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.