The radical, international journal Race & Class was founded thirty years ago this month. Race & Class might never have happened. Its publisher for the last thirty years, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), had first been established in the 1950s as a forum for ‘objective’ scholarship on the emerging post-colonial societies of the Third
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Indefinite detention creates a ‘suicide culture’
A Scottish NGO is calling on Amnesty International and the UNHCR to investigate the ‘suicide culture’ at Dungavel detention centre. Dungavel detention centre in Scotland, one of three immigration detention centres to detain children, has now been open for three years. To mark those years, Positive Action in Housing (PAIH), a Glasgow-based charity, has produced
New study highlights discrimination in use of anti-terror laws
The Institute of Race Relations publishes today a catalogue that details how hundreds of Muslims have been arrested under terrorism powers before being released without charge; how the special powers granted by parliament to tackle terrorism are being deployed in other spheres, such as in routine criminal investigations or in the policing of immigration; how
Help a grieving Iraqi family to bring their son home
The impoverished parents of an Iraqi man, who died trying to enter Britain in 2001, have appealed to the British public to help raise £3,100 – the cost of sending the body from a Kent mortuary, where it has been left for the last three years, to Iraq for burial. (ADDENDUM, 8 SEPT 2004: The
Funding available for anti-racism week
Kick It Out, the national campaign against racism in football, is offering grants for community organisations which want to participate in October’s Anti-Racism Week of Action. The week of action is held every year during Black History Month to use the medium of football as a tool for education, anti-racism and encouraging inclusion. This year,
Hundreds demonstrate outside Home Office against ‘war on terror’
The campaign against the criminalisation of Muslim communities under anti-terror laws stepped up a gear this week as over 300 people protested outside the Home Office. The emergency protest on 13 August 2004 was called following the re-arrest two weeks earlier of Babar Ahmad, a 30-year-old university IT officer. Babar was first arrested under anti-terror
A matter of fear or death
David Blunkett has blamed campaigners for encouraging an Iraqi asylum seeker to sew up his lips. Naseh Ghafor is a 20-year-old Iraqi man who has been on hunger strike since 8 July. Naseh, who has sewn up his lips, is seriously ill but is refusing treatment because, according to a member of the Sheffield Committee
Analysis: who are the terrorists?
Discussion of the UK’s tough anti-terrorist laws has focused on the low conviction rate for those arrested under their powers. What is ignored is that, of those who are convicted, many are not Muslim but are White Loyalists and/or racists. According to Home Office figures, since 11 September 2001, 609 people have been arrested and
Father speaks out against son’s arrest
At a public meeting held by the ‘Stop Police Terror’ group this week in Tooting, south London, Ashfaq Ahmad called on the government not to extradite his son, Babar, to the US, where he faces terrorism charges. ‘I want you to know the truth about my son despite everything that has happened and all the
‘Deadly detention’ protests
Over the weekend, 31 July/ 1August, campaigners held demonstrations against ‘deadly detention’ outside detention centres and prisons across UK. These were organised after two asylum seekers were found hanged, one in Harmondsworth and another in Dungavel. As a result, protests were held on Saturday at Campsfield and Dover removal centres and outside Liverpool Prison. The