In a personal statement, Phil Scraton sets the recent attacks on Roma in South Belfast in the wider context of persistent anti-Traveller racial violence in the UK. Over thirty Roma families, including many young children, were forced to leave their homes in South Belfast and within a week most families left Ireland, following several weeks
News Service
Cancelled!
The introduction of the points-based system, together with the habitual contempt for foreigners shown by immigration staff, is turning the UK into a pariah destination for artists and creative workers, according to an important new report. The Manifesto Club’s report UK Arts and Culture: Cancelled, by Order of the Home Office: The Impact of New
New exhibition on the Anti-Apartheid movement
A new exhibition has opened at the Museum of London that celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The display, ‘Forward to Freedom: The Anti-Apartheid Movement and the liberation of southern Africa’, a collaborative effort between the Museum and the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) Archives Committee seeks to show the brutality and injustice of the
Proscription leads to jail for ‘decent man’
A packed meeting of the Bar Human Rights Committee on 16 June heard Mark Muller QC and Gareth Peirce describe how the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 forced the jailing of someone the judge said was a ‘thoroughly decent man’. Mark Muller QC and Gareth Peirce were the legal team representing Shanthan (Arunachalam Chrishanthakumar),
SOAS occupied after cleaners detained and forcibly removed
Students have taken action after nine cleaners, who campaigned for a ‘living wage’ whilst working at a top London university, were detained in a dawn raid by immigration officers dressed in full riot gear. Six of the workers have since been forcibly removed to South American countries, including Colombia, where gross human rights abuses against
France: academic freedom under threat
A campaign to safeguard intellectual freedom has been formed in France to support a researcher who faces disciplinary action in connection with his work on Islamophobia. Vincent Geisser, a researcher who has worked to dispel anti-Muslim prejudices and authoritarianism, is to appear on 29 June before the disciplinary commission of the government’s National Centre for
Forced returns of Iraqis from Sweden
Deportation charter flights from the UK to the Kurdish controlled area of northern Iraq have been regular occurrences, now, other European countries are carrying out forced returns. On 14 June, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported that a total of 111 failed Iraqi asylum seekers have now been deported to Iraq from Sweden. The summary
Universities must not ride the wave of xenophobia
We reproduce below a statement by a number of UK-based academics. ‘We called for labour power’, playwright Max Frisch once said, ‘and human beings came’. The British government has called for higher education fees, and is discomforted by the actual arrival of non-EU students along with their overseas students’ fees. Apparently, it cannot tell the
No to secret evidence
The House of Lords’ ruling on control orders is a victory for the campaign against secret evidence, but the ruling has yet to be applied to deportations and other areas. On 10 June, an extraordinary legal odyssey culminated in nine judges at the House of Lords condemning as illegal the system of secret evidence underpinning
Family challenge IPCC decision
The High Court has recently turned down an application for judicial review of an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) decision to downgrade an investigation into the death in police custody of Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah. Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah died on 3 July 2008 after a stop and search by police officers in High Wycombe (read an