As petitions are launched to stop the criminalisation of humanitarians, calls for the European Commission to intervene to change the law intensify. The continuing threat of jail hanging over three Spanish fire-fighters, arrested in January 2016 on charges of attempted human trafficking and weapons possession, has led to the launch of at least two petitions,
Geography: Wales
The Corporate Greed of Strangers
John Grayson reveals the spread of corporate involvement in the provision of asylum housing in the UK and northern Europe, and how outsourcing and private companies are tarnishing Europe’s ‘welcome’ to refugees. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to two families in G4S housing[1] in Sheffield who arrived in the UK in September last
Calendar of racism and resistance (4-17 December 2015)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Policing & criminal justice 3 December: Babacar Guèye, a 27-year-old Senegalese man, dies after being shot five times by a police officer in Rennes in north-west France. Guèye attempted to self-harm with a bread knife before his friend
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
Another deportation death in Europe
An Iraqi man, who collapsed and died in Sweden following a deportation attempt, is the seventeenth deportee to die in Europe since 1991. Questions are mounting about the death of a 45-year-old man, who had worked for the US military in Iraq and lived in Sweden for eight years. The man, who is named in
Deaths of Europe’s ‘unwanted and unnoticed’ migrants exposed
The IRR publishes a disturbing new report, Unwanted, unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration-related deaths in Europe, revealing the extent of Europe’s departure from its vaunted humanitarian ideals. The deaths over the last five years, in the detention and reception centres, the streets and the squats of Europe, are a product of the rightlessness
Calendar of racism and resistance (14 – 27 November 2014)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum seekers and refugees 14 November: It is revealed that an unnamed language analyst working for Swedish firm Sprakab, is a convicted drug smuggler whose expert reports have been used to refuse asylum to hundreds in the UK.
Calendar of racism and resistance (31 October-13 November 2014)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum seekers and refugees 3 November: The trial of three G4S guards on charges of the manslaughter of Jimmy Mubenga, during a deportation in October 2010, begins at the Old Bailey. The court is told the guards repeatedly
Sweden’s counter-extremism policies fail the accountability test
The Swedish model of countering far-right extremism is deeply flawed and should not be followed by other EU countries. The European Commission has recommended that EU member states set up special programmes for those at risk of radicalisation and the Swedish Ministry of Justice is already working to export its model of countering far-right extremism
Asylum in Switzerland – out of sight, out of mind
Swiss asylum policy is characterised by institutional neglect within hostile systems designed to segregate and exclude. Feras Farees Abedal Motaleeb was a Palestinian refugee who, having fled from Iraq to Switzerland to save his life, found death in a remote Swiss valley, in an 8m² space in a metal container which he shared with two