Fifty people forcibly deported to Baghdad last night
I haven’t been in Iraq since I was seventeen. I don’t even speak Arabic so I can’t stay in Baghdad but how am I going to get from there to Kirkuk? I have a three year old son here. The UK is my home.’
PRESS RELEASE, International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, 17th June 2010
Approximately fifty Iraqi refugees were deported to Baghdad late last night. They were taken from detention centres from 14.00 yesterday and taken for a 22.45 flight. They are expected to have arrived in Baghdad by now.
Mahmoud Mohammed, originally from Kirkuk, who was held in Colnbrook spoke to the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq just before he was taken to the airport:
‘They are coming for us now, it’s wrong what the British Government is doing. I haven’t been in Iraq since I was seventeen. I don’t even speak Arabic so I can’t stay in Baghdad but how am I going to get from there to Kirkuk? I have a three year old son here. The UK is my home.’
Zed Karam, from Baghdad, who was held in Campsfield detention centre said:
‘I have lived here for three years. I had a good business in Iraq, I didn’t want to leave but I had to when I was threatened by the sectarian violence. I can’t eat or drink anything at the moment. If they put me on this flight next week they are sending me to my death.’
After the last flight to Baghdad in October, when ten people were deported to the thirty-three others on the plane were sent back by the Iraqi authorities, an Iraqi Government spokesman said the Iraqi Government was against the UK government forcing people back to the country, but more than one hundred Iraqis have been interviewed by Iraqi Government officials in the last two weeks to assess whether they will accept them into the country.
After a deportation flight last week thirteen people were detained in Baghdad airport by Iraqi police because they didn’t have the right ID.
Richard Whittell from the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq says:
‘this shameful act, which we fear will lead to even more deportations to Iraq, is a politically motivated consequence of the scapegoating of immigrants by the government. The Foreign Office says Iraq is not safe to travel to so why force Iraqi refugees there? Are their lives less important than British people’s?’
Dashty Jamal from the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees says:
‘The new government is playing politics with the lives of Iraqi refugees, many of whom had to leave because of the war David Cameron and his party supported. That war was not fought to make Iraq more secure, as David Cameron said, but for the economic and political interests of the US and the UK. Iraq continues to suffer from the effects of this war and people should not be sent back there. Iraqi refugees have the right to stay in this country with their families and lives here.’
(Ends)
Contact: 07824996724
E mail: ifir@hotmail.co.uk
www.federationifir.com
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Notes for editors
1. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees campaigns for the rights of Iraqi refugees and against forcible deportations and detention. The Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq campaigns against the forcible deportation and detention of Iraqi refugees.
2. See www.csdiraq.com for more information on previous deportation flights
3. At least four million Iraqis have been forced to flee either to another part of Iraq or abroad since the war began in 2003
