Immigration and asylum - new material (11)
01 October 2011
Almost 700 children detained in three months and Why are so many children being detained at out ports? The Children’s Society Press releases, October 2011. These news releases ask why so many children are being detained after travelling to the UK. Some children are held at Heathrow Airport and ports in the south-east in conditions described as “degrading” by the Independent Monitoring Board; they lack places to sleep and “even decent washing facilities.” The 697 children held in Greater London and the south-east, could indicate that “as many as 2,000 children are detained annually, but shockingly, the Home Office is not collecting information on the length of detention or reasons why the children have been detained.” This is after the government promised 18 months ago that it would end the immigration detention of children, with deputy prime minister Nick Clegg making an impassioned plea for an end to this “shameful practice.” The Children’s Society website: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/
Ways of celebrating 18-D. Mugak, no. 57 December 2011. The following introduction by the editorial team of Mugak in its December issue focuses on visits by migrant support groups in four of Spain’s nine CIEs (Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros, detention centres for foreigners), on racial profiling and stop-and-search operations in Spanish cities, on the construction of racist discourse and on stereotypes, prejudices and attitudes towards people from the Muslim faith. “When ephemeralities are set in the international calendar, like 10 December, anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or 18 December, International Migrants’ Day, it appears that the institutions also need to highlight respect for the rights that are commemorated, at least on these dates. Well, on 15 December organised a joint removal flight for migrants to Dakar in Senegal. To do so, it set to work increasing identity checks on the streets to look for people from Senegal whose status is irregular, and concentrated Senegalese people held in CIEs (detention centres) around Spain in the CIE in Aluche [in southern Madrid, not far from Barajas airport] to make chartering the flight cost-effective.Among those to be expelled on this flight were people with detention orders issued by judges who are clearly settled, who have been recorded in the municipal residents’ register [padrón] for four years, who have a stable residence and all the other criteria for applying [to be regularised] on this basis and which, according to the legislation, make detention and expulsion a disproportionate measure. This forms part of a policy of internment and expulsion of citizens who have not committed any other irregularity than that of looking to make a living wherever they can, even if they do not have the relevant administrative authorisation. And, to do this, Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros, whose very existence and what happens in them is unknown to a large majority of the population, are used.The organisations that form part of the Migreurop network in the Spanish state have just released a report on the visits that they have undertaken in four CIEs in their attempt to throw light on the existence of this prison-like reality, and as part of its demand for both the closure of these centres and the requirement that the rights of people who are detained there be respected. This is certainly another way of celebrating 18-D.” Available from: Mugak, Peña y Goñi, 13-1° 20002 San Sebastián.
Unsafe Return: Refoulement of Congolese Asylum Seekers, Catherine Ramos (compiler). Justice First, November 2011, pp. 36. The introduction to this briefing says: “This report has been prepared in response to a growing concern for the plight of Congolese nationals who have sought asylum in the UK, whose appeals have been refused and who have been forcibly removed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2006 and 2011. During this period, first hand reports which were received from nine people who had been living in the Tees Valley area alleged inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of the Congolese authorities.” The need for the report arose because the “United Kingdom has no monitoring mechanism in place to test the UKBA hypothesis of safety on return for rejected asylum seekers”. See: http://no-racism.net/upload/172818438.pdf