IFIR

Mass deportation to Iraq planned as attacks on demonstrators throughout country continue

As anti-government demonstrations continue across Iraq the UK Government plans to deport refugees back to Baghdad next week. More than 25 people, including one Christian, have been arrested, detained in detention centres across the country and have been given deportation tickets for a charter flight leaving on Wednesday 9th March to Baghdad.

More than 29 people have been killed and hundreds injured as government security and militia forces have shot at demonstrators in both Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Government controlled cities, and tried to prevent them going out to demonstrate. (see, for example, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030401061.html)

Barzan Tofiq, from Kirkuk, told the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, “I ran away from a terrorist group. I have no family there now. I’ve been living peacefully here in Dover. They tried to send me back before but I put scissors in my mouth and cut it so they couldn’t send me, I was so scared. If I go back it’s dangerous for me: the terrorist group is still there. I ask people in the UK to support me and to stop this flight leaving.”

Lokman Abdul, from Halabja in Kurdistan told the IFIR:

“I have been here for 11 years. My wife has British citizenship. I am a film-maker and a writer. I lost most of my family in the gas attack on Halabja by Saddam Hussein. Because of the films and articles I have been making here criticising the parties in the Kurdish government I won’t be safe there. You can see what they do to people who criticise them: they kill them, like they have done in these last two weeks.”

A statement from the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq says:

“in the whole of Iraq people are demonstrating against injustice, corruption, repression, unemployment and lack of basic services and the Iraqi and Kurdish governments are responding with violence and killing. And yet the UK Government, while it is saying how much it supports democracy and human rights in Libya, continues to support the corrupt governments in Iraq and Kurdistan, and now is deporting people, many of whom left to flee this same government violence, into the middle of it! It is a criminal hypocrisy and must be stopped.”

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Contact and for background, comment and interviews with deportees: 07856032991, 07824996724

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