A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 13 November: Nepalese man, Suraj Sapkota, is awarded £24,515.43 by the High Court for false imprisonment, after he was arrested and detained for thirty-six days because immigration officials wrongly believed he was marrying bigamously. (Free
As the tendering process for £4 billion worth of contracts over ten years gets under way, asylum campaigner John Grayson examines the market for asylum seekers’ housing in the UK. G4S dumps toddler with rare cancer in dirty asylum house with rats in the yard. Can G4S be trusted to be given part of the new
This year six men have died in immigration detention centres — the deadliest year since the IRR began recording deaths in immigration detention. The most recent death occurred, on 19 November, when 27-year-old Arim Bakar, an Iraqi man was found dead at the Prison Service-run Morton Hall, where two others have died this year. Detainees at
‘We are the Lions Mr Manager’ is a small but perfectly formed play which tells the story of the Grunwick strike. A two-hander, it tells a digested version of the Grunwick saga, a major moment in labour history which seems to have faded in the collective memory. The work of the Grunwick 40 campaign over
The IRR’s Sophia Siddiqui reports on a recent demonstration at Yarl’s Wood. The demonstrations outside Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre are a palpable and direct act of solidarity. Standing facing the detention centre, separated by a prison-like metal fence, barbed wire and security cameras, you can see, wave, and interact with the women inside who
Dear IRR News subscriber, No one should be stigmatised, harassed or prosecuted for saving lives at sea or assisting weary and displaced people at a border. This week, the IRR launches its new report Humanitarianism: the unacceptable face of solidarity which charts the hostile political and legal environment facing humanitarian actors who seek to protect
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 27 October: Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Executions, presents a new report to the UN General Assembly on ‘Unlawful Death of Refugees and Migrants’, download it here. (Der Spiegel, 28
Asylum campaigner John Grayson examines the appalling conditions in privately contracted housing for asylum seekers in south yorkshire. Ann was showing me round her G4S terraced house, on the inner ring road in Doncaster, on a Sunday afternoon in late October. A few days earlier, Ann had been to the local advice ‘drop-in centre’ for
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today research showing that EU member states are using laws, aimed at traffickers and smugglers, to criminalise those acting out of humanitarian motives. The rhetoric of EU politicians and its border force, Frontex, may be fuelling far-right extremism, it IRR warns. It has written to the European Commission
In a podcast, Race & Class Editorial Working Committee member Arun Kundnani talks to journalist Anand Gopal and filmmaker Madiha Tahir about US empire in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan under Trump, and the US Left’s response. Anand Gopal has reported for the Wall Street Journal, Harpers, and the Atlantic and is the author of No Good Men Among
