http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009g9d7

By Anthony Robinson

Say the word ‘refugee’ to yourself. Without thinking, what images and notions enter your mind?

Now, think about it.

The last Saturday of Refugee Week 2010 was an important day in the lives of four refugee children and their families – a celebration of childhood regained.

We have told their stories in a series of books for children, the Refugee Diaries. At the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, these children’s lives were celebrated. This was a marker for them and all those who have supported and cheered them on – a day to celebrate the longed-for ordinariness of their lives.

My wife, Annemarie Young, and I took this proposal to the publishers Frances Lincoln for two reasons. We wanted to present these children as just that, children. Admittedly, children who through force of circumstance had been caught up in whatever horrors led them to flee their own countries. And make no mistake, all these children fled the threat of brutality and possible death at home, and hardship on the road to hoped-for freedom, on a scale we can only imagine.

And we were driven by our belief in the need to counter the negative stereotypes, misinformation and all too often hysterical and cheap politicisation, so prevalent in parts of the media.

Refugees turn up on our doorstep because they are desperate. They come for a life without persecution. And for the lives and futures of their children. They do what we would do. Can you imagine, even for one moment, what it is like for a mother to grab her only child and head out into the night with nothing except the clothes on her back? And what it feels like to have, ‘We’ll be back for you’ ringing in her ears, delivered by the men who were dragging her husband off? I can’t, but this was the reality for Mohammed’s mother. They come with the thinnest hope. They come begging for refuge. They come because there is nowhere else to go.

Refugees throw themselves on our mercy and we all too often find ourselves lacking. We share a humanity and this needs to be manifest in our response to them. Locking them up, along with their children all too often, denying them basic rights, vilifying them and frequently sending them back to god knows what, is not our humanity manifest. This is not a political problem, it is a human one. It is attendant on us, who so often chide and lecture other governments on human rights, to put our marker down. If we do not do this, how seriously are those ‘other’ regimes round the world likely to take our humanist finger wagging?

Preserving and presenting their stories has been our way of shining a light on the dignity and worth of these children, a dignity that their histories might have denied them.

People ask me how I ‘did’ the children’s voices so well. And how I presented the horrors visited on them in such a ‘low key’ way. The truth of the matter is that the children did it. How this happened was my journey. Hand in hand with the children, we told their stories. All I had to do was become invisible, to be a conduit for them. It is sometimes a writer’s job to take the ‘I’ out of the process.

It was their voices I wanted to transcribe onto the page. The recordings and notes – phrases marked, the unsaids, the listening and re-listening – all informed the process. But it was their voices that moved the hand that wrote the words that told the story. This was the aim of the Refugee Diaries. Read these stories and if you are moved, if you have a different notion of what it is to be a refugee, or even of what it is to be a child, then they have been successful.

Hats off to the four children, Gervelie, Mohammed, Hamzat and Meltem (in absentia) who had a wonderful day in the spotlight, but spare a thought for the ones who did not, or will not make it to celebrate the glorious ordinariness of life.

Anthony Robinson, Cambridge, 21 July 2010

Author of the Refugee Diaries series for children, published by Frances Lincoln: Gervelie’s Journey, Mohammed’s Journey, Hamzat’s Journey. Meltem’s Journey is published on 10 August.

End Child Detention Now welcomes the government’s announcement that Yarl’s Wood family unit will close. Although this decision should  have happened years ago if the Home Office had attended to the medical evidence of the harm Yarl’s Wood has done to children, instead of striving to bury it.

We pay tribute to the many people who have campaigned for years to bring this abusive practice to an end. We hope this marks a move towards a more humane asylum system that will, as Nick Clegg said, “restore a sense of decency and liberty to the way in which we conduct ourselves.” That can only happen if prison-like detention centres such as Yarl’s Wood are closed immediately for all asylum seekers and irregular migrants who pose no danger to the public.

As the Coalition government reappraises how the UK treats those who seek sanctuary within its borders, OurKingdom publishes an article by actor Colin Firth based on his submission to the Home Office Review into Ending the Detention of Children for Immigration Purposes.

Last month, at a Citizens UK event in London, the new immigration minister Damian Green appeared to reject the views of extremist politicians, saying he believes many asylum seekers are genuine refugees deserving of our help, that CO. I hope these principles will inform his decisions during the current review into ending child detention for immigration purposes, and that we are moving towards a humane and evidence-based asylum system.

We have a long way to go.

While this review takes place attempts are being made to remove asylum seekers to war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

Most of these people will have been denied the opportunity to obtain the necessary proofs of their case. Their initial interviews — 17 pages in English — based on a series of questions eliciting the narrative in a non-consecutive way, may confuse the applicant. Interpretation is often inadequate. Dialects may differ. Several cases have been delayed because the individuals making the decision found the initial interviewer’s writing illegible. (One such example was reported to the Southampton MP Alan Whitehead).

The previous government cut legal aid provision to 5 hours:  lawyers insist that cases require at least 18 hours to process. In hearings the presumption is often made that the person(s) concerned are lying. Attempts are made to trip them up by reference to the first interview, when they were bewildered and frightened.

Many women seeking asylum have been raped. Despite strong evidence that women do not disclose sexual violence to a male stranger, especially in front of male relatives, this is frequently the situation they find themselves in at their initial asylum interview. When, later, they disclose rape and sexual violence, they are disbelieved.

Adjudicators rarely treat the appellant with respect. Decisions are made by people who may lack understanding of in-country conditions, under pressure to achieve targets that the UKBA’s own inspector calls ‘unachievable’.

As Thomas Hammarberg, the Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe said in his stinging rebuke of UK asylum policy two years ago: “celerity and quality of decision-making in the complex field of refugee law and protection are rarely a matching pair.”

Hammarberg also strongly opposed “the UK practice of aliens’ forced returns on the basis of diplomatic assurances which are inherently flawed since they are usually sought from countries with long-standing, proven records of torture and ill-treatment.”

Indeed it is hard to see the government’s logic in sending vulnerable Somalis to Mogadishu, the capital of a failed state, the world’s most violent city and a place too unsafe to have a working British Embassy.

“If we must return families to such countries,” said Chris Mullin MP, “we should take some interest in what happens to them after they have disembarked. That might involve putting some money in their pockets, employing an NGO to see them safely through the airport and back to where they came from, and perhaps a little help with reintegrating.”

Reintegration was not an issue for Adam Osman Mohammed, 32, a failed asylum-seeker returned to Darfur under a UK government repatriation scheme. Just days after arriving in his village, in full sight of his wife and four-year-old son, he was gunned down by Sudanese security officers.

Adam’s return was not a unique and terrible mistake. In April of this year Amnesty International accused Britain (along with a number of other European countries) of forcibly repatriating Iraqis to “extremely dangerous” parts of the country — in breach of United Nations guidelines.

Damian Green rightly recognised there is a need for “a general review of the asylum system … to ensure that decisions are right first time”.

But “right first time” decisions are less likely than ever since the government’s decision last month to let Refugee & Migrant Justice fail, depriving many thousands of asylum-seekers of decent legal representation. In a last ditch appeal to the government to save RMJ, the largest specialist national provider of legal representation to asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned: “Lives will be put at risk and there are likely to be many more miscarriages of justice – which are already common in our asylum system.”

Bishop John Packer said: “It is hard to see how any government or society with a concern for justice could allow it to cease its work.”

Lord McNally’s reassurance that the government was “giving high priority”to minimising the “disruption” in allocating the 10,000-plus cases previously managed by RMJ, is not borne out by reports from the field. There, chaos rules.

It should go without saying that the separation of parents and children must be specifically prohibited in the new arrangements for asylum-seeking families. Separation would be contrary both to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 22 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as Section 55 of the Border, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009.

Since the 1950s, when John Bowlby began to examine the impact of maternal separation on young children, our society’s whole approach to the needs of the child has been predicated on the importance of avoiding maternal / parental separation especially at times of stress when children are more vulnerable to harm (for example when they are sick or in hospital).

Yet, in spite of the clearly recorded vulnerability of child refugees and asylum seekers, (who as a consequence of being asylum seekers are likely to be experiencing material poverty, poor quality housing, discrimination, poor diets and problematic access to health and social care services), the UK Border Agency has had few qualms about separating young asylum seekers and refugees from their parents.

In his February 2010 follow up report to, The arrest and detention of children subject to immigration control, the then Children’s Commissioner for England Sir Al Aynsley-Green said: “Separating young children from their parents – even for a short time during transportation (to detention centres) – is potentially extremely damaging and should only be used in the most extreme circumstances.”

He goes on:

We have received at least three reports in which children – even very young children – have been separated from their parent when initially taken from home to the local enforcement office . . . This has the potential to be extremely damaging to the child who may not have the capacity to understand when or how they will be reunited with their parent. We have documentary evidence of the effects of this on one small child and it makes very uncomfortable reading.

It is unconscionable that our government would choose as an alternative to detention the planned and deliberate separation of a baby, child or young person from his or her parents.

Regular reporting is a cheap and effective alternative to detention. Other options could include a close link with a social worker or with a member of an approved NGO. I welcome the pilot scheme that was launched in Glasgow and which saw asylum families housed in former council flats, under a partnership between the council, the Scottish government and the UKBA. But I remain concerned that evaluation of this scheme focuses on its ability to secure higher return rates and not on the well being of the children and families concerned. David Wood of the UKBA admitted to the Home Affairs Select Committee last year that families are very unlikely to abscond:

Whilst issues are raised about absconding, that is not our biggest issue. It does happen but it is not terribly easy for a family unit to abscond.

All the evidence points to the fact that higher rates of compliance with voluntary returns will be achieved only if families who have fled danger to seek sanctuary here are permitted to dwell in the community while their cases are being considered, and are supported and kept informed of the progress of their case by dedicated case managers.

I agree with the report from Ian Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice that excellent, available legal advice, the trustworthiness of the workers they have contact with, and support — not destitution — are the conditions most likely to achieve the voluntary returns the government is seeking.

Any civilised nation should respond this way to those who seek sanctuary. Families who are to be returned should be treated with dignity and respect; they are, in the words of the Bishop of Southwark, not worthless scroungers to be despised but, “men and women who are anxious and frightened and trying to keep body and soul together in a strange land.”

I call on the government to end the immigration detention of children and to adopt more humane alternatives that recognise the rights of all children to be treated with dignity and respect. Families should never be left destitute. Central to any fair and just alternative would be community-based access to housing, food, clothing, health and social care, alongside good quality legal representation.

The lack of understanding around asylum seekers, and the climate of suspicion so easily stirred up by media and politicians, has seeped into the culture of the legal system and the enforcement process.

We need to elevate the human and civil rights status of innocent asylum seekers to at least the level we accord our criminals.

Colin Firth is an actor and activist and co-founder of Brightwide — the website for social and political cinema. With thanks to Clare Sambrook, Esme Madill, Simon Parker, Professor John Mellor, Dennis Cook and Dr Shirley Firth.

Primary winner: Florence Potkins, 11, Drayton Park primary school, London. Is this Nazi Germany?

She wakes, as eight men in dark uniforms barge through her front door. Her mother screams, but she stays riveted to the spot, shaking uncontrollably. The men hand her mother some paper and ignore her screams of outrage.

The men search the house. It is turned upside down. Abruptly, they are both frogmarched to the back of a van. They don’t know where they are going or how long they will remain in this dark, enclosed space.

This is not Nazi Germany; this is September 2009 in Leeds. Bethlehem Abate is 11 years old and has escaped with her mother from Ethiopia, where she was abused by her father. If she returns to Ethiopia, she will be separated from her mother, who is Eritrean. She will have no one to care for her. Her mother will be put in detention or even killed by the authorities.

Yarl’s Wood is situated in Bedfordshire; it is a detention centre for asylum seekers. Each year there is an intake of 1,000 children. It is not a place for children. No child should be deprived of their education and freedom in this way.

As Bethlehem entered Yarl’s Wood, she said, ”It was like going into prison, for doing an awful crime.”

“I thought the British government would understand our situation and help us.”

Bethlehem and her mother have now been granted the right to remain in this country. They look back at their time in Yarl’s Wood with horror. Many others are not so fortunate.

The End Child Detention Now campaign congratulates Florence Potkins on winning this fantastic prize, and using the opportunity to tell such an important story. To mark national Refugee Week, we’ve re-published her story and an interview on our site.

• Read Florence Potkins’ entry here: ‘Is this Nazi Germany?’

Earlier this month as part of its annual Media Awards, Amnesty International UK announced the winners of its first ever Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year competition. The organisation, which ran the award in association with the Guardian’s Learnnewsdesk, said that nearly 450 children had entered.

Florence, who won the upper primary category for 7-11 year olds, told the Guardian’s Emily Drabble why she chose the topic.

Q: Why did you enter the competition?

A: My mum is a Guardian reader and when she read about the competition she told me about it. She knows I like to enter competitions and she said I could enter. I knew something about Amnesty as well.

Q: How did you choose the Bethlehem Abate story?

A: I’m an only child and we do talk about some interesting topics at home – I discussed it with my family and I decided I wanted to write something about detention centres so I searched on the internet for a story.

I wanted to find a child’s perspective of the story so when I found Bethlehem Abate’s story I knew I wanted to write about her. I’m very interested in WW2 and that’s why I put the comparison with WW2 at the beginning of my article.

Q: If you were prime minister what would you change?

A: If I was PM I would abolish detention centres. I think it’s really wrong. Before I wrote this article I didn’t know this happened in the UK. While I was doing my research I found lots of other stories about children in detention centres, I found it really disturbing that people in the UK are not being educated properly instead they are being tortured. It’s heartbreaking.

I told my friends about what I found out and they are really interested.

With kind thanks to the Guardian for allowing us to reproduce the interview and article.

Simon Parker, Comment is Free, The Guardian, Friday 28 May 2010.

The announcement in Tuesday’s Queen’s speech that along with a cap on non-EU immigration, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government no longer intends to detain children under immigration control powers comes as a welcome boost to the many thousands of concerned citizens who have signed petitions, lobbied their MPs and parliamentary candidates, written to the local and national press, and organised vigils and demonstrations in order to bring this shameful practice to an end.

However, before we begin any premature celebrations, there are some troubling aspects of the new coalition agreement that deserve especially careful scrutiny. The first point is that Nick Clegg and his team rightly sought to insist that the declaration would commit to ending the detention of families, but the Conservatives struck this out and insisted that the no-detention policy would apply only to children.

Damian Green also declared that while the review was underway, the existing policy of detaining children would remain in place, despite the fact that the government now appears to accept that the practice of detaining children is harmful and unwarranted. The shocking case of the arrest and detention of Sehar Shahbaz and her eight-month-old baby in Dungavel and their nine-hour journey in a prison van to Yarl’s Wood, which Colin Firth highlighted in a letter to the Guardian, if anything suggests a hardening of minds rather than the “changed mindset” that Sir Al Aynsley Green has called for in the Home Office.

Indeed, an Iranian family of five, including the pregnant mother, were arrested and detained on the day it was announced child detention was due to end – and were issued with removal instructions to a brutal regime whose response to political dissent involves torture, lengthy jail sentences and state execution.

Campaigners should at least take heart that the review is about to start soon and that it is expected to conclude within weeks rather than months. But as yet there is no commitment to a timetable for implementing any alternatives to detention, or a promise not to arrest and detain families in the meantime.

A major concern for refugee, asylum and children’s welfare organisations is the clear implication that by agreeing only to spare children from detention, the Home Office is considering the option of taking children into care while their parents are detained. This would be to substitute one form of state child abuse with another, and would not only be contrary to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, it would be opposed, one would hope, by every local safeguarding children board and director of social services in the country – not least because it would make social workers complicit in damaging rather than protecting the welfare of the child.

blish the entire letter that 13-year-old Malawian refugee, Wells Botomani wrote to the Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green about his incarceration in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. Wells’ story is also published in today’s Society Guardian.

Wells started the letter while in detention. It was left behind when the family was suddenly moved. So Wells set about starting the whole thing again on his release. Religious faith comes through very strongly in Well’s story, combined with his mother’s astonishing strength in the face of such indignity and fear.

We asked Beatrice how she managed that (so many adults, understandably, buckle. - A steep decline in mental health and parenting ability is how Lorek et al expressed it in their terrific and disturbing medical report about Yarl’s Wood families). How did she stay, or appear to stay, strong?

She said: ‘It’s not easy but I had to do it to avoid them breaking down.  This is where you find teenagers attempting suicide.  Teenagers are more vulnerable than toddlers.  So I had to behave like a hen protecting its chicks from an eagle.’

End Child Detention Now sends warm thanks and congratulations to Wells. And also thanks to Beatrice Botomani, Dr Frank Arnold at Medical Justice, Anthony Robinson, Annemarie Young and Alison Benjamin at the Guardian.

We also congratulate Wells on being selected for coaching with Manchester City F.C. – he’s clearly not just a promising young writer.

Sir Al Aynsley-Green
Children’s Commissioner
11 MILLION
1 London Bridge
LONDON  SE1 9BG

Dear Sir Al  Aynsley-Green,

My name is Wells Rombani Botomani.  I, 13 years old.   I want to tell you  about what happened to me when I spent 65 days at Yarl’s Wood so you can try and stop other children and teenagers being taken there.  My experience with immigration was really terrible and has left me in total shock and confusion till today.

It was very early in the morning of 6th January while it was very dark and we were in very deep sleep when I heard a big bang on the door.  The bang never stopped, I could hear the door being tried and the mail box flap being opened and shut, then even more scary bangs continued.  My mother  quietly went down and opened the door while I stayed awake and trembling in my bed.

Soon, I heard voices coming upstairs and two men came to my bedroom and told me to get out of bed and go down stairs. When I went out I saw other men in my mum’s bedroom and my sister’s bedroom and still heard more loud voices downstairs talking to my mum.

My heart melted as they escorted me downstairs.  I was told to sit down and the room was almost full with the people and  two men were standing in the kitchen doorway.  Then my sister came downstairs again escorted by two more people.

A man carrying a big file was talking in a loud voice telling my mum about removal dates and that she was not allowed to appeal within the United Kingdom but could do so in her home country. While this man was talking other men and women were asking my mum some other personal questions and laughing mockingly.

I remembered my mother warning us repeatedly before during our prayer times every evening and she warned us to be calm because God will be always be on our side and all of us were very calm and were just listening and watching them while saying silent prayers to God.

In no time, we were told to pack few clothes because we were being taken to detention.  Another man appeared at the door with three sack bags.  I was the first one to be taken to my bedroom to pack my clothes.  In my confused state, I was helpless, I didn’t know what to pack, so I just packed dirty and torn clothes which I had heaped  in my bedroom to be washed and some to be thrown away.

The most important things my mind concentrated on was to make sure I should pack my school uniform because I thought we were still going to be allowed to go to my school.

All along I was made to understand and gave so much respect to the law of United Kingdom that there was no way they would deny children’s rights to education.  So I packed  my school uniform.  I packed no spare underwear, two different colours of socks and no pijamas as I was told I should hurry up.

I was scared of the men downstairs where we used to hang all our winter coats so I had to just pick up my sister’s coat which was in my bedroom. The coat sleeves were short for me since my sister is shorter than me but I could not help that I was wearing a girl’s coat which barely fitted me.  I was quickly forced to go downstairs without going to the toilet and brushing my teeth.  I felt very bad.

My sister was the next one who was also escorted by two people, a man and a woman into her bedroom to pack her belongings.  Then my mum was the last one.  We were told that someone we knew  would come to collect the rest of our belongings and bring them where we were going but we were warned we were allowed only 20kgs each no more.  This tormented my mind even more.

Other men took our bags into the car and then like criminals, we were taken out of the house one by one into a car which was standing outside our gate.  Like a dream the doors of the car were shut and off we  were taken to Kirkstall, Waterside Home Office.  I knew this place very well because we used to go with our mum for reporting and when we went for ARC cards.  This time we went behind the usual building.  We were taken out of the car one by one into a building which when we entered it had no carpet and no heaters, with plastic chairs attached to the wall and opposite us I saw a toilet.

The door was shut and locked and we sat there trembling with shock and cold.  The room was very cold and I wondered how long we were going to be there. My mum told us that we should not hate these people because they were simply carrying out their job, rather we should keep on praying to our God he was the only help we had.  Soon my heart felt better because of what my mum told me and I felt some strength in me.

Then another man with a bandage on his hand opened the door and asked us if we needed anything to drink, we said no but my mum asked for a cup of tea, I knew she wanted to encourage us to eat and to feel at ease. The door was locked again. Then opened again, then we saw the same man pulling a huge heater towards the door.  The cord of the heater was short so the heater was left right in the doorway.  The warmth could barely reach us but I felt thankful because the room was proper freezing.  My mum did not want to tell us that we were in a cell but I only wondered why  they keep the room in a bad state like the way it was.

We were there until at 08.30 am when our bags were taken into a police caged van then one by one we were taken into the van.  We were told we were being taken to a very nice family unit detention which would take almost 4 hours.  My mum was asked if she was ever detained, she said no.

Then we were told it was one of the best detention centre in the country.  On the front seat,  they placed some assorted small packs of food items with a bottle of water each. Then the door was shut and then a gate like door was locked on top of the van door.  Now my mind was settled to say I used to see these vans carrying people and I used to rule out that I could ever be taken in such vans because I was a well behaved boy and in our family no one has ever had a bad record with the police.

But this day, it was me and my poor mother who has tried all her best to bring us up in a godly manner and we were convinced we were one such a family despite difficulties, we were well-mannered and stayed peacefully with each other and with other people in the community, school, church and wherever we went. But alas, it was true, I was the one in the cursed vans.  On the way, we could not talk to each other.  I felt sick and paralyzed inside me, I thought about my friends I left behind, my school, my teachers, my church, my football and rugby teammates and wondered what my future would be like if indeed we were taken back to my country.  My heart sank inside me and I felt like screaming and cry aloud but my mum’s words drew me back. My lips and my throat went dry and my head was spinning with pain and I felt confused.  The woman and the driver in front used to watch us on a screen in front, mirror and through a small space which was a link between us and them.

My mother encouraged us to eat but my chest and throat was so heavy that I thought nothing could go through to my stomach.  My sister never spoke a word.  It took four and half hours before we reached Yarls’ Wood.  The place was snowy white.  The van stopped outside a huge gate and we could see barbed laser wire around the fence, it looked like a proper prison.  The place looked dead as if no one lived there.  It was so quiet.  The gate opened then the van entered and then we soon saw another black gate in front of us and the van stopped again.  We waited anxiously and the gate did not open, then the woman officer in front of the van came and opened the door where were and told us we should wait a little bit.

She was smoking and she asked us, “Have you ever seen snow before in your lives?” I felt angry and mocked, we kept quiet but my mum calmly said ya, it also snows in Leeds.  Then she said,” oh, ok, how long have you been in England?”  Then she said this year was the fifth year.  Then she said, “where we come from it snows a lot”.  My mum asked her where do you come from?  She responded, “Doncaster, have you ever heard about Doncaster?”  I felt that was total mockery but my mum told her that Leeds is not far from Doncaster.  Then, the gate opened and a woman carrying something which looked like a golf stick came out with a book on the other hand.  She searched the car and scanned out bags behind and then the van went inside.

We were handed over to the detention team.  We were ushered into a room and we were properly searched.  Then we went through another door where we found a long table with computers and several rooms opposite the long table where detainees were being locked in while waiting for reception staff to finish their recording.  We found some detainees there whose faces looked very sad.  But my mum told us never to wear sad faces or do anything stupid but be cooperative and take the situation positively.  But it was hard.  A day had gone without being in school, I sobbed internally.  We were put in a separate room.  The process there was so slow and frustrating.  We were kept at the reception from 12.30 until 6.30pm.  We were tired and bored.  I now knew, I didn’t go to school for the first time.  I have never missed school a single day or to be late.  Education was the only thing which promised future for me and I was sure I was going to be taken out of the many problems my family went through.  But now it looked, that chances of continuing with my education came to an end.

The officer who was searching our items told my mum we could take anything from the fridge or make any drink from the machine but we still felt frozen inside us.  He said when going making sure you take fruits.  My mum tried to get some fruits and salads for us to eat but we felt not hungry.  After the process finished we had to wait for another officer to take us to our rooms. When this woman came she told us we should take our bags and I first went to the fridge to get a fruit but alas, suddenly I heard a loud voice shouting at me behind WHO TOLD YOU TO TAKE FOOD FROM THE FRIDGE?  Then my mum told her that the officer at the reception told us that we should take some fruits with us because there was no food where we were going to stay, people had already eaten.  I could see tears in my mum’s eyes and I also felt very traumatized inside me and I was wondering how we were going to stay with such attitudes.  Silently I went backwards and I was told to carry my own bag which was heavy for me but I had no choice,  I dragged it,  helplessly.  I knew life had totally turned against me.  The officer walked very fast and told us to walk fast as she unlocked so many doors on our way to the family unit.  We were given keys and went upstairs with our heavy bags without anyone helping us.  We entered our room which had two rooms.  Soon we chose where we could sleep and sat there like a stone.

My teachers had sent my mum texts to find out what had happened to me and my mum told them that we were detained at Yarlswood and we were going to be deported on 11th January, 2008.  I understand my friends cried when they were told about this and some went to tell their parents who became of very big  assistant to us while we were there.  Many letters from teachers, friends and parents were written to the home office and to us to ask them to release us for the sake of our education and future.

That night I could not sleep, I was just shaking.  My mum taught bible verses and told us to be strong and never to join people who would be doing bad things towards the officers because we were in a critical position because they were going to make a case out of anything we would do and say. After that we went to sleep but it was really late because my heart was pounding like never before and in the night I could hear footsteps the whole night .  Security officers kept unlocking our doors and locking them the whole night. Then the next day when I was just starting to sleep, I heard a nock on the door, my mum opened the door, it was the teacher telling my mum that I was supposed to go to school. She knocked on the door really loud that I got so scared.  My mum told me that I should go to school in Yarlswood, I was so tired that I never said anything then she said ‘I know you are tired so u can come in the afternoon for sports ok’ I just said okay. So I went back to sleep for another hour then bathed, I went downstairs to the school and it was just one room for year 7-11 and one for the primary school and there was so many children like me and even  younger than me.  It was my first time to meet people and the place was filled up with many people from pregnant women to teenagers were there. And there were even babies who didn’t know how to walk, in the place we had only two playgrounds and the rest of the day we were just staying inside day after day people kept on coming with children.

Education
When we were told that there was school my mum was very happy and us too that we were not going to miss out in our studies.  But when I entered the classroom, there was one teacher and students were put in one class room.  It was just the name school but honestly its mockery.  All we were doing day after day was drawing, a bit of maths, and English and three quarters of the time playing football and other games.  The teacher never made an effort to get in touch with our schools to get the stuff we were learning so we could not miss much.  The next day, I thought things would change but I realized that we were just being kept in the class to give a picture that there was education.    My sister was told that there was nothing for her but would come for sports only.  The teacher also used to tell us scary stories concerning how the immigration was working hard to deport people.  One day she told us that if you refuse to go back to your countries, they sometimes send your parents separately so that you should also cooperate to go or they would send your parents and take you to social welfare homes.  I felt so scared.  I thought of my mum being thrown in the plane.  I could not sleep and I didn’t find courage to tell my mother.  But one day, I told her that the teacher was telling us quite scary stories. My mother was very angry and told me that if she would start again we should tell her that she didn’t have the right to corrupt our weak and bruised minds.  But I knew, I would not have the courage.  I must say that, that teacher was not suitable to teach vulnerable children at all.  She was very harsh to us and very forceful to us.  I later on felt it was pointless to go into class where there was nothing beneficial for my future, after  all with the stories she was telling us, I felt intimidated and thought my future was coming to an end at a very early age.  I was spending sleepless nights, either watching violent films which the centre was putting on the tvs or reading the bible. Every time my mum used to force me to sleep but I couldn’t.  Things seemed to have fallen apart.
Food
For the first month, I grew into a stick because I could not eat.  My lips were dry and red and my mum was scared.  She used to force me to go into the dinning room to eat but I couldn’t eat.  I felt dead inside me.  Sooner I started diarrhea which couldn’t stop.  My mum went to book for a nurse which we couldn’t see till after two days.  While waiting for the appointment, my mum continued to force me to drink and eat fruits.  I could drink but could not take solid food because my stomach was paining me so much and my throat. When we went to see the nurse, she just looked at me and said I was ok, there was nothing wrong with me, I was told to go on a scale and it was found that I had indeed lost some weight. But she said I was still ok.  Within a few minutes we were out and my mum was told that she should keep on forcing me to eat.  The food which was being served was all the prohibited junk food, the English Education was against with.  Later, in school we were asked to make proposals of what food we would love to eat which we did.  At least on some days, I would eat when such food was served.
Health
My experience in Yarls Wood was that it was very unhealthy for children to be kept there.  Everyday, I was living with fears that any day I would get infected with airborne diseases which kept circulating, chicken pox, urine infection, flue and dirrhoea and fever which the cause was not known.  Health staff seemed not to care much.
Scary experiences
The place is full of scary stories.  Every day we were hearing terrible scary stories about how people were being beaten and hand-cuffed into planes and forced to go back to their countries. Everyday till now I couldn’t and cant face the day peacefully.  Every time I wake up, my heart would first beat rapidly and I would feel very scared inside me.  I felt rejected and condemned.  I felt death was the best option rather than sending me to a place where I would end up living on the streets and no food and no education.  Night time in Yarls Wood is worst time. Everytime you would hear heavy boot steps of officers walking in the corridors up and down throughout the night.  Doors being banged and sometime people crying.  Whenever you hear boot footsteps your heart would always jump and you just stay quietly in bed shaking listening to which door are they going to open. Every time you would think they may be coming to our door.  This trauma is still planted in me and I don’t know how to get rid of it knowing our case still remains unresolved despite the High Court ruling in our favor on 12th May, 2009.
One night, while we were in my room, I heard people screaming and running downstairs, I and a friend we went down too and we found a man had poured boiled water over his body from head and was jumping up and down screaming, banging his head against the wall.  The next day onward, this man had blisters  all over his body and could not wear a top.  He was under guard 24 hours and every meal time they used to take him to the dining room while people were eating.  He was looking horrible and the blisters were so  scaring and used to put me off to continue eating.  I had a lot of questions why they could take a person into a public place without clothes on, why they could not just keep him in his room and collect the food for him as they were doing with other people with special incidences.  The burns on his body used to put off people’s appetite. It was also not good for children to see such things and be expected to lead a normal life.  Some could not speak but you could see that every child’s attention was turned to this man as soon as he enters into the dining room or when he was walking in the corridors small kids used to stop playing and keep on looking at this man as the guards escorted him.

During the same week, another teenager girl who was so confused almost hanged herself to death. I was so close to this girl and only to hear she almost strangled herself and was found hanging. When I  went to see her I found that her room was under guard 24 hours.  Questions of wonder saturated my mind and I always regretted why I and my fellow children had to be subjected to such an environment.

Now on our floor, another woman started screaming and banging her head the whole night that we couldn’t sleep. Every day we would see people crying and being taken to the airport.

The two months I was in Yarls Wood was a lifetime hell for me.  Please let the government think of us children, we do not deserve this treatment.  We deserve a future just like their children.  Let immigration be hard on life-threatening criminals not people who are seeking a better and self living and future  of their children.

It is my prayer to God that the British Government will maintain its mercy on the lives of children.  I am also asking my fellow friends known to me and unknown, imagine what I went through and that was going to be the end of my future and all my dreams thrown into the bin because the government would not keep us in this country.  Imagine it was you or your sister or your brother.  Fathers and mothers, please help us to plead to the law makers to have pity on us children who have fallen victims of the immigration matters.  I am sure law makers and enforcers are mothers and fathers, please have mercy upon us.

May God keep guiding the British Government and may your love towards humanity never cease and respect of fallen children’s rights will be a priority. Detention for us is hell and not easily forgettable.
May God bless England.

Thank you for reading my letter.

Wells Rombani Botomani,  City of Leeds High School.

You can read Sir Al Aynsley-Green’s reply here:

The first Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, writing in The Guardian, calls on the government to release the families from Britain’s asylum prisons now.

Aynsley-Green who has done more than any single person to expose the arrest and detention of innocent children, the injustices and sheer horror of their lived experiences, urges: ‘a fundamental change in the culture and mindset of the government, its ministers, its civil servants and its contractors so that the welfare and best interests of children are put first, before the administrative convenience of government.’

This is his first published article since leaving his post as Children’s Commissioner in February 2010.

Nothing in my 30 years’ experience of being a children’s doctor prepared me for my first visit to Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre (IRC) in 2005, soon after becoming children’s commissioner. Using the power given to me by parliament to enter any premises other than a child’s home to interview any child, I asked to be treated as a newly arrested child and to follow their journey through the prison.

I saw a bewildered 10-year-old, smartly dressed in his school uniform alongside his distraught mother – they had been snatched from their home in a “dawn raid”. He asked if his friends knew where he was, worried about his belongings, and didn’t understand what had happened to him, even though I was told he would be deported the next day.

I passed through barred and locked doors where even babies had their nappies searched by prison-like officers, keys a-jangling; withdrawn and deeply traumatised children clinging to their mothers, refusing to eat the unhealthy food provided, with developmental regression, bed-wetting and soiling; mothers struggling to maintain breast feeding; inadequate play and schooling – the litany of human misery was endless. I was appalled and resolved that children seeking refuge would be an immediate priority for my new organisation.

We studied the “journeys” of children seeking asylum – the screening process where unaccompanied children’s claims for asylum were assessed; the process of age determination, including the use of X-rays; the experiences of young people in the care of a local authority, and, through subsequent visits to Yarl’s Wood IRC, the process of arrest, detention and deportation of families, many of whose children were born in the UK, and were well integrated into schools and local communities.

We published rigorous reports of our findings, and exposed to media and parliamentary attention the truth of the appalling life experiences of these children.

Much that is good has now happened – the joint report by the medical Royal Colleges confirming the physical and psychological damage caused by detention; the removal by government of its reservation to article 22 of the UN convention on the rights of the child, thereby giving asylum-seeking children the same rights as British children; the duty of care on statutory bodies to promote the welfare of children; the improvements in the physical environment in Yarl’s Wood IRC; and now, the announcement last week by Damian Green, the new minister for asylum and immigration, of a review to end the detention of children.

But there is unfinished business.

We need a fundamental change in the culture and mindset of the government, its ministers, its civil servants and its contractors so that the welfare and best interests of children are put first, before the administrative convenience of government. A speedy end to the detention of children. The promised “review” should not be an excuse for civil service prevarication. The evidence of harm is overwhelming and for a country that takes pride in safeguarding its children, it is indefensible, and frankly shameful, to force a small group of them into detention where their welfare is known to be at risk. They should be released now. The Local Children’s Safeguarding Board in Bedfordshire is currently investigating serious allegations of sexually harmful behaviour and safeguarding failures in Yarl’s Wood exposed by my most recent report. The full results must be published quickly.

We must know more of what happens to those children deported to their parents’ countries of origin. Are they safe, are they well and are they being cared for?

We need urgent research to establish an ethically sound approach to the assessment of age of individuals who claim to be a child but who have no papers to prove it. Exposing children to radiation (X-rays) for immigration control without medical benefit to them is unethical and, where a child cannot give informed consent, potentially unlawful. The Labour government’s commitment not to use X-rays, extracted under pressure, must prevail.

There must be full public and evidence-based debate about the ethics of using new medical technology – such as DNA analysis – for administrative purposes to assess paternity and country of origin.

The government must monitor the impact of financial cuts to local authorities on the welfare of unaccompanied minors (children who have no parent to look after them) who already are often poorly served.

By Clare Sambrook (from OpenDemocracy, 12 May 2010).

‘We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes,’ says today’s coalition agreement. A stunning victory for children, decency and the Liberal Democrats if this pledge proves good. That may be a very big if.

Days before the election David Cameron offered to set up a ‘working party’ including charities to ‘review child detention’. What’s to review? NHS paediatricians and psychologists Lorek et al six months ago found that children at Yarl’s Wood were ‘clearly vulnerable, marginalized, and at risk of mental and physical harm as a result of state sanctioned neglect (inadequate care and protection), and possibly abuse in the sense of exposure to violence within the detention facilities themselves.’ The Children’s Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley Green, himself an eminent paediatrician working from irresistible evidence of harm, called repeatedly on the Labour government over years to stop detaining children.

To borrow Australian psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry’s description of his own country’s detention centres, ours too are ‘factories for producing mental illness’.

‘We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes.’ They better had. And quickly too. Arrest and detention causes children swift and lasting damaging, rendering them confused, fearful, unable to sleep, according to Lorek et al. Children suffer headaches, tummy pains and weight loss and exhibit severe emotional and behavioural problems.

Dr Frank Arnold, a torture scars expert who cares for detainees said today, ‘If for any reason the government delays or reneges on this promise I would like to invite the immigration minister to join me in examining a willing family in detention for them to learn first hand the harm that continuing detention is doing to people.’

Delay or prevarication over this policy which has no proper purpose — a UK Border Agency executive let slip last year that the Agency knows families don’t abscond but persists in detaining them anyway because it’s a deterrent — will invite rising pressure on the government and on the corporations that profit from this shameful business.

Yesterday Dr Arnold put a question to Chris Hyman the Pentecostal Christian who races Formula 3 Ferraris and trousers £4,325 every day running Serco, the security giant that runs Yarl’s Wood detention centre for profit.

At the company’s annual meeting at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Dr Arnold said:

‘Serco is expanding its activities in Healthcare to include NHS hospital management, polyclinics and GP services. At the same time, the company is receiving serious criticism and reputational harm because of its role in the incarceration of children at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre under contract to the UK Border Agency. As the Chief Inspector of Prisons and Children’s Champion have publicly insisted, it is not possible to lock up children (who have done no wrong) without harming them. Will the board agree to take legal steps to obtain release from its contracts with UK BA over administrative detention to improve the company’s reputation?’

Hyman, who chairs the Prince of Wales’s charity In Kind Direct, said Serco had made improvements not required by its government contract, including a new school building at Yarl’s Wood — called Hummingbird House — and cooking facilities where families may prepare ‘culturally appropriate meals’. Hyman invited Arnold to see for himself.

Arnold, a regular visitor to detention centres, said:

‘Many of these children suffer neglect of serious medical conditions, both physical and psychological which are frequently made worse by their imprisonment. Examples include children detained while in sickle crisis, continuing detention in ignorance of a vital central venous feeding line in place, failure to provide immunisation and malaria prophylaxis when due, weight loss, behavioural regression, onset or deterioration of pre-existing PTSD and depression, and suicidal behaviour. All of these failures of care have been documented by clinical experts and in parliament and the media.’

Arnold went on:

‘Serco are contracted to manage people in detention but also, through Serco healthcare, to certify them as fit for detention. This is an insoluble conflict of interest and must cease. However prettily you paint the walls, these children are still imprisoned, dealing with the traumas of dawn raids and being locked up. The administrative detention of children is simply too harmful to be accepted in a civilised society.’

If the immediate closure of Yarl’s Wood is what is meant by, ‘We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes,’ then that is cause for rejoicing and huge thanks to Nick Clegg. But not yet. We must hold them to it.