Release Delshad Zorab and Grant Him Asylum Rights

On the morning of Friday February 13th Delshad Namiq Zorab was taken from his home in Doncaster to a police station and then to Campsfield Detention Centre near Oxford. Many people will have met Delshad: he has been an active campaigner for the right to asylum and was a good friend of Mohammad Hussain who sadly died last year. Now, locked in Campsfield Detention Centre, he fears that he will be forcibly deported to Iraqi Kurdistan where he has every reason to believe that his life would be in real danger. This is despite the fact that his appeal for asylum is still pending: Delshad should not – even under this Government’s asylum laws – be detained or deported.



Information about Delshad

Delshad Namiq Zorab is an active member of the UK Committee of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) and a member of The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees. The WCPI is a banned organisation in Iraq and Kurdistan. Its members both at home and abroad are persecuted by the Kurdish and Iraqi security forces. Delshad’s life is in danger if he is deported back to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Delshad was born in 1/7/1956 in the village of Sewsenan, Sulaimaniyah, into a politically active family. Both he and his family have been the regular victims of persecution for their political beliefs and activities; his brother Kamal was killed by Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime for being a member of the Iraqi Communist Party, 70 people from Delshad’s village, mainly family members and friends were killed in a chemical attack, similar to Halabja, by the Iraqi army on 22/3/1988.

Delshad has been involved in many demonstrations and meetings calling for the end to violence and war in Kurdistan and for equal rights of women and children against religious and nationalist organisations. As a result of this campaigning Delshad has been the target of persecution by the Kurdish nationalist parties – the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and by some Islamic groups. He was arrested and tortured on a several occasions by the Kurdish nationalist parties and by the Baathist Iraqi regime.

Delshad has lived in the UK since 2003. He has demonstrated with the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) outside Lindholme Detention Centre in 2007 against the detention of those who had committed no crime. He spoke passionately on demonstrations in London and Newcastle for asylum seekers’ right to work and against deportations to Kurdistan. Just before he was detained he was helping to establish a scheme in Doncaster to help exchange asylum vouchers for cash. All his life Delshad has supported those people persecuted by dictatorship, big business and bigotry. Now he needs our support.

Today, from Campsfield Detention Centre, Delshad said “I want you to tell everyone ‘thank you’ for supporting me”.



What You Can Do

To help release Delshad from detention and to grant him asylum, SYMAAG and the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) ask you to:

Sign the petition at  http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/release-delshad-namiq-zorab.html
Write, email or fax Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. A model letter is at the above web address. Remember to quote Delshad’s Home Office Reference number: H1050750 in all correspondence. Please send copies of your emails to SYMAAG at  dignitynotdetention@yahoo.co.uk and to IFIR at  jasm_rg@yahoo.co.uk
Contact Delshad’s MP Rosie Winterton MP: 01302 326 297 or  http://www.rosiewinterton.co.uk/contact.aspx to ask how she is trying to secure the release of her constituent, Delshad Zorab
Read more about the danger facing those deported to Kurdistan from the website of the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq:  http://www.csdiraq.com/


We know that our actions can stop deportations and save lives