Skip to content or view screen version

Anti-deportation protest at the Kurdistan Regional Government office in London

One of NoBorders | 16.04.2009 15:32 | Iraq | Migration

About 20 people gathered outside the London office of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government to highlight its complicity in the mass deportations of Iraqi-Kurdish refugees. The protest, which was called by the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) and supported by London No Borders, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns and Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, coincided with an international demonstration outside the UN offices in Geneva. No Borders South Wales also held a solidarity demonstration at the UK Border Agency office in Cardiff.








Over 400 hundred Iraqi-Kurdish refugees have been forcibly deported from the UK via charter flights over the last eight months. Separated from their friends and families, they are arrested, handcuffed and put on special charter flights that carry them to northern Iraq, where they are received by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) security forces. Many of them have since committed suicide, been kidnapped or killed in car bombs. Others have gone into hiding or changed their names to avoid persecution.

Many of those deported had fled the KRG authorities, to whose mercy they are being sent back. Earlier this week, a report by Amnesty International revealed "a pattern of abuses" committed by KRG security forces. A 2007 report by Human Rights Watch similarly revealed that KRG security forces "routinely torture and deny basic due-process rights to detainees."

Badran Bewari, an Iraqi-Kurdish refugee who was present at the demonstration, said:
"The Kurdistan Regional Government, which is trading Kurdish refugees for financial gains, is complicit in these tragedies and should stop 'cooperating' with European governments against its own people."


"I don't know when I'll see my partner or my daughter again. I speak to them in tears on the phone every night. I am still in shock after being sent back. I have had to change my name so I'm not targeted by the same people who threatened to kill me before. My entire world has caved in. The people who are still in the UK should take a stand against the policy of both their government and the KRG." - Abbas, deported in February 2009.

One of NoBorders

Comments

Hide the following comment

Cardiff Demo is on Friday

16.04.2009 17:06

No Borders South Wales will be holding a demonstration in solidarity with the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) outside the UK Border Agency, 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff on Friday 17th April at 1pm, it was not today as suggested in the article.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427298.html

No Border South Wales
mail e-mail: noborderswales@riseup.net
- Homepage: http://noborderswales.org.uk