Approximately fifty men originally from northern Iraq have been given deportation tickets telling them they will be removed to the Kurdistan Regional Government controlled area of northern Iraq.  They are currently being held in immigration prisons in Heathrow, Gatwick and Doncaster.   

The tickets, the first of which were given last Tuesday, state that they will be:

‘removed no sooner than 5 days and no later than 25 days from the date of this notice’.

and are those used for specially chartered, mass deportation flight, similar to that of the 14th October to Baghdad.

One detainee told the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees:

‘if they send us back they have no respect for the human rights.  They arrested me two weeks ago and have locked me up even though they have convicted me of no crime.  Now they say they are going to deport me but they don’t even tell me when.  I have no life there.’ 

(Ends)

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www.csdiraq.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.  It is a member of the Coalitions to Stop Deportations to Iraq (www.csdiraq.com)

2. According to Home Office figures, 632 people were forcibly deported to the KRG region in the north between 2005 and 2008. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees estimates that the figure, with monthly mass deportations of 50 people at a time since the beginning of 2009, currently stands at over 1000.

3. Many of those deported had fled the KRG authorities, to whose mercy they are being sent back.  At least three people have committed suicide, while others have been killed in car bombs and kidnapped, since being deported.  Many others live in hiding.  Last month, 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." The Amnesty International report, 'Hope and Fear', is available at http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18152. The Human Rights Watch report, 'Caught in the Whirlwind', is available at http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/07/02/caught-whirlwind-0.

4. As the government seeks to increase the number and frequency of deportations, it has started to increasingly use specially chartered flights to deport as many as 80 people at a time. In 2008 alone, there were 66 such flights, deporting a total of 1,529 people.

5. The flight will be the first to Iraq since the 14th October, when ten people were deported to Baghdad and the thirty-three others on the plane were sent back by Iraqi authorities.  See www.csdiraq.com for more information

6. Mass deportation flights further limit refugees’ access to due legal process. The UK Border Agency's Enforcement Instructions and Guidance states that: "charter flights may be subject to different arrangements where it is considered appropriate because of the complexities, practicalities and costs of arranging an operation." Deportees and their representatives are not even told the date of the flight. On the day of the flight, they are woken up early in the morning and forced to switch off their phones so they are unable to instruct their solicitors to submit last-minute appeals.  More details can be found in the Stop Deportation network briefing: http://stopdeportation.net/node/1

7. To operate a mass deportation flight, the Home Office contracts a range of private companies. Airlines that are known to have been used include Hamburg International and Czech Airlines. Bus companies to drive people from detention to the airport have included WH Tours and Woodcock coaches. Private security companies used to escort deportees include Group 4 Securicor and SERCO.

8. Standard practice on mass deportation flights, confirmed by people who have been deported, is for each deportee to be shadowed by at least two security guards, handcuffed and forced onto the plane under the threat of violence. Any disobedience or attempt to resist has been met with disproportionate force to 'restrain' the deportees. A mass deportation flight to Iraqi Kurdistan in September 2008 saw deportees who tried to leave the plane beaten by the security guards, with one man's head hit against a window of the plane smashing it. The flight was cancelled.

9. For more details on previous mass deportations to the KRG, see:
http://csdiraq.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1&limit=5&limit...
http://csdiraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=1
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3208
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/30/immigrationpolicy.immigra...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/12/asylum-seekers-kurds

10. There have been two blockades of mass deportation flights to the KRG, On 19th October 2009 six protestors were found not guilty of blockading a mass deportation flight to Iraqi Kurdistan in May 2009.  Details at:

http://stopdeportation.net/node/12

http://stopdeportation.net/node/16

http://stopdeportation.net/node/28