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
Theme: Health
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.
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
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
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
Young People Seeking Safety Week to be held across the UK
Young People Seeking Safety (YPSS) is organising a week long nationwide event for the purpose of raising awareness about the hardships met by unaccompanied young people seeking asylum in the UK. YPSS Week will take place between 28 March and 3 April 2011 where community groups will host events and exhibit music, film, and photography
In a time of war – the strange case of racism and politics in Barnsley
Does the selection of ‘war hero’ Dan Jarvis to fight the Barnsley seat signal a shift in Labour tactics? The imprisonment of disgraced politician Eric Illsley has forced a by-election on 3 March in one of Labour’s safest seats, Barnsley. For the first time since 1938 Labour has chosen a candidate who is neither local