etc. No reasons are given for this merry-go-round but it must be lucrative for the transport providers.
19. The personnel of the private companies that transport detainees between centres and to airports often inflict violence
On Lne detainees. Covert television reporting has exposed this, and reports by organisations
the Medical SUCH Foundation for the Victims of Torture (Harm on Removal: Excessive Force Against Failed Seekers, October 2004) and Bail for Immigration Detainees have given details of individual instances; there are civil legal cases in progress that arise out of this practice.
Newspaper reporting (again, of necessity, covert as the government is strongly opposed to reporting of what happens inside detention centres) and detainees' accounts also report the racism of some detention guards.
20. Arising from the above, and always ensuring that
22. The JCHR inquiry is into the treatment of asylum seekers, but much of the above applies also in the case of other migrants detained who are not seeking asylum but may be "overstayers" or otherwise "undocumented migrants".
They are often seized from their workplaces or, like asylum seekers, from their homes or even in the street for paperwork megularilies. They are parted from their families and possessions, and taken by security van to a
centre WILs information about what will happen to them next. They may have come here legally, estabusded tamily, and stayed on without regularising their position. Removing a person to a country they have not been in for maybe eight or more years is a punitive process that breaks up families and creates dependence on the state for those left with no breadwinner (inforIllalloll from Bail for Immigration Detainees). The Home Office forcibly removed 34 Iraqi Kurds on an RAF flight to Erbil in Northern Iraq / South Kurdistan on September 5. Lawyers succeeded in obtaining full injunctions to stop the removal of five people - including one who had attempted suicide three times since being detained - but the Home Office immediately took five more people already in Colnbrook and put them on the flight.
The Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq held a picket outside the Home Office on September 5, sent a contingent to the antiwar demonstration in Manchester, and held a public meeting in Huddersfield.
Local committees have been set up in several cities including Hudderstield, and supporters are seeking to meet with local MPs to ask them to try to stop further deportations. An attempt to hold a press conference in South Kurdistan with some of those deported was stopped by the authorities. New exodus from heard that 1200 people trying to leave Iraq had recently been turned back at the Turkish border.
Those fleeing are going to Jordan, Iran, Turkey, and Europe, including Britain. Of course the British government will try to cover this up for as long as possible, but there is no doubt that their own policies are precipitating this new exodus.
There is now new evidence, that the US and Britain may be advancing their Plan B to separate South Kurdistan from Iraq, in order, they hope, to partially extricate themselves from the red pepper raising the pail cal amperature quagmire of Iraq and to build up a client state to serve their plans to remould the region.
The evidence includes the recent announcement by Kurdistan Regional Government's President Barzani, that the Iraqi flag will no longer be used in Kurdistan, and the plans being discussed by the KR Parliament to incorporate various Kurdish cities and areas including Kirkuk and Khanaquin, (still ruled by the Baathists after part of Kurdistan was separated in 1991 into the Kurdish area
iragi Asylum
Seekers Say Iraqi Asylum
Seekers Say NO NOT SAFE
to Deportation One of the uses of this new client state will be as a base from which to pursue the attempted demolition of Iran. These subjects will be covered in more depth in future issues of Socialist Resistance. For more information contact Sarah Parker on 02078090633, [email protected] or Dashty Jamal, Secretary, International Federation of Iraqi Refugees 0785603291 [email protected] The political frustration is palpable. A foreign policy doomed to disaster and domestic policies increasing divisions between rich and poor, eroding civil liberties, handing health and education services to the market and contributing to climate chaos. Surely we didn't vote for this? The search is on for alternatives - and you can find them in Red Pepper