A local law centre project to help unrepresented asylum seekers has demonstrated that the vast majority are wrongly refused legal help for their appeals. In June 2007, Devon Law Centre set up its Asylum Appellate Project (AAP), to help asylum seekers refused public funding for their appeals to obtain it, and to obtain the evidence
Theme: Health
Peaceful protest punished
A culture of fear seems to be re-establishing itself at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre (IRC), where a recent report reveals that peaceful protests about detention have led to those concerned being transferred to prison. The latest annual report of the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), published in March 2009,[1] reveals that in April 2008 a group
Kenan Malik: journey of an ex-anti-racist
Kenan Malik’s latest book From Fatwa To Jihad: the Rushdie affair and its legacy distorts anti-racist history and plays into the hands of today’s anti-Muslim politics. During the 1980s, Kenan Malik was active with an organisation called East London Workers Against Racism (ELWAR). In response to racist violence, ELWAR organised street patrols and ensured the
The parallel world of Europe’s anti-terror regimen
Below we reproduce the introduction to the latest edition of the European Race Bulletin. In the eighteen months since the European Race Bulletin carried out its last audit of the anti-terrorist laws, national governments, building on the blocks provided by the EU Common and Framework Decisions on Countering Terrorism and the European Union’s list of
Play at the National – neither very nice nor very funny
Why has the National Theatre extended the run of a play which has been accused of fuelling racism? In April 2009, we saw England People Very Nice by Richard Bean at the National Theatre. This was meant to be the last week the play was showing. Imagine our shock when we saw the website of
PR and the selling of border controls
Below Jon Burnett analyses a recent Sky TV series, UK Border Force, which portrayed the work of the UK Border Agency. In 2008, the Home Office paid £400,000 to Steadfast Television,[1] an independent production company, to help fund a documentary for Sky TV on UK border control. The programme, according to Sky, was ‘a revealing
Fifty years on – remembering Kelso Cochrane
Last weekend, a series of events were held in west London to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the racially motivated murder of Kelso Cochrane. Kelso, a 32-year-old immigrant from Antigua, was murdered on 17 May 1959 in Notting Hill by a gang of White men as he walked home from a local hospital after receiving
Lords refuse to hear Travellers’ appeal, whilst UN pledges support
Dale Farm residents’ hopes of an eleventh hour reprieve from eviction have been crushed by the House of Lords’ refusal to hear their appeal – a matter of hours after a spirited meeting in parliament saw the UN pledge its support. Residents from Dale Farm in Essex, often described as the largest ‘illegal’ Traveller site
Austria: ‘provoking and connecting’ the Kanafani way
Below we reproduce a discussion with members of the Austrian Kanafani Inter-Cultural Initiative. How did the Kanafani Inter-Cultural Initiative get started and what are its main goals? Baruch Wolski: To start with we were just a circle of Kurdish, Austrian, Turkish and Arab friends. One of the first things we organised were women-only dance events.
Kanafanis challenge Austrian integration policy
The Kanafani Inter-Cultural Initiative (Kulturverein Kanafani) in Vienna, which publishes the journal der.wisch, has set itself a goal: to challenge the mainstream political debate in Austria over ‘integration’. The IRR’s ‘Alternative Voices on Integration’ project attended the Kanafani Inter-Cultural Initiative discussion forum ‘Integration – a miracle cure put to the test’ in Vienna on 5