David Blunkett has blamed campaigners for encouraging an Iraqi asylum seeker to sew up his lips. Naseh Ghafor is a 20-year-old Iraqi man who has been on hunger strike since 8 July. Naseh, who has sewn up his lips, is seriously ill but is refusing treatment because, according to a member of the Sheffield Committee
Analysis: who are the terrorists?
Discussion of the UK’s tough anti-terrorist laws has focused on the low conviction rate for those arrested under their powers. What is ignored is that, of those who are convicted, many are not Muslim but are White Loyalists and/or racists. According to Home Office figures, since 11 September 2001, 609 people have been arrested and
Father speaks out against son’s arrest
At a public meeting held by the ‘Stop Police Terror’ group this week in Tooting, south London, Ashfaq Ahmad called on the government not to extradite his son, Babar, to the US, where he faces terrorism charges. ‘I want you to know the truth about my son despite everything that has happened and all the
‘Deadly detention’ protests
Over the weekend, 31 July/ 1August, campaigners held demonstrations against ‘deadly detention’ outside detention centres and prisons across UK. These were organised after two asylum seekers were found hanged, one in Harmondsworth and another in Dungavel. As a result, protests were held on Saturday at Campsfield and Dover removal centres and outside Liverpool Prison. The
The human cost of immigration detention
Concern is mounting that the issues behind the recent disturbance at Harmondsworth detention centre – the apparent failure of the private firms which run detention centres to provide full care to detainees and the emerging evidence of assaults by officers – will be ignored as prosecutions of at least seventeen detainees proceed. On 19 July
Plans to close CRE library
Librarians and race relations workers in London are shocked at proposals to close the library at the Commission for Racial Equality to members of the public. According to current plans, management has allocated no funds to the library service in the budget, current staff members are to be redeployed and the library itself is to
Report on Somali community welcomed
Somalis have lived in the UK since the 19th century, and over the last 20 years, tens of thousands have fled to the UK as refugees. Yet the community remains relatively ignored by mainstream services, unrepresented in any national debates and many of its members are marginalised. A recent report written by Hermione Harris, The
Rewinding racism
A youth work project based in Sandwell takes an unfashionable approach to anti-racism: telling young people that ‘race’ isn’t real. The towns around Sandwell, stretching westwards from Birmingham, each have their own legacy of racism. Smethwick was where the Labour Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, was defeated by Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths in 1964 after
Failing the vulnerable: the death of ten asylum seekers and other foreign nationals in UK detention
The self-inflicted death of a Ukrainian asylum seeker at Harmondsworth removal centre on 19 July would have gone unnoticed if it had not been for the subsequent eruption of large-scale violence forcing the closure of the centre and the dispersal of detainees to other detention centres and prisons. One of those dispersed, a 23-year-old Vietnamese
Alliance to fight anti-Gypsy racism
Two weeks after the CPS announced that it would not prosecute a Sussex bonfire society for burning a caravan bearing effigies of a Gypsy family and the number plate ‘P1KEY’, activists have decided to form their own Gypsy Bonfire Society to inform people about anti-Gypsy racism. Twelve members of the Firle Bonfire Society were arrested