An edited version of a speech given by the director of the Collectif Contre l’ Islamophobie en France at the joint IRR/CCIF seminar ‘Securitisation, Schools and Preventing Extremism’ For me as a teenager, the UK was the place to be. Growing up in France in the ‘90s, we Muslims saw the UK as a place
Geography: France
‘Hotspots’ for asylum applications: some things we urgently need to know
We republish here an article by Frances Webber published on 29 September on the EU Law Analysis blog. Through the mechanisms it is setting up for the relocation of refugees from Italy and Greece, the EU is trying to regain control of refugee movement in the EU. The tough screening process it is setting up
When solidarity fails
In observations made at a side-meeting of the 87th session of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD),[1] the IRR’s director warned that Europe’s mishandling of the refugee crisis is fuelling racism. I want to talk about the immediate institutional crisis in the EU, as hostility grows towards a modest plan by the European
Asylum seeker death toll rising
In the last two months, at least thirteen people, two of whom were teenagers, have died trying to reach the UK, and countless others have been injured. The media have concentrated on the chaos at strike-torn Calais and the stress on lorry drivers there, as well as the hardships for holiday-makers as traffic builds up.
Critical mass to Calais
A bike ride to Calais to get bikes and other provisions to refugees in Calais. Saturday 29 August – Monday 31 August 2015 London-Calais (see website for further details) Related links Critical Mass London Read more about the bike ride on Rabble
Charlie Hebdo backlash – the unredacted story
A new report by Le Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France (CCIF) documents the intensification of violence against Muslims following the Paris attacks in January 2015. After the terrorist attacks earlier this year in France – in which eleven staff at the magazine Charlie Hebdo were gunned down, a police officer outside was killed, another police officer killed
Self defence or a licence to kill?
When we look at the figures of young African Americans shot dead, some might comfort themselves with the mantra ‘thank goodness our police forces, unlike those of the US, are not routinely armed’. But look at our record of BAME killings when they are armed. In just the last few years, Azelle Rodney was shot
‘Hell is a very small place’
Below we reproduce an interview with Jean Casella from the US-based Solitary Watch by Luk Vervaet, first published on his blog. Although solitary confinement is not used as frequently as in the US, the UK has four close supervision centres.[1] A recent Prisons & Probation Ombudsman report highlighted the high number of suicides of those prisoners held in
Why we should listen when the UN condemns the UK’s ‘extremist media’
Below we reproduce an article by author Matt Carr from his blog, Infernal Machine, on the current situation in the Mediterranean. British tabloid editors have never struck me as a particularly reflective and thoughtful breed of humanity, so I doubt they will be plunged into a mood of remorseful self-analysis by the very strongly-worded suggestion from the
Licence to Kill
A recent community campaigning book from France on deaths in police custody shows just how alarmingly similar the French experience is to that in Britain. On 21 August 2014, Abdelhak Goradia (51), an Algerian undocumented migrant, died in a police van on his way to Roissy airport, near Paris, to be deported. A police spokesperson