over fifty people deported to iraqi kurdistan

Between fifty and fifty-five people were forcibly deported to Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday afternoon on a specially chartered mass deportation flight, operated by Alitalia airlines.

Four white coaches took deportees from Tinsley House, Brook House, Colnbrook and Dover immigration prisons, with others brought in G4S vans. The flight left Stanstead at 5pm and arrived in Erbil International Airport at 10 in the evening. Each person was given $100 then left at the airport.

stop deportations to iraq – defend iraqi and kurdish refugees

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF IRAQ REFUGEES-IFIR

Human rights campaigners, trade unions and refugee rights organizations across Europe, please join our campaign to defend Iraqi and Kurdish refugees

The American coalition forces attacked Iraq in the name of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq instead they have brought terror and killing. It has been six years since the American led invasion of Iraq, yet killing, security, poverty, unemployment and lack of basic services continue in Iraq. Yet Iraqi refugees remain the highest percentage of any nationality entering neighbouring countries, Europe, America and worldwide.

meeting for international women’s day

by David Broder

On Friday 6th March a meeting was held at the University of London Union to mark International Women’s Day.

Tamar Katz, a young Israeli woman who was repeatedly imprisoned for refusing to join the Israeli army, spoke alongside Laura Schwartz from Feminist Fightback, the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (Hekmatist) member Houzan Mahmoud, the Independent journalist Terri Jude, Green Party MEP Jean Lambert and Maria Exall from the Communication Workers’ Union.

Particularly inspiring was the story told by the young Israeli woman who had rejected militarism and the ‘normal’ path of the country’s youths in favour of a principled stance of solidarity with Palestinians, despite repeated imprisonment as well as the criticism she was subject to whenever the question of her age – and thus her refusal to join the IDF – was raised. This speech was warmly received by the audience.

report on student stop the war rally

by David Broder

There were two self-proclaimed “socialists” on the platform at the Student Stop the War rally in London today – Tony Benn and Lindsey German – and most of the one hundred people in the audience were from the Socialist Workers’ Party and other “socialist” groups. But working-class politics was not on the agenda. Not only did they fail to cite the workers’ movement as the agency to fight imperialism, there was almost no talk of solidarity with Marxists and trade unionists in conflict zones like the Middle East and the Caucasus.

east against west… or class against class?

text of leaflet for the 6th september student stop the war meeting (from 3pm, birkbeck college, malet st, central london).

The recent Russian-Georgian war and the ensuing crisis in the Kremlin’s relations with the European Union and USA have little to do with the fate of South Ossetia. The territory and the 70,000 people who live there – a third of the population of Hackney – are merely an insignificant pawn in the current bout of great power rivalry. Although we have not yet seen an attack on Iran, conflict zones and fronts of tension are expanding at a canter.

demonstration: hands off kurdish asylum seekers!

the international federation of iraqi refugees and coalition to stop deportations to iraq are holding a joint lobby to protest at the uk home office’s continuing policy of forcible deportations to iraq.

lobby of the home office, 2 marsham st, london, westminster/st james’ park, thursday 11 september, 12.30 – 14.30

the families of hussein ali and muhammed hussein will be attending the lobby: hussein ali committed suicide days after being forcibly returned to kurdistan on 7 august. muhammad hussein died of cancer following six years of struggle to gain refugee status in the uk.