News

Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers recount enforced removal

Two of the thirty-two Iraqi Kurds who were deported to northern Iraq on a military plane this week have given eye-witness accounts of their enforced removal. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) has spoken to two of the deportees, who have said they are ‘angry, tired and stressed’ after being handed over to militia

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News

Report on Yarl’s Wood calls for complete overhaul of child detention

Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, has published a report criticising the continued detention of children at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. The report was based on an announced inspection from 13-16 February 2006 designed to ascertain whether recommendations made following the full inspection in the previous year had been adhered to. Yet despite identifying

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Free healthcare clinics for vulnerable groups in London

A free, confidential drop-in health clinic aimed at vulnerable migrants, women and homeless people has opened in London. Project:London consists of two weekly clinics in east London where patients do not need to bring any proof of identity or status to receive treatment. Each clinic is staffed by a doctor and nurse who can provide

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Comment

Labour’s love lost?

A new book on London’s East End blames multiculturalism, and especially the sharing of welfare benefits with ‘newcomer’ Bengalis, for white working-class racism. Let’s face it, the Left just doesn’t know what to do about working-class racism. From that doyen of working-class history, E.P. Thompson, who praised the bloody-mindedness of the English jury that acquitted

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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

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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

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A Dickensian classic set in Bedfordshire

In true Dickensian fashion, a new report reveals the appalling treatment of society’s forgotten victims, namely female rape survivors and torture victims held at Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre. 15 December saw the launch of the findings of an investigation into the conditions provided for women detained at Bedfordshire’s Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre and the neglect

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Comment

Desperately seeking asylum

In June 2005, the author interviewed five Sudanese men, all but one of whom had been failed by the UK asylum procedures. ‘I am 27, no 28′, said Salah when I met him in June 2005. He looked 35 and spoke no English. Through the interpreter, Hassan, Salah told me he felt utterly frustrated and

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