Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq press release: An increasing number of Iraqi Kurds have been detained in the past month.
We estimate the Home Office may have 40 or more Iraqi Kurds in detention in Colnbrook, Campsfield, Harmonsworth and Dover. We understand that the Home Office plans to restart forced removals to Iraq in September.
All over Britain Iraqis are living in fear of a dawn raid on their home, or of arrest at their place of work or when they go to report at the Home Office signing centre. They fear losing even the precarious position they have found in British society.
Kurdistan unsafe
The dangers of central and southern Iraq are well-known. Less well-known are conditions in Northern Iraq / South Kurdistan. But news from there shows that contrary to what Tony Blair and his Home Office would have us believe, Northern Iraq too is not free, safe and democratic.
In the last 3 weeks some 400 people have been arrested and 60 people injured.
It is reported that about 2000 young people have fled the country within a week.
Security forces from the two main Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, regularly shoot demonstrators.
Investigative journalists are routinely arrested by the security forces.
Honour killings and suicides by women have reached epidemic levels.
Many people arrested in March 2006 in Halabja after protests about lack of health care and services in the town, and the way the PUK leadership cash in on Halabja’s suffering, are still in prison.
At the end of July cement factory workers, striking because they had not been paid, were shot at and 13 were injured by the security forces in Suleimanyia.
On 7 August 1000 people took part in a demonstration in Chamchamal, and the PUK arrested ten of them.
In Darbandixan south of Suleimanyia on 7 August during a demonstration the PUK arrested 100 protesters and wounded 11.
Protests have also taken place in Kalar, Kifri, Zarayan, Kirkuk.
Why the protests in Kurdistan?
People are fed up with seeing rampant official corruption and incompetence and the luxurious lifestyles of the party leaders and their hangers-on. This all contrasts painfully with run-away inflation, high unemployment rates, petrol shortages, water shortages, power cuts, a losing battle to make ends meet for ordinary people, and persecution if you overstep the narrow bounds of acceptable criticism.
European Council for Refugees opposes forced and mandatory returns
The European Council on Exiles and Refugees said in its March 2006 report, “ECRE believes that the current situation in Iraq is such that the mandatory or forced return of Iraqis is unacceptable, and recommends a continued ban on forced return to any part of the country, including the Kurdish Autonomous Region.”
Our demands
We have said before, and we repeat now, that Iraq, including Kurdistan, is dangerous, and that it is wrong to return people there. People who had 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. Plus the general security situation is not good.
Once again we call on the Home Office to
recognise that Iraq is not safe, and that people should not be returned there.
to regularise the status of asylum seekers from Iraq to whom they have so far refused protection, by giving them leave to remain, and the right either to work or to decent levels of benefits, in line with the recent proposals made by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in their document “Recognising Rights, Recognising Political Realities” published on 13 July.
For more information contact Sarah Parker on 0207– 809 - 0633 or 0793-211-6615 sarahp107@hotmail.com or Dashty Jamal, International Federation of Iraqi Refugees 0785 603 2991or d.jamal@ntlworld.com or sarahp107@hotmail.com.
See also the website www.csdiraq.com
No Deportations to Iraq!
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