همبستگى - فدراسيون سراسرى پناهندگان ايرانى- انگليس
International Federation of Iranian Refugees, UK Branch
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24 January 2006

“Life without Fear”

Campaign for the rights of Iranian asylum seekers in the UK

We have fled the barbaric regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Under this regime, laughter, happiness and love are a crime and sexual discrimination, flogging and executions are the norm. The regime imprisons, tortures and executes people for their beliefs. It executes children and teenagers. It stones women and men to death and hangs gays for consensual sex. Under this regime, workers are denied the right to organise and strike; labour activists are routinely beaten up and imprisoned. There is no freedom of expression and opposition political activity is banned. Women are treated as second-class citizens and sexual apartheid rules. Young people are denied the prospect of any meaningful life; their protests for rights and freedoms are violently suppressed. The list is endless.

To flee such conditions is the basic right of people, and many have already done so and continue to do so – often at the cost of endangering their lives and that of their families. They take such risks to find shelter in other countries in order to escape from the nightmare of prison, torture and persecution. They risk starvation and death at sea or in freezing mountains to get themselves to a safe place. Hundreds and thousands have had their dreams buried on the way to safe zones.

Arriving at a safe shore, such as the UK, is not the end of the agonies of asylum seekers. For many, another nightmare is just beginning! In clear breach of its obligations under international conventions on the rights of persons fleeing persecution, the British government has arbitrarily refused the applications of thousands of refugees who have fled the Islamic dictatorship in Iran. The reasons for these refusals do not correlate with the truth. When a refugee says she is a woman who escaped the Islamic reaction, they do not accept her application. If a worker says that they had not been paid any salary for months, and the response to their protest had been arrest and torture, they are told that those are not reasonable grounds for refugee status. If a student says they were persecuted for their activities against the regime, they are not believed. If someone says that as a youth they did not have any political, social or cultural freedoms, their applications are denied any consideration.

The current policy of the British government towards asylum seekers is totally arbitrary, irresponsible and inhumane. Refusing their applications and deporting them back to Iran is tantamount to denying the crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and returning victims back to their persecuters.

The International Federation of Iranian Refugees (IFIR) in the UK protests against this policy of the British government. Since 16 January 2006 we have started a campaign for a period of two months with the following aims:

1- Iran under the Islamic Republic is not a safe country. No Iranian asylum seeker should be deported to Iran;
2- There should be an immediate stop to all detentions of Iranian asylum seekers. All those currently in detention in British prisons for the ‘crime’ of seeking asylum should be freed;
3- Given the present suppressive nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the British government must change its policy towards the asylum seekers and grant them refuge.

We urge all humanitarian organisations and individuals to support our campaign.

For more information, please contact Siamak Amjadi, the Secretary of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees, UK Branch.

Tel: 079 4675 2534 or 079 3186 6985
 ifiruk@yahoo.com

BM Box 1919
London WC1N 3XX