Move to halt war on liberties

Jewish campaigners plan talks in a bid to resist government attacks on civil liberties.

The move will come at a public meeting on Sunday (13 November) to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938 when Germans murdered Jews and destroyed many Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in the first step towards the Holocaust.

It comes amid controversy over new legislation piloted by home secretary Charles Clarke which would allow Britain to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 90 days.

Speakers at the London meeting will include Dr Donald Kenrick, vice-president of the Gypsy Council, who will tell of the 500,000 gypsies, or Roma, who died in the Holocaust with six million Jews.

And he will talk about Roma asylum seekers who face prejudice and harsh treatment in Britain today.

Reports have shown that immigration officers in Glasgow have dragged children and their parents – who fled death threats in Kosovo - from their homes to the notorious Bedfordshire detention centre at Yarlswood.

Last December the Law Lords found that the government practised systematic race discrimination with its “pre-entry clearance scheme” in the Czech Republic to stop Roma asylum seekers reaching Britain.

They targeted Roma – “readily identifiable through their darker skin and hair ” - for more intrusive questioning and refused almost 90 per cent of Roma passengers, compared with 0.2 per cent of non-Roma passengers.

The Guardian on Monday reported that the children’s charity Barnardo’s attacked the government over stopping all welfare benefits for asylum seekers and their families who do not voluntarily return to their home countries.

Another speaker will be Teresa Hayter, author of the book Open Borders and a member of Barbed Wire Britain, the network to end migrant and refugee detention, and of a campaign to shut Campsfield detention centre, near Oxford.

Over 1,800 people, nearly all of them asylum seekers, are locked up in detention camps and prisons in Britain, without trial, time limit or automatic right to bail.

A third speaker will be lawyer Daniel Machover, who specialises in international human rights law and civil actions against the Home Office.

Mr Machover demanded a criminal investigation into officials at the Israeli embassy in London who helped a retired Israeli general wanted in Britain for alleged war crimes to escape arrest.

A war-crimes arrest warrant was issued over claims that Doron Almog ordered the destruction of 59 civilian homes in Gaza in breach of the Geneva Conventions.

As detectives waited at Heathrow airport when Almog flew in on a private visit, Israel’s military attaché in London arrived on the plane to advise him that he faced arrest. Almog stayed on the plane until its return to Israel.

The meeting will take place at 7.30 pm at the Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Square, W1. Admission is by donation.