The Kurds have suffered more persecution and ethnic cleansing than any other racial group since the end of the second world war! Millions have been forced out of Turkey and Iraq! Turkey has persecuted the most even sending planes to bomb the safe havens set up for the Kurds by the UN in Northern Iraq! And thousands of Kurdish villages in Turkey have been destroyed in a massive reign of oppression and ethnic cleansing many times worse than what has happened to Iraqi Kurds.

Meanwhile the government in the UK has treated thev Kurds like terrorists by raiding a Kurdish information centre in Stoke Newington for possible links with the PKK the Kurdistan guerrilla independence movement a few years ago. Also when hundreds of Kurds stormed the Greek Embassey a few years ago because of Greeces handing over of Turkish guerrilla laeder Abdullah Ocalan they were all arrested under the terrorism act.

The Jews would earn more respect in the eyes of the international community if they founded an international organsation to campaign against ethnic cleansing and genocide and lobbied the UN to set up such an international armed force to prevent any acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing, instead of just going on about their holocaust all the time!

Okay, my slightly daft faith in Harlequin being a real person has finally been shattered!

Surely only a specially designed wind-up script generator could talk about Jewish people 'going on about their holocaust all the time'.. I mean, Christ-on-a-bike!

If someone posted up a message calling for peace on earth, Harlequin would post a comment saying 'war is better than peace and you are an idiot'.

Today on Holocaust Memorial Day

Say No to the Daily Mail's War on Refugees and Immigrants

Demonstrate - 5.30pm

Monday 27th January 2003

Daily Mail Offices
Associated Newspapers Building
2 Derry Street
Kensington
London W8
(near High Street Kensington Underground Station)

Come and show your opposition to racism in the media. Join with us today Monday 27th January from 5.30pm Outside the Daily Mail Offices in Derry Street

Called by: Barbed Wire Britain, Bristol Defend the Asylum Seekers Campaign, Close Down Campsfield Campaign, Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, Jewish Socialist Group, Manchester Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers.

Nearly every day there is an article in the Daily Mail attacking asylum seekers - often on the front page with an inflammatory headline such as "Stop the Asylum Invasion". Often in a big centre spread. Sometimes the leader column. Always portraying migrants and refugees as scroungers trying to take advantage and as a threat to the 'British way of life'. Sometimes as barely or sub-human. As one refugee said seeing a Daily Mail headline - 'A Door We Can't Close' - "it makes me feel like vermin". Well, that's the idea, that is the image that is being presented. No wonder asylum seekers get beaten up around the country, often sustaining permanent injuries such as losing an eye, and in some cases murdered. This is a heavy responsibility that lies upon the Daily Mail and other papers such as the Express.

There is nothing new about this. On Holocaust Memorial Day it is fitting to remember what the Daily Mail said about Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany "The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrageŠthe number of aliens entering the country through back door - a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed" Daily Mail, 20 August 1938.

Or go back further "They fought, they jostled to the foremost places at the gangways.. When the Relief Committee passed by they hid their gold and fawned and whined in broken English asked for money for their train fare." This is the Daily Mail, February 3rd writing about Jewish immigrants in 1900.

On Holocaust Memorial Day it is worth remembering that the Daily Mail was an enthusiastic supporter of Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists "Hurrah for the Black Shirts". The Daily Mail sang the praises of Mussolini's Italy and for Nazi Germany. Lord Rothemere the proprietor of the newspaper had regular meetings with Hitler in the mid-1930s.

Clearly this vicious leopard has not changed its spots in the last century. This is an opening salvo in our campaign to put an end to its racist filth. We will not cease, until the Daily Mail ceases its hateful campaign.

If you can't be there send a message of 'Solidarity', to be read out at the demo,
send c/o Liz Peretz, Close Down Campsfield Campaign:
 lizperetz@aol.com

Inquiries/further information:
 lizperetz@aol.com

Jewish Socialist Group (JSG)
BM3725
London
WC1N 3XX.

Source for this message: Barbed Wire Britain, Bristol Defend the Asylum Seekers Campaign, Close Down Campsfield Campaign, Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, Jewish Socialist Group, Manchester Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers.

The Daily Mail is not to blame. It is how the government are handling the refugee crisis which is at fault. The government are settling the vast majority of refugees in London which places an unacceptable burden on London borough councils. Their dispersal policy for asylum seekers was a good idea as why should London borough councils have to foot the bill for asylum seekers when they already have enough problems as it is! Dispersal also means that asylum seekers can be housed in cheaper parts of the country and that the burden is shared amongst all local councils which is much fairer. Dispersal also avoids creating gehttos and helps to intergrate refugees into the general population.

Another thing that would help would be for Britain to adopt a very strict arms selling policy so that the arms industry doesn't contribute to the world refugee crisis. This would mean a complete ban on all arms sales to waring countries and a ban on arms sales to countries with bad human rights records or a history of oppressing ethnic groups.

The language used by the Daily mail, is the same incendiary language used by nazis to describe jews, gypsies etc. The same tone used to incite racial hatred against jews and others during the reign of the third reich. The fact of the matter is that Bush, blair, and soddem are all trigger happy meglomaniac dictators. There is no difference between bush and soddem, there is no real excuse for waging a phoney war, against soddem. At the end of the day, America is turkey's no 1 ally, supplying the weapons used by Turkey to torture, murder and gas kurds, and other ethnic minorities and political dissenters. The question remains why Iraq not turkey. Those in power in Iraq are guilty of human rights abuses, abusing the human rights of ordinary iraqis and kurds, ordinary iraqis and kurds do not need the added burdern and torture of bush and blair inflicting war on them as well. You resent your taxes going to fund and support refugees, but these refugees many from afghanistan, iraq, yugoslavia, were created by Blair and bushes military intervention in Afghanistan, yugoslavia and now iraq. These people fled their countries to come to britain, after all their amenities, homes, hospitals, places of work, schools etc were reduced to rubble during our governments military interventionist wars in afghanistan, and yugoslavia. These people were misled into thinking that britain cared about their welfare, seeing as britain had taken the time and effort to intervene militarily in their countries. With millions more iraqi refugeees on their way here because of the threat of war. Your sympathic support of the kurdish people doesnt seem to extend to welcoming them into your own country as refugees. When kurds are refugees here, to you and the daily mail, they're just another bunch of scrounging asylum seekers, over here for the free ride. The daily mail, star, sun etc, would mislead us into thinking that scrounging refugees have it soo easy and lead a life of luxury and leisure. I think not, if you think fleeing from a war torn rubble that once was your home, across dangerous terrain, weather etc, in the hope of reaching a place of safety, only to find, that you're herded into special camps/detention centres, to be processed, branded, labelled, and earmarked second class citizens, having to use vouchers, 5 people living a one room b&b, facing racist abuse, taunts and assaults due to the incitement fueled by papers like the daily mail etc is having it easy, then you must be one sad, miserable twisted bitter, binky old boy ex gestapo commandent.