The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) and has branded the tagging of a growing number of asylum seekers as a means of ‘criminalising’ the innocent. Asylum seekers are being fitted with an electronic monitoring device around their ankles. A monitoring unit is then installed in the accommodation address where the individual resides. During periods
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Two very Dutch Fires
Helen Hintjens uses the way the Dutch authorities responded to a school fire in the Hague and one in a detention centre at Schipol airport to comment on the treatment meted out to asylum seekers in the Netherlands. It was raining in the Hague, on Monday 16 January. Standing on the corner, a crowd of
Disastrous cuts planned for helplines
A decision to cut funding for specialist legal support is likely to have dire consequences for new immigrants and asylum seekers across the country. On 16 January the Legal Services Commission (LSC) announced that it intends to abolish, as from July, one of its most successful schemes for providing specialist legal help to the most
Damages paid to man cleared in custody death case
A two-week civil hearing has cleared Jason Paul of any involvement in the death of fellow Afro-Caribbean Christopher Alder, who died in police custody in 1998, and has awarded him £30,500 in damages against the police. The civil hearing marked Mr Paul’s second attempt at claiming false imprisonment and malicious prosecution against Humberside Police. Mr
‘We are very close to violence’
A letter from an anti-racist worker in Oslo warns of the dangerous anti-Muslim climate in Norway in the context of the Danish cartoon debate. Dear IRR News, We are experiencing extreme times here at the moment. After a Christian fundamentalist paper printed the drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, things have been on the far side
Man dies during police operation
The Somali community in the Woolwich area is in deep shock after the death of a 22-year-old Somali, Nuur Saeed, after an ‘operation’ by Woolwich police. The police say that on 10 January Nuur was in a house at which they executed a search warrant in Plumstead. ‘At 5pm Mr Saeed was found to be
Vigil for Bereket Yohannes at Harmondsworth
On a bitterly cold Sunday morning last week, over eighty people gathered outside Harmondsworth removal centre for a vigil in memory of 26-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker, Bereket Yohannes, who was found hanged in a shower block at Harmondsworth on 19 January. Bereket’s is the eighth asylum seeker to take his own life in an immigration
Better care for asylum seekers with HIV
The National AIDS Trust (NAT) has welcomed a decision by the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) to amend its policy on the dispersal of asylum seekers with healthcare needs. In a recent report, NAT highlights the problem that dispersal brings in terms of healthcare needs of asylum seekers with HIV and welcome the December 2005
Return to Kirkuk
In this interview, Karzan Sherabayani, a Kurdish actor and filmmaker, says why he returned to the Kurdish region of Iraq to make his latest film and what he and other Iraqi Kurds think about the recent forced deportations to Iraq. Tim: When you made Karzan’s Brothers – Escape from the Safe Haven in the mid-1990s,
Coalition against deportations to Iraq
On 11 January 2006, a coalition was formed to stop forced deportations of Iraqi and Kurdish asylum seekers to Iraq. The group included the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, Green Party, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, Organisation of Kurdish Women-Britain and the Campaign to Stop Deportation