Your local voice for Amnesty International
Just days after the shooting and killing of 21 people, mainly children, in Uvalde, America’s National Rifle Association (NRA) held its convention boasting 14 acres of the latest weapons. Although its membership has declined since 2018, it spent £23mn on the elections in 2020. New organisations are springing up which take an even harder line…
Continue reading The Right to Bear Arms?
According to multiple interviews conducted by Amnesty researchers with returnees or their relatives, Syrian intelligence officers have subjected women, children and men returning to Syria to unlawful or arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment including rape and sexual violence, and enforced disappearance. These violations have been a direct consequence of their perceived affiliation with the…
Continue reading Amnesty International’s Report ‘You’re Going to Your Death’
The following sections provide more information about the proposals to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, with the government committed to scheduling another flight. It intends to issue more removal notices than seats in the plane in the hope that it can take off with some people on board. Numbers 28,000 migrants and refugees crossed the…
Continue reading Asylum Seekers and Deportations to Rwanda
British Courts: A judicial review on the government’s policy to send refugees to Rwanda will take place in July. In the meantime, numerous organisations applied for injunctions to block the first flight, due to take off on 14 June, including the Public and Commercial Services Union, Care4Calais and Detention Action. In rejecting the application for…
Continue reading The Flight that Did Not Take Place
In August 2021, the UK government promised ‘to do right by Afghans’. Almost a year later, Afghans without safe passage to the UK are the largest national group of asylum seekers arriving on small boats. More than 1,000 arrived in the UK between January and March 2022, strong evidence of insufficient safe and legal routes…
Continue reading Afghans Left Behind
Nigina Istanakzai-Zarifi presented a powerful, passionate and moving statement of the situation now faced by Afghan women and girls, and of the failure of the international community to address it. She said that from the moment the Taliban entered Kabul, life for women and girls changed and, of course, it is worse in the provinces…
Continue reading Amnesty Talk – Women and Girls in Afghanistan
The SchemeIn April, the government signed an agreement with the East African nation Rwanda to send migrants who arrive in the UK and who are deemed ‘inadmissible’ – that is they have arrived without a visa and through an unofficial route – to detention centres in Rwanda. They will be detained in the UK pending…
Continue reading A Compassionate Response to Asylum Seekers – One-way Tickets to Rwanda?