A new report by the Campaign to Close Campsfield on immigration bail hearings is a thorough piece of research but makes for very depressing reading. The report, Immigration bail hearings: a travesty of justice? Observations from the public gallery, was written and researched by the Bail Observation project of the Campaign to Close Campsfield, a
Evidence of anti-Muslim hate crime
Muslims are still being specifically targeted according to research on racial violence. Evidence produced by the Institute of Race Relations, as a submission to the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights 2010 annual report on hate crimes in the OSCE region, documents a distinct and discernible pattern of anti-Muslim violence within the UK. Although
Torture survivors let down
An audit of UK Border Agency (UKBA) officials’ responses to medical reports concerning vulnerable detainees, including torture survivors, demonstrates a frightening lack of care. The UKBA report, Detention Centre Rule 35 Audit, ‘seeks’, in its own words, ‘to address the perception among some NGOs that the UK Border Agency fails to comply with … policy
No Borders oppose new deportation centre
No Borders London and Brighton have begun campaigning against the Home Office’s proposed ‘pre-departure accommodation’ centre for families and children in Pease Pottage, Sussex. The campaign is calling on ‘anyone concerned with the ongoing detention of children’ to contact the Mid Sussex District Central Area Planning Committee and/or all fifty-four Mid Sussex district councillors to
Call for inquiry into deaths of Russian asylum seekers
The Glasgow-based Positive Action in Housing (PAIH) is asking people to sign a petition calling for a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) into the apparent suicides of three Russian asylum seekers in March 2010. A year after the deaths, the group has also formally written to the Lord Advocate (in Scotland), for a second time, requesting
Open hostility to Gypsies and Travellers
Last weekend, on a wet Saturday morning, campaigners gathered for a weekend of protest at the high of levels anti-Gypsy/Traveller racism but, by Sunday, the protest had to be called off after threats were received. Over fifty people, men, women and children, gathered from across the UK to protest at the rising levels of racism.
Report calls for end to international blacklisting regime
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has published a landmark report on the international blacklisting regime. The report, Blacklisted: Targeted sanctions, pre-emptive security and fundamental rights by Gavin Sullivan and Ben Hayes, documents the development of terrorism blacklisting at the UN, European Union (EU) and national levels and critically evaluates the legacy of
Voices against Islamophobia
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes this week two timely reports on the nature, impact and campaigns against Islamophobia across Europe. ‘Islamophobia and progressive values’ This unique report draws attention to the specific role that a discourse on progressive values is playing in shaping Islamophobia. Dr Sabine Schiffer (Institute for Media Responsibility, Erlangen), Murat
Dirty dealing with Qaddafi
We should not forget, argues a leading human rights lawyer, how ready the UK was to use Qaddafi’s offices when it came to keeping African migrants and asylum seekers from reaching our shores. When we listen to our leaders’ vigorous condemnations of the human rights abuses and lack of democracy of Qaddafi’s and other authoritarian
Gypsies’ big fat struggle for justice
Gypsies living in Meriden have been under sustained attack from the local community and the media since 2010. This pattern is being repeated across the UK as Gypsy and Traveller communities fight to preserve their way of life. Meriden is a small village in the Midlands between Solihull and Coventry. In May 2010 ten Romany