Amnesty Criticises Britain Over Forced Returns of Iraqi Refugees

Britain has forcibly returned more Iraqis than any other European nation and is not doing enough to help Iraq's neighbors cope with the largest population movement in the Middle East since Palestinians were displaced after the creation of Israel in 1948, Amnesty International said in a hard-hitting report released yesterday.

The government has agreed to resettle 500 Iraqi refugees a year, a figure that is to increase to 750, the human rights group said. Britain had also contributed to humanitarian agencies working in the region. However, Britain has also been "one of the key players in forcible returns of Iraqis", sending them to the Kurdish-controlled north which it regards as "sufficiently stable for returns", said Amnesty. It had been returning failed Kurdish asylum-seekers to Irbil, in northern Iraq, since 2005 and there are plans to forcibly return more, it added.

It said that more than 3,400 Iraqis whose asylum claims have been rejected are existing on a cashless system of vouchers pending their return.

"It's staggering that the UK is sending people back to Iraq when it should be helping Syria and Jordan to cope with this refugee crisis," Kate Allen, Amnesty International's UK director, said. Ms Allen continued: "As one of the countries involved in the invasion of Iraq, it has a moral obligation to help those displaced by the bloodshed that has followed."

More than 2 million Iraqis have been forced to take refuge in neighboring countries, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. Of these, 1.4 million are in Syria - at least 7% of the country's population, and 750,000 in Jordan, 10% of the population of that country.

A Home Office spokeswoman said yesterday: "It is important for the integrity of our asylum system that those people not in need of international protection should leave the UK ... There is clearly a difficult position in some parts of Iraq but we do not accept this applies to all areas".