigil held in Slough on 27 December to mark the deaths in police custody of Philimore Mills and Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah.
News Service
Capita wrongly telling people to leave the UK
Outsourcing of enforcement role causes confusion and distress as many are wrongly targeted. In the second and third weeks of December 2012, as businesses wound down for Christmas and MPs went home, thousands of migrants, including students, workers and investors, received text messages or emails telling them they had no lawful leave to be in
Protest vigil: stop deaths in police custody
Below we publish an edited version of an article that appeared in the Slough Times on a demonstration that took place at the end of December. On a dark and cold winter evening protesters campaigning for justice for the two men who died in Thames Valley Police’s custody held a peaceful vigil outside Slough police.
Revealing the impact of immigration detention
Two recent reports add fuel to growing demands to rethink indefinite immigration detention. On any given day between January and March 2012, 3,500 people were held in immigration detention, of whom over forty had been there for over two years: the equivalent of a four-year prison sentence, for being a refused asylum seeker, overstayer or
IRR News 12-21 December 2012
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week we publish an interview with the IRR’s A. Sivanandan on Ed Miliband’s recent speech. Liz Fekete assesses the recent deaths of asylum seekers across Europe and the resistance springing up in response, and Frances Webber reviews two recent reports that detail the impact of indefinite immigration detention. And in
Miliband’s progress?
A. Sivanandan, known for his trenchant critiques of government ‘race’ policies, has broadly welcomed what Ed Miliband had to say last week. IRR News asks him why. What’s new about the Miliband speech? It seems to carry many of the same old themes – need to curtail immigration, need to integrate and so on. It
From despair comes resistance
Asylum-seekers and migrants across Europe are determined to change the inhuman circumstances of their existence. In his new book Fortress Europe: dispatches from a gated continent, journalist Matthew Carr describes a protest in Lombardy in which five migrants climbed to the top of a crane above Brescia’s new light railway line. ‘For seventeen days they
IRR News 7-13 December 2012
Dear IRR News Subscriber, In the same week as Lord Ouseley, Chair of Kick It Out, has stepped down from the FA Council over its mishandling of the year’s high-profile incidents of racist abuse, the IRR’s Jon Burnett puts a spotlight on racial violence, focusing in part on racism in football. In other news from
Spotlight on racial violence: October-December 2012
An overview of racist attacks and convictions over the last three months. Earlier this week, Kick it Out chair Herman Ouseley resigned from the Football Association (FA), describing the authorities’ efforts to fight racism in football in 2012 as ‘wasted in hypocrisy’. Lord Ouseley spoke of an ‘establishment [that] seemed to be looking after its
IRR News 30 November-6 December 2012
Dear IRR News Subscriber, This week the IRR’s Liz Fekete looks at racial profiling in police forces across Europe, reporting on the work of groups involved in fighting against the misuse of stops and other operations on the basis of race and religion. In other news from around the UK, two police officers may face