Clare Sambrook, 8 March 2010, on OpenDemocracy
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‘He looks my age,’ says my nine-year-old son. ‘He looks sort of like me.’
There’s a picture on my screen: a small, slight boy who, for legal reasons, we’ll call M. He’s being cuddled by his 17 year old big brother Z. Both [...]
Government lies about the suffering of children in detention
Clare Sambrook in the guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/18/asylum-detention-children-report
Uniformed men break down your door, burst in, shout at your children: “Get up! Get up!” You may pack a few belongings. Your boy needs a wee. The woman in uniform watches over him in case of … what? Your children are [...]
Key findings from: The Children’s Commissioner for England’s follow up report to: The arrest and detention of children subject to immigration control.
Introduction & Executive Summary
Sir Al Aynsley-Green reaffirms that in the UK ‘each year some 2,000 children are detained for administrative purposes for immigration [...]
1 February 2010
As Bishop of Ripon and Leeds I am aware of the impact of removal and detention on those who experience it as well as those left behind, in our schools, communities and congregations. I welcome the initiative of the End Child Detention Now Campaign.
The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, representing the Urban Bishop’s [...]
Bolivian asylum seekers were falsely imprisoned and children traumatised after being held at centre.
Esther Addley, The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010.
A refugee has won a settlement of £100,000 from the Home Office after it admitted falsely imprisoning her and her children at an immigration detention centre.
Carmen Quiroga, originally from Bolivia, spent 42 days at Oakington [...]
Provision at Tinsley House Immigration Removal Centre, run by G4S, had deteriorated since the last inspection and arrangements for children and single women were wholly unacceptable, said Dame Anne Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons, publishing the report of an unannounced short follow-up inspection of the centre at Gatwick airport.
Since the last inspection, Tinsley House had [...]
Responding to an article by Mary Dejevesky in Tuesday’s (15 December) Independent which accused end child detention campaigners and supporters – such as the more than 60 children’s authors and illustrators who signed an open letter to Gordon Brown – of being cynical and financially motivated in using Paddington Bear and the Christmas season to [...]
Jacqueline Wilson, Quentin Blake, Michael Rosen, Benjamin Zephaniah, Julia Donaldson and sixty other leading children’s authors and illustrators have written to Gordon Brown urging him to stop detaining children.
In a letter that appears in today’s OBSERVER, the writers and illustrators condemn the detention policy and strongly support children’s commissioner Sir Al Aynsley Green, the Royal [...]
The Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Child Health, General Practitioners and Psychiatrists and the UK Faculty of Public Health have published a new policy statement and recommendations on the harms to the physical and mental health of children and young people in the UK who are subjected to administrative immigration detention.
The three Royal Colleges and [...]
By Clare Sambrook
THERE is no evidence that asylum-seekers with children are likely to abscond, yet the Government forcibly detains at least 2,000 children and babies every year and holds them, sometimes for months on end, in conditions known to damage their physical and mental health.
Why on earth would our Government do that?
One principle that has [...]
Child detention in the news