The wholesale deportation of Sri Lankan Tamils in defiance of human rights concerns, and the feting of a leader accused of war crimes, demonstrate that asylum policy has as little to do with humanitarian considerations as it did a generation ago. For the British government, entertaining Sri Lanka’s president Rajapaksa at the diamond jubilee celebrations
A screening tour of COINTELPRO101, a documentary about the FBI’s attacks on the Black Panther movement, with discussions on how BME communities in the UK now face similar tactics. Tuesday 19 June 2012, 6.30pm British Film Institute, Blue Room, Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XT Chaired by Cageprisoners and Colin Prescod Thursday 21 June
A fundraiser for Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA). Tuesday 26 June 2012, 7-10.30pm The Tabernacle, 35 Powis Square, Notting Hill, London W11 2AY including music from: Alabama 3 Goddaz Speakers: Paddy Hill – MOJO, Birmingham 6 Janet Cunliffe – Mother of Jordan Cunliffe Related Links JENGbA Download an event flyer here.
Graham Murray reports on the ‘normalisation’ of extreme Right politics in France. The defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy on 6 May 2012 should be celebrated as a victory against Islamophobia and racism. No other French presidential candidate from ‘mainstream’ politics tapped into the ideology of the far Right to the extent that Sarkozy did. In an
An event to mark the significance of the 50th anniversary of the first Commonwealth Immigrants Act and the impact of immigration control legislation. Thursday 14 June 2012, 6.30-9pm Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H 0XG Speakers: Professor Nigel Harris – University College London Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah (Chair) – Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society Professor
The government’s rebranding of the UK Border Agency (UKBA)’s operational arm from immigration service to Border Force encapsulates the approach which treats migrants as criminals. Suddenly, there were all these references to ‘border force’ officials on the news. Border Force. The name brands the organisation as somehow more powerful, hard-hitting, but also and contradictorily tells
The government routinely breaches its own policies by detaining torture survivors, according to a report published this week by Medical Justice. Eleven years ago, a set of rules governing the detention of people for immigration purposes was published. Among them was the innocuous-sounding Rule 35, stating (among other things) that torture survivors should never be
The Administrative Court in Dresden has ruled that a clause in the German government’s counter-extremism strategy is in part unlawful Last year, IRR News reported that the German federal government had introduced a clause into its grant conditions for federally-funded victim support groups fighting far-right extremism which obliges them to swear allegiance to the German
The rejection of race discrimination claims brought by a young Nigerian woman who was brought in illegally by her employers, brutalised and denied wages, gives a green light to racism. MH was probably only 14 when her employer brought her from Nigeria to work in the UK as an au pair, promising to send her
Another High Court judge rebukes the UK Border Agency for its detention of mentally ill foreign offenders. On 17 April, Mr Justice Singh QC ruled that the detention by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) of a Nigerian offender was unlawful[1] after a psychiatrist said the man urgently needed proper assessment in a mental hospital, four
