Tag: Failed Kurdish Asylum Seekers

Deportation flights to Iraq resume despite UN warning

Asylum seekers have been returned to Baghdad after a temporary suspension of repatriation flights

Owen Bowcott

Iraqi protesters in Baghdad. As many as 30 have been killed in the 'Arab spring' demonstrations. Photograph: Shihab Ahmed/EPA

The first group deportation of Iraqis for six months has seen a number of asylum seekers returned to a country convulsed by civil rights protests and violence.

The decision to resume charter flights was in defiance of warnings by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees that it is unsafe to remove people to Baghdad and central Iraq.

The plane, organised by the UK Borders Agency in conjunction with the Swedish government and the EU border agency Frontex, left Stansted airport at 7am on Wednesday. Last-minute appeals on behalf of other failed asylum seekers prevented several others from being forcibly repatriated. It is not known how many deportees from Sweden were on board.

Charter flight removals to Baghdad were temporarily suspended last October after the European court of human rights ruled that a surge in sectarian violence and suicide bombings made Baghdad and the surrounding area too dangerous.

The Home Office has since pledged to “continue to undertake” deportations but acknowledged that, in cases where the Strasbourg court supported petitions from individuals demonstrating that they were at risk, it would not enforce removal.

Refugee organisations said that as many as 17 people had been deported, but the Home Office maintained that only eight had gone.

Protesters in Baghdad and northern Iraq are staging “Arab spring”-style protests against corruption, poor services and lack of employment. As many as 30 demonstrators have been killed in the capital and the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya since mid-February as authorities have suppressed dissent.

The UNHCR has criticised European states, including the UK, that have sent Iraqis back to the five central governorates, or provinces, including Baghdad. “We are very concerned about reports that the Home Office has returned Iraqis to Baghdad,” a spokeswoman for the UNHCR said. “The situation for minorities [such as Christians] in Iraq is very precarious. There has been a deterioration in security.”

The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, which monitors removals, said the resumption of charter flights had been done at a time when attention was focused on Libya.

“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 (sic),” said a spokesman. “Now it 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.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “The UK courts have confirmed that we are able to return people to all of Iraq and that the return of Kurdish Iraqis via Baghdad does not expose them to serious harm. The UK Border Agency would prefer that those with no legal basis to remain in the UK leave voluntarily. Where they do not, we will seek to enforce their removal.”

guardian.co.uk, 9 March 2011

March 11, 2011
Kurdish officials ban flights returning failed asylum seekers from UK

Flights redirected to Baghdad after political objections and local protests

Owen Bowcott

At least sixty people are being held at Colnbrook detention centre, near Heathrow, awaiting deportation to Iraq. Photograph: Tim Ockenden/PA

Home Office deportation flights are being prevented from taking failed asylum seekers directly to northern Iraq because of a diplomatic dispute with the Kurdish regional government (KRG).

A ban has in effect been placed on incoming flights from the UK landing forcibly returned Kurds at the regional airport in Irbil. Political objections and local protests have led to the UK Border Agency redirecting the planes to Baghdad.

Another round-up of failed Iraqi asylum seekers has been ordered in the past week. At least 60 people are now being held at Colnbrook detention centre, near Heathrow, awaiting removal by charter flight. Those about to be deported have been given tickets dated 1 or 6 September.

Thousands of Iraqi refugees remain in Britain, many having arrived before the 2003 invasion when Saddam Hussein was persecuting the Kurds.

The Home Office’s forced repatriation of asylum seekers denied permission to remain in Britain has been diplomatically fraught. The first flight to Baghdad last year led to airport officials in the Iraqi capital refusing to accept all but a handful of passengers. Most were denied entry and sent back to the UK.

To assuage political sensitivities, Iraqi interior ministry officials are permitted the unusual privilege of interviewing and screening detained asylum seekers in UK detention centres to confirm they will accept each individual.

The UK policy of sending deportees back to, or through, the central provinces of Iraq, which include Baghdad, is in defiance of guidelines issued by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, which warns that the area remains unsafe due to suicide bombs and attacks by al-Qaida militants.

One Iraqi deported from the UK was killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk in 2007. The continuing violence claimed more than 60 lives following a series of co-ordinated blasts in Iraqi cities during just one day – 25 August – last week.

The KRG, the semi-autonomous administration that runs the Kurdistan region of north-east Iraq, controls its own militia. For many years, it has objected to forcible returns of failed asylum seekers from western European countries, threatening to withdraw diplomatic co-operation.

Many deportation flights from the UK have nonetheless been sent to Iribil; on the first flights deportees were ordered to wear flak jackets for their return to what was deemed a safe country.

An official at the KRG representative office in London said: “The KRG has asked the British government to send only those people who want to go back. It is opposed to forcible deportations.”

The last UK deportation flight to Kurdistan was about five months ago. The Home Office now accepts that it will have to send Kurdish Iraqis back via Baghdad unless the KRG agrees to reopen direct flights.

The border agency told the Guardian: “UKBA only ever returns those who both the agency and the courts are satisfied do not need our protection and refuse to leave voluntarily.

“Currently we have agreement with the government of Iraq to return all Iraqi citizens to Baghdad. We make arrangements for those who require onward travel to their home towns, and this includes those travelling to the KR [Kurdish region].

“These arrangements worked well on the recent charter flights to Baghdad and we are confident they will continue to do so.”

Political opposition to forcible deportations has been led by the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, which has organised protests both in western European countries and within Kurdistan.

More than 2 million Iraqis fled the sectarian violence which erupted after the 2003 invasion. Most sought sanctuary in neighbouring Arab states but many were attracted by the opportunities of employment in the EU.

Richard Whittel, of the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq, said: “It is inspiring that popular pressure in Kurdistan forced the government there to take a stand against these deportations but disturbing that our government persists with them, pandering to the myth that immigration is to blame for the country’s problems.”

Among the common complaints raised by opponents of forced removals have been persistent allegations that failed asylum seekers are mistreated by security guards when they are forced on to planes in Britain for flights back to Iraq.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/31/kurdish-uk-asylum-seekers-iraq, 31 August 2010

September 4, 2010
Ethnic Kurd wins high court release ruling after failed deportation
• Test case reveals Iraqi government resistance to repatriations
• Home Office officials out of control, claims rights group
- Owen Bowcott
Home Office attempts to forcibly deport thousands of failed Iraqi asylum seekers suffered a setback today when it emerged that Baghdad has objected to any “increase in returns”.

The official refusal surfaced in a high court test case , which ruled that an ethnic Kurd should be released after 21 months in immigration detention because there was no likelihood of his being sent back, even in the “medium term”.

The decision by Mr Justice Langstaff may relate only to a single individual – Soran Ahmed, 22, from Kirkuk – but the judgment has exposed the Iraqi government’s reluctance to receive deportees and the difficulty UK officials have persuading counterparts in Baghdad to cooperate.

An internal Whitehall document, read out to the court, detailed how the UK Border Agency is proposing to fly Iraqi officials into Britain so that they can understand and “buy-in” to the deportation process. It also suggested arranging a UK ministerial visit to Baghdad to stress “the importance of returns to Iraq“.

Ahmed, whose case was supported by the Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) civil rights group, was one of 44 failed Iraqi asylum seekers forcibly put on an abortive charter flight to Baghdad last October with private security guards; Ahmed claimed he was assaulted on board.

In Baghdad, Iraqi interior officials never appeared and the deportees interviewed by an infuriated Iraqi colonel in charge of the airport. “He was antagonistic from the outset,” Mr Justice Langstaff commented.

The colonel accepted 10 deportees and ordered the rest back to London. They did not have the correct Iraqi documentation, he claimed, or were ethnic Kurds who would be in danger in the predominantly Arab city of Baghdad.

There are regular UK deportation flights to the relative peace of the Kurdistan Regional Government area in northern Iraq. Other European countries have been sending failed asylum seekers back to central and southern Iraq. The UK is meeting stiffer resistance to this route.

The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) still opposes repatriations to the central five governorates of Iraq due to the risk of violence. An email from officials in Baghdad to Whitehall last May “disclosed a reluctance to see an increase in the return of Iraqi nationals from the UK to Iraq,” the judge said.

A Foreign Office official who flew to Iraq several times to prepare the way for the flight explained that he met resistance from Iraqi officials to EU documentation. On receipt of the full list of deportees the Iraqis said: “We will see what we can do”.

A report from the conference reviewing the failure of the October flight suggested that the UK Borders Agency should learn from more successful EU deportation programmes and the Iraqi prime minister’s office should be written to for help. The high court heard that the letter has still not been despatched.

It would be unlawful to continue to detain Ahmed, said Langstaff. He was previously imprisoned in Britain for sexual assault and using false documents. There was no prospect of UK flights returning him to Kirkuk via Baghdad this year and the Kurdish Regional Government would not accept him. The judge ordered him to be released under strict bail conditions despite the fact that he posed “some risk” to the public. Bail conditions will be determined at later hearing.

Caroline Slocock, chief executive of RMJ, welcomed the judgment. “”[The flight] should never have left the UK. Home Office staff widened their own criteria on who could safely be on board, largely to fill empty seats at the last moment.

“Not only was the destination of the flight kept secret from those being removed, but it is now clear Iraqi authorities were kept in the dark. The alarming picture emerging is of Home Office officials out of control. Officials needs to get a grip of the problem rather than egg officials on by changes of policy which make it easier for the remove people without proper judicial scrutiny.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/19/kurd-asylum-seeker-repatriation-iraq, 19 February 2010
February 28, 2010