A series of hunger strikes, following allegations of abuse, force and the use of forged documents, are showing up the fault lines in the Dutch detention system. For the first time in more than a decade, hundreds of people in Dutch immigration detention centres have gone on hunger strikes in protest at their hopeless situation.
IRR News reports on a recent deportation, which resulted in a Kurdish man allegedly having his nose broken by a guard from the private company Tascor (which is contracted to carry out deportations). Omer Kader was being deported to Northern Iraq on a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight on Friday 7 June 2013. He has reported
Apply or nominate someone for an award for their campaigning. The SMK Campaigner Awards recognise the outstanding contribution that a new generation of campaigners are making towards achieving social, environmental and economic justice here in the UK and abroad. Winners of an award will receive a tailored package of support to help them campaign more effectively: he/she will receive
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week the IRR’s European News Team reports on the increasing activity of the far Right in Germany and Sweden. While in Germany the National Socialist Underground trial is under way, the far Right has attacked mosques, refugee centres and asylum seeker housing, proving that fascism needs no stimulus to act
Attacks in Germany linked to the NSU trial demonstrate that the far Right does not need a stimulus for violence. Following the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich and attacks on several mosques, the government-funded Tell MAMA project warned of the dangers of cumulative extremism, tit-for-tat violence between Islamists and counter-jihadists and a
Swedish neo-Nazi vigilantes formed a ‘National Guard’ to stop ‘race riots’. In the UK ‘riots’ of August 2011, the EDL formed a vigilante group in south London and ended up attacking black passers-by and the police. In Sweden, the Research Group (an independent group of engaged Swedish citizens who investigate stories that don’t get properly
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week, Frances Webber reports on the implications of proposed cuts to legal aid to BME communities. We also have an interview with an anti-racist group in Germany which recently turned down an award for their work as a protest against government counter-extremism policies. And in news from across the UK,
In the blizzard of coalition measures wreaking destruction on living standards, the justice ministry’s proposals on legal aid will once again bear down hardest on poor BME, Muslim and migrant communities. From the introduction of a residence test for civil legal aid, to the withdrawal of public funding for challenges to mistreatment in prison and
An overview of the anti-Muslim violence and abuse that has taken place in the last seven days. It only took a matter of hours. Soon after British soldier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered, a man walked into a mosque in Gillingham, smashing up the interior. Around the same time, someone was arrested outside an Islamic
An interview with a spokesperson from Antirassisistischer und Antifaschister Ratschlag. European government counter-extremism policies which classify fascism as just another form of contemporary extremism (which also includes Left extremism and in some cases anti-fascism) are being resisted by victim support groups in Germany. In 2012, at a time when the federal government was attempting to
