In an announcement to the House of Commons on Wednesday 21 July, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed that Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre was to be closed for the purposes of detaining families. However, the Home Office corrected Mr Clegg’s initial statement that Yarl’s Wood as a facility was to close by confirming [...]
New immigration plans will end child detention but we should be wary of substituting one form of state abuse with another. 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 [...]
Here we publish 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 [...]
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 [...]
This is the text of Positive Action’s Statement to Supporters of the Sehar must stay in Scotland campaign. We made a last minute plea this morning at 8.30 am to all the key players including Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg, Immigration Minister Damian Green, Theresa May Home Secretary, but to no avail. Sehar Shebaz was [...]
As the government announces that Dungavel will no longer be used for the detention of children, but will be re-purposed as ‘a health check’ facility for families who are facing removal, young mother Sehar Shebaz and her baby are being transported in a prison van to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire from where [...]
In the early hours of this morning, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister issued a statement in which as part of a Tory commitment to put a cap on immigration it was agreed to put an end to child detention immigration controls (the latter was a Lib Dem proposal). End Child Detention Now believes that this [...]
End Child Detention Now is urging all its supporters to get behind the inspiring Citizens for Sanctuary prospective parliamentary candidate pledge campaign which is especially emphasising the scandalous detention of children by the UK immigration authorities. Dozens of PPCs have signed up to the pledge – but many more have yet to declare their support. [...]
It’s not usual to have five-year-olds and 15-year-olds in the same storytelling workshop. But there was nothing usual about the event that illustrator Karin Littlewood and I ran last December for imprisoned children. They were behind bars, not for committing some horrible crime but because they were asylum-seekers, and because we live in a society [...]
Phil Woolas’s defence of the inhumane Yarl’s Wood removal centre reflects Labour’s shift to the right on asylum Simon Parker, The Guardian, Comment is Free, Thursday 25 March 2010, 15.00 GMT. Phil Woolas’s response to a further damning report on Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre by the chief inspector of prisons shows that the government has [...]
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