Refugee Follow

AT THE very moment David Blunkett was tendering his resignation at 10 Downing Street before Christmas, 50 Zimbabwean refugees and their supporters were angrily demonstrating outside.

The destruction of Fallujah raised many questions for Iraqis—questions voiced by three friends aged 24 to 30. The three men are traders who were trapped in Syria as the US laid siege to Fallujah. The government of Iyad Allawi is refusing to allow men of fighting age to re-enter the country. The three have joined the growing band of Iraqi refugees in Syria.

THE BRITISH government is turning back refugees from Darfur in Sudan, even though it says that appalling suffering and mass murder are going on in the area.

SOME 34 people joined the delegation to Palestine, united around the common theme of action against war and for peace. We came together from mosques, trade unions, universities, schools and the voluntary sector to see the conditions in the Palestinian refugee camps for ourselves.

MORE than 150 people marched through Sheffield last Saturday in support of a Kurdish asylum seeker who had been on hunger strike for over 40 days.

CAMPAIGNERS are stepping up action to defend Naseh Ghafor, the 20 year old Kurdish refugee who is being threatened with deportation to Iraq.

Arshad Suhail Masih is one of the many refugee prisoners held at Dungavel prison near Glasgow.

MORE THAN 200 people joined last Sunday’s protest at the Dungavel detention centre in South Lanarkshire, called by the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.

THE TRAGEDY of New Labour’s draconian asylum policy moved north last Friday night, from Harmondsworth to the Dungavel detention centre in Scotland.

A TRAGEDY at the refugee detention centre in Harmondsworth, near Heathrow airport, sparked protests by inmates this week.

Hardly a week passes without racist scare stories in the press directed against refugees and asylum seekers. The racism is not just directed against asylum seekers. Two new reports give damning evidence of the rise in racism against Muslims since 11 September 2001.

A 27 year old man was found dead at his flat in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow on 18 May after apparently committing suicide. He was Zekria Ghulam Mohammed, an Afghan asylum seeker. The papers that are normally so keen to splash pictures of refugees over their pages ignored his death.