Take Action
JOIN THE RELEASE CARNIVAL – SOAS DETAINEE SUPPORT
SOAS Detainee Support is organising a demonstration on the 5th of June to protest against immigration detention of children and families.
See the website
Event: Release Carnival
What: Rally
Start Time: 05 June at 12:00
End Time: 05 June at 16:00
Where: Torrington Square to Downing Street.
On Saturday the 5th June a united force of musicians, circus acts, choirs, dancers and clowns will join activists and ex-detainees with one goal: to unite the community against the abhorrent practice of detaining children for immigration purposes. And we are inviting you and your organisation to join us! We will assemble in Torrington Square, where speakers from Refugee Migrant Justice, BiD/Children’s Society, Liberty,and more will talk about children and families in detention, and we will enjoy choir and parlour performances.
The Carnival will assemble in Torrington Square (between Birkbeck and SOAS) with speakers including representatives from the Children’s Society, Bail for Immigration, Liberty and more. We will then process to Downing Street with juggling, clowns and live music- everything from from samba bands to church choirs and much more besides. Assemble at 12pm for speakers, workshops food and music. The march will start at 2pm and finish no later than 4pm in front of Downing Street where a small procession will deliver a letter demanding a change in the policy of immigration detention.
The day will be fun, inclusive and educational and a positive way of challenging one of the most odious and barbaric aspects of the immigration detention system. We hope you can join us!
SIGN AND RAISE AWARENESS OF THE NO.10 PETITION!
You must be a UK voter or resident in the UK or Crown Territories and Dependencies to sign the e-petition. Only your name is published on the petition website.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoChildDetention/
Please pass this link on to all your friends, families and colleagues and feel free to ask your political representatives, Councillors, MPs, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs to sign too it’s easy via the Write to Them website.
You could also write in to your local newspaper!
ASK YOUR MP TO SIGN EARLY DAY MOTION 139
Chris Mullin has re-tabled the Early Day Motion outlined below which has attracted the signatures of 121 MPs. We want to ensure that all MPs support this motion, there really is no reason to treat children in this way.
To make it even easier we have drafted a letter which you can copy and paste into an email if you want. You can download it here: Draft Letter for MP.
***Please note that if you want to use the Write to Them website to contact your MP they block identical copy and paste messages so you would have to write our draft letter in your own words.***
Early Day Motion EDM 139 Detention of Children
19.11.2009
Mullin, Chris
That this House notes with concern that around 2,000 children are detained each year in immigration detention centres, some for periods of several months; further notes the opinion of Save the Children and the Children’s Commissioner that this is unjustified and damaging; further notes that families with children are among the least likely to abscond; further notes that some EU and Commonwealth countries have successfully introduced solutions other than secure detention for families who have exhausted their asylum claims; and urgently calls on the Government to end the practice of holding children in immigration detention centres.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET A REPLY FROM YOUR MP WITH A COPY OF A HOME OFFICE LETTER JUSTIFYING THE CONTINUED DETENTION OF CHILDREN.
The UKBA is fond of sending out formulaic letters above the signatures of its ministers and senior officials, often via MPs who raise the concerns of constituents about child detention. Such letters are designed to mislead, to pretend that the government would really rather not lock up families but that it is forced to do so because parents refuse to be removed after all legal remedies have been exhausted, that the detention of such families is for the shortest possible time and any delay is due to ‘vexatious’ legal action by those with no right to stay. Also that while in detention, children are treated with care and compassion and suffer no trauma or infringement of their rights.
ECDN has produced a carefully researched rebuttal of the current Meg Hillier response which you can download here. Please adapt and rephrase in your own words when replying to your MP or to the Home Office if you have received the correspondence directly.
ASK YOUR MSP TO SIGN THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT MOTION
If you are a Scottish voter please urge your MSP to support Christina McKelvie’s excellent motion. You can check who your MSP is by entering your postcode on the search page here.
S3M-5021 Christina McKelvie:
End Detention of Children in the UK—That the Parliament is disturbed to note the findings of a team of paediatricians and psychologists published in Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal, which found that 73% of the children held in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre whom they examined had developed clinically significant emotional, mental and physical health problems since being detained, including weight loss, sleep problems, bedwetting and speech regression; believes that these findings vindicate the Scottish Government’s insistence on pursuing alternatives to detention for asylum-seeker families with children; hopes that the community-based pilot launched jointly by the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council and the UK Border Agency in May 2009 means that no more asylum-seeking children will be detained in Scotland; further notes, however, that, according to Home Office figures, 470 children have been detained this year in England and Wales, and calls on the UK Government to follow the Scottish Government’s example in introducing community-based alternatives to detention throughout the UK and end the practice of detaining children as soon as possible.
ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO SIGN THE MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS PETITION
This petition promoted by Dr Frank Arnold is particularly directed at medical practitioners.
If you are one please go the petition site by clicking here.
The administrative detention of children is damaging to them, cannot be made otherwise, and is unacceptable in a civilised society. We call for the immediate cessation of this practice which is demonstrably and permanently harmful to children’s health, both in the short and long term.
We call upon the government to end the immigration detention of children and families.
Until that happens urgent steps are needed to minimise avoidable harms to children. These are as follows:
Children and young people in immigration detention should be recognised as Children in Need and given the same safeguards, such as an Initial Assessment completed within 7 days.
Primary and secondary medical care to CYP and their families should be adequately resourced and provided on the same in-reach basis as for the prison service.
GPs in the community and doctors in secondary care should consider the damaging effects of detention on children and young people and wherever necessary make representations to the immigration services to prevent children with health problems from being detained
GPs providing care for children in IRCs should be especially mindful of the damaging effects of detention on them, and intervene in a timely way to protect their health and well being, including recommending release of any child at risk of further harm. We call upon the GMC and the medical profession as a whole to support doctors who may have to defend themselves for carrying out their duties toward these children.
EDM 1224 – YARL’S WOOD IMMIGRATION REMOVAL CENTRE 30.03.2010
“That this House notes that two of the Government’s most senior professional advisers, the Children’s Commissioner for England and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, have stated unequivocally that Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, near Bedford, is `no place for a child’; further notes that their detailed reports, published respectively in February and March 2010, catalogue compelling reasons for concluding that the welfare of children is `clearly and adversely affected’ at Yarl’s Wood; believes that the reports make shameful reading for a country which prides itself in having the welfare of children at the heart of its legislation; further notes that both reports recommend greater attention by the relevant Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) and that the Children’s Commissioner reports that the LSCB is already reviewing an allegation of sexually harmful behaviour between unrelated young children at Yarl’s Wood; and further believes that immediate rectification is required to safeguard children in the Government’s care at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre.”
MPs signed as of 1pm 31st March 2010
Corbyn, Jeremy
Abbott, Diane
McDonnell, John
Drew, David
ECDN is backing this EDM too – please encourage your MP to sign…
Check latest list of MPs who have signed on www.parliament.uk <http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=40884&SESSION=903>
RAISE AWARENESS!
When people learn about what’s happening to children in detention centres, first, they don’t believe it. Then, they want to stop it. Please tell everyone you know.
