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UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no
one notices
1.4.2008
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April 1, 2008
Blinded by the apparent allure of a tall, thin woman
from France, Britain’s press completely ignored the
forcible deportation, on Thursday, of 60 Iraqi
Kurds, who were transported back to a decidedly
uncertain future on a German plane from a UK
airport. Each of the 60 “failed asylum seekers,” as
they are officially known, was escorted by an armed
Home Office guard funded by the UK taxpayer. The
guards had previously seized the men from the
detention centers at Campsfield and Colnbrook in
what looked uncomfortably like a “dawn raid.”
According to the International Federation of Iraq
Refugees (IFIR), which immediately issued a press
release that, unfortunately, did not include the
words “Carla Bruni” in its title, the plane arrived
at Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan at 3 am on
Friday morning (see:
Report PDF ).
Confused, tired and unsure of where they were, the
men refused to leave the plane. The Home Office
guards then called for assistance from guards of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), who were
waiting at the airport. 25 of these men boarded the
plane, and “pushed and threatened the asylum seekers
off the plane onto two waiting coaches.” |
UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no one notices |
The ITIR press release
continued, “At the airport the asylum seekers
noticed three jeeps observing them, which they
thought contained UNHCR personnel [from the office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees],www.ekurd.net
but they were not allowed to talk to the
people in the jeeps.” They were then transported to
Ain Kawa Bridge, in a village near Erbil, where they
were abandoned, even though many of them were
injured and all of them had lost their luggage,
including their all-important mobile phones. An
eye-witness reported that the KRG guards “knew
nothing about human rights.” “If I had seen it in a
film,” he said, “I would not have believed it.”
Compounding the men’s plight, many are not even from
Kurdistan, but from cities further south, including
Mosul and Kirkuk, even though, as ITIR noted,
“people from this area have generally not been
removed by the Home Office in the past” (see:
here PDF ).
Rizgar Bahem, from Mosul, protested about being
abandoned at the bridge, and tried to reason with
the guards. “I am not from Kurdistan,” he said. “Why
are you leaving me here?” The guards’ leader
“responded by hitting him with the muzzle of his gun
and pushed him off the coach.”
Even those from Kurdistan are not necessarily safe.
As IFIR
noted last November,
on the second anniversary of the forced deportation
of 15 Iraqi Kurds on a military plane from Brize
Norton airbase in Oxfordshire, “The Iraqi Kurdish
asylum seekers are not criminals. They are civilians
and victims of the war in Iraq. Kurdistan is not an
independent state and is not part of stable state.
Thus the Kurdish people are in limbo and the future
of their lives is uncertain.”
Last February, when around 50 others were forcibly
deported, Amnesty International issued an even more
strongly worded response.
Jan Shaw, the UK’s Refugee Programme Director,
explained, “Forcing people back to Iraq, even to the
North, will put people's lives at risk. Amnesty
remains opposed to any forcible return of
asylum-seekers to Iraq, including to the Kurdish
region. In post-conflict situations people should
not be returned unless there is stability and a
durable peace; neither of those is true in Iraq.
Given the colossal scale of fighting and bloodshed
in the country, it is hard to describe Iraq's
situation as 'post-conflict' at all. Imagine how
terrifying it must be for those watching the chaos
unfolding in Iraq on the news to then receive a
letter from the government stating that they are
about to be flown back there.”
Over the last few years, the British government has
returned over a hundred ”failed asylum seekers” to
Iraqi Kurdistan. Previous deportations have at least
been covered in the media, but the silence in this
latest case suggests that ”deportation fatigue” has
set in.
On the other hand, it may be that everyone’s still
blinded by the presence of Carla Bruni, although on
this matter, as on so many others, the wife of the
French President has expressed no opinion.
For further information on the deportation, email
Dashty Jamal, IFIR’s Secretary on: d.jamal@ntlworld.com
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
indymedia org.uk
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