The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has begun an investigation into the death of a Chinese woman following her release from custody after being arrested at Heathrow airport. According to an IPCC press release, in the early hours of the morning of Thursday 12 November, 35-year-old Jianping Liu was arrested as a suspected overstayer in
People must be entertained
We publish below a talk on ‘Early 19th century theatre and racial attitudes’ given by Dr Hazel Waters at the Museum of London, Docklands on 19 November. We’re sitting here in a former sugar warehouse in what was once one of the busiest commercial ports in the world, with a network of massive and forbidding
Dickensian poverty in the twenty-first century
The asylum support system destroys hope and sanity. In his home country of Zimbabwe, Gabrial Ziki was chair of the National Aircraft Engineers’ Association – until 2003, when he organised a strike and his life was threatened. He fled to the UK, where, shockingly, his asylum claim was refused, and since then he has received
The EU security-industrial complex
This report is an indispensable reference manual on the threats posed to citizens by the convergence of neo-con ideology, power and technology in the name of national security. ‘A new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards’, the product of a marriage between the imperatives of profit and the
IQ film misses opportunity
Channel 4’s Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo programme missed an opportunity to educate a new generation about the sham ‘scientific’ claims behind this controversy. Rageh Omaar opened his programme on the connections between race and intelligence, part of a five-part series, with the kind of doom-laden voice-over we’ve come to expect from his investigative
Calais migrants demand rights
We reproduce below a statement from a grassroots group carrying out practical solidarity work in Calais. As survival packs are distributed in Calais, migrants and solidarity groups call for human rights for all and an end to police repression. Today [10 November], packs including blankets, ponchos, tarpaulins and hygiene packs were distributed to more than
Company’s use of anti-terror laws criticised
The use of anti-terror legislation by an energy company to stop protests by a ‘blacklisted’ worker at one of its plants has been branded ‘fanciful’ by a High Court judge. Under the Terrorism Act, Scottish & Southern Energy brought an injunction against union member Steve Acheson to stop him protesting at the Fiddler’s Ferry power
Cheryl Laws fights deportation
A young woman is facing deportation to the Philippines, miles away from her partner and young daughter. Cheryl Laws, who is 29, spends her days at Yarl’s Wood removal centre waiting to find out if she will be next. If her appeal to stay in the UK fails, her family say, she’ll be forced to
The criminalisation of protest
Evidence is mounting that the authorities are criminalising more areas of peaceful protest. These protests are UK-wide and include anti-racists, anti-deportation activists and pro-Palestine campaigners. Protest against mass deportation to Nigeria An anti-deportation demonstrator involved in a blockade of Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre has been released from prison after serving eight days of a
Foreign nationals and the criminal justice system
Below we reproduce an extract of the lead article from the IRR’s European Race Bulletin on the fate of foreign nationals swept up in Europe’s deportation drive. Sensationalist headlines about foreign criminals – from dark and swarthy Middle-Eastern terrorists, Albanian rapists and sexual predators from Africa, to Roma swindlers and tricksters from eastern and central