Since Monday 8, January the Home Office has again begun arresting rejected Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in Manchester, Birmingham and Doncaster, with a view to forcibly removing them to Northern Iraq.
This shortly after UNHCR has warned that Iraq cannot deal with the number of displaced persons it already has, that Tony Blair has said Britain has to keep fighting wars, and George Bush has announced that he intends to send 21,500 more troops to
The Coalition to Stop Deportations to (CSDIraq) has protested in the The Home strongest possible
Office still terms against these arrests. It does not
including accept that Kurdistan, is dangerous, and that it is many people
•LU were refused people there.
who had unfairly problems with the KDP or PUK or Islamist groups in the past will still be at risk of the same problems if they are sent back now - the KDP and PUK are still in power, and the Islamists are still active". John Reid
The general security situation is not good, and conditions for ordinary people are very difficult even in
Kurdistan - little electricity or oil for heating or cooking, water shortages, inflation, housing shortages, lack of decent jobs, restrictions on freedom of speech etc. Frequent protests take place against poor living conditions and the corruption and incompetence of the authorities, and the protests are often met with violence and mass arrests.
The latest UNHCR report on Iraq recognises that conditions in Kurdistan are problematic; it lists some of these problems, and says that states may therefore wish to extend humanitarian protection to people who have not been found in need of protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
CSDIraq is aware that people who were forcibly returned last year have indeed suffered various problems since their return, and some have had to leave the area again.
But the Home Office seems determined to send people back and to ignore the reality of conditions there.
CSDIraq recently received a reply to a letter in which we explained why people should not be sent back.
The Home Office still does not accept that many people were refused unfairly, or that conditions in Northern Iraq are unsuitable for returns, and tries to offload responsibility for what happens to people who went back voluntarily onto the Organisation for Migration, the organisation the Home Office uses to operate "voluntary returns" Northern
The campaign is now calling on the Home Office to
• recognise that Iraq is not safe, and that people should not be returned there. Embassy in London on January 11 Guantanamo "prisoners" and a brutal "guard" in action during the protest outside the US