Iraq deemed
safe!

With the American troop surge’s success in reducing violence being celebrated by Iraqis with a sudden spurt of new suicide bombings and roadside attacks, the U.K.’s Home Office has determined conditions are swell enough for the 1,400 Iraqi refugees they’ve been trying to unload for three years to finally go home. Unless, of course, they’d prefer starving in the streets.

Since 2005, the refugees—asylum-seekers judged not to be in need of asylum—have been receiving basic food, shelter and amenities because their return home was seen as too risky. Now, at least in policy, all that has changed. Contrary to the United Nation’s high commissioner of refugees’ assessment, Britain’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said that Iraq is now “safe,” and it’s time for the refugees to hop aboard the Fuck Off Express. They’ve been given three weeks to sign up for a “voluntary” return program. Failure to do so will result in their already scant assistance being immediately terminated.

“It’s a nasty policy and a failed one,” says Refugee Council chief executive Donna Covey. “Removing support in such cases only results in one thing: more hungry and homeless people living in constant fear.”

by SCOTT SAXON