News

Black history project launched

The Institute of Race Relations has been awarded a grant of £49,800 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create an educational Black History Collection. The grant has been made to allow the IRR, which has been collecting materials created by Black organisations and/or on Black struggles since the 1950s, to form these into a coherent

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Black Experience Archive Trust launch

An inspiring new project has brought activists and Black schoolchildren in North London together to create an innovative digital community history archive. West Green BEAT (Black Experience Archive Trust) is a collaboration between activist film-makers Migrant Media, Parkview Academy and the West Green Learning Centre in Tottenham and the London Metropolitan Archives. More than forty

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News

The New Londoners

A new paper circulating in London, The New Londoners, produced by refugees and asylum seekers, provides a strong, alternative voice for these marginalised and often vilified communities. The tabloid-size 24-page newspaper, produced by the Refugee Media Action Group at the Migrants Resource Centre for Refugee Week, is slickly produced with quality pictures and interesting articles

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News

Human rights advocacy graduates speak out

Two days before Human Rights Day, sixteen asylum seekers and refugees graduated from an intensive human rights advocacy course. On Friday 8 December, Amnesty International hosted a graduation ceremony in London, which was attended by family, friends, activists and sympathetic MPs. After hearing speeches by Cameron Bowles of Education Action and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty,

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Sergey Baranyuk forgotten at Harmondsworth

A recent inquest into the death of Ukrainian asylum seeker Sergey Baranyuk provided a glimpse of how asylum seekers are treated behind the closed doors of removal centres in the UK – detained, forgotten and slowly driven to despair. Sergey Baranyuk travelled from the Ukraine to the UK and claimed asylum. He died awaiting voluntary

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Chronicler of Black history dies

Peter Fryer, the author of ‘Staying Power: the history of black people in Britain’ died on 31 October. His funeral is on Wednesday 8 November at 2pm at Islington Crematorium, High Road, East Finchley, London N2 9AG. Peter Fryer, born in 1927, was from an early age associated with left movements in the UK. As

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Remembering Naser Al Shdaida

Last week in Burgess Park, south London, the Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers (SDCAS), held a memorial service and tree planting ceremony for Syrian asylum seeker, Naser Al Shdaida, who took his life earlier this year after his asylum claim was refused. Naser was a regular user of the SDCAS which provides a ‘warm

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News

Conference finds common cause

Over 250 individuals representing more than eighty organisations (listed below) attended the Institute of Race Relations’ one-day conference, Racism, Liberty and the ‘War on Terror’ on Saturday 16 September. Its aim was to unite activists from a broad range of campaigns in an understanding of how racism, imperialism and globalisation interact today. As keynote speaker

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News

Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers recount enforced removal

Two of the thirty-two Iraqi Kurds who were deported to northern Iraq on a military plane this week have given eye-witness accounts of their enforced removal. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) has spoken to two of the deportees, who have said they are ‘angry, tired and stressed’ after being handed over to militia

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