Raekha Prasad: Toddlers behind the razor wire
Children are the innocent victims of Britain's hardline asylum policy. Six-year-old Hadia Ahmadi and her brother Seear, four, are the latest casualties in the war on asylum seekers.
Children are the innocent victims of Britain's hardline asylum policy.
Six-year-old Hadia Ahmadi and her brother Seear, four, are the latest casualties in the war on asylum seekers. Caught between their Afghan parents' desire to stay in Britain and the government's wish to eject the family, the children have been removed from their mother and father by a family friend and hidden away. Separation, the Ahmadis decided, was preferable to their children being taken from the West Midlands' mosque where they had sought refuge and joining them in a detention centre.
But they are by no means the only child victims of asylum policy. Earlier this month, the plight of two young brothers seeking refuge in the British consulate in Melbourne from the notorious Woomera detention centre failed to move the foreign secretary. Instead, Jack Straw handed the distraught pair, who had fled 600 miles across the desert, back to Australia's heavy-handed asylum officials.
The British government seems to be taking its cue from Australia, where detention is routine and harsh treatment is seen as a vote-winner. Rather than let families seeking asylum live openly in British towns and cities, ministers are increasingly detaining them, arguing that otherwise some would disappear. The consequence is that the Labour government locks up minors who would not have been detained by previous Conservative administrations.
Whitehall now incarcerates children seeking asylum for unprecedented lengths of time in numbers hitherto unthought of. By expanding the use of detention, ministers shrink the rights of the child. This runs contrary to Labour's social justice message: it is prepared to use the language of social inclusion for British kids, but systematically excludes foreign children seeking asylum here.
The number of children held will increase significantly from those currently imprisoned in the 300 "family rooms" at Harmondsworth, in Middlesex, and Dungavel, in Scotland. These places are far from cosy: they have security equivalent to category B prisons, uniformed officers roam the corridors, nurseries look out to high walls topped with razor wire.
The assessment of who is likely to abscond is highly questionable. Several pregnant women with babies and toddlers have been detained for up to three months. Conditions are far from ideal: babies have failed to receive inoculations on time and child protection standards are patchy.
How can the government justify imprisoning minors who have not committed any offence? Seeking asylum in Britain is not a crime, even if false papers are sometimes the only way of getting here. By its own admission, the government has no evidence to show that families are increasingly absconding. A report produced last month by South Bank University in London shows that, given bail, nine out of 10 asylum seekers comply with the law.
Going to ground is a dangerous, complicated and ultimately fruitless activity for single asylum seekers. For families, the practicalities are near impossible and the consequences likely to be calamitous. The South Bank study calculated that last year up to £2m a week was wasted on unnecessary detentions.
Labour came into power with good intentions. Before 1997, the ad hoc policy that saw accompanied children placed in care or very occasionally detained was deemed inefficient. So a year later the government, in its white paper on asylum, said that though it was "particularly regrettable", families could be held in the few days prior to removal once all legal challenges had failed.
By 2001, regret had become politically unviable. Gone was the remorse, gone was the desire to keep detentions short, and gone was any real chance of getting out. Families have been held indefinitely in purpose-built blocks since October.
The new powers are so wide-ranging that asylum seekers, previously detained only before they were deported, can now be incarcerated indefinitely if the authorities have any doubts about their identities at any stage of processing their applications.
Once inside, detainees face great difficulties in arguing for their liberty. Asylum seekers have no automatic right to a bail hearing. Unless they can contact a lawyer and arrange for two people not in detention and with money to vouch for them, asylum seekers have no opportunity to test the state's case for holding them in a court.
Children are being handed out rough justice when their only crime is to arrive in a country where claiming asylum is increasingly being treated as an offence. Until the government puts the best interests of children before political expediency, and moves to stem the misperception that the UK is awash with absconding families, ministers will be building more and more centres to imprison asylum seekers.
Six-year-old Hadia Ahmadi and her brother Seear, four, are the latest casualties in the war on asylum seekers. Caught between their Afghan parents' desire to stay in Britain and the government's wish to eject the family, the children have been removed from their mother and father by a family friend and hidden away. Separation, the Ahmadis decided, was preferable to their children being taken from the West Midlands' mosque where they had sought refuge and joining them in a detention centre.
But they are by no means the only child victims of asylum policy. Earlier this month, the plight of two young brothers seeking refuge in the British consulate in Melbourne from the notorious Woomera detention centre failed to move the foreign secretary. Instead, Jack Straw handed the distraught pair, who had fled 600 miles across the desert, back to Australia's heavy-handed asylum officials.
The British government seems to be taking its cue from Australia, where detention is routine and harsh treatment is seen as a vote-winner. Rather than let families seeking asylum live openly in British towns and cities, ministers are increasingly detaining them, arguing that otherwise some would disappear. The consequence is that the Labour government locks up minors who would not have been detained by previous Conservative administrations.
Whitehall now incarcerates children seeking asylum for unprecedented lengths of time in numbers hitherto unthought of. By expanding the use of detention, ministers shrink the rights of the child. This runs contrary to Labour's social justice message: it is prepared to use the language of social inclusion for British kids, but systematically excludes foreign children seeking asylum here.
The number of children held will increase significantly from those currently imprisoned in the 300 "family rooms" at Harmondsworth, in Middlesex, and Dungavel, in Scotland. These places are far from cosy: they have security equivalent to category B prisons, uniformed officers roam the corridors, nurseries look out to high walls topped with razor wire.
The assessment of who is likely to abscond is highly questionable. Several pregnant women with babies and toddlers have been detained for up to three months. Conditions are far from ideal: babies have failed to receive inoculations on time and child protection standards are patchy.
How can the government justify imprisoning minors who have not committed any offence? Seeking asylum in Britain is not a crime, even if false papers are sometimes the only way of getting here. By its own admission, the government has no evidence to show that families are increasingly absconding. A report produced last month by South Bank University in London shows that, given bail, nine out of 10 asylum seekers comply with the law.
Going to ground is a dangerous, complicated and ultimately fruitless activity for single asylum seekers. For families, the practicalities are near impossible and the consequences likely to be calamitous. The South Bank study calculated that last year up to £2m a week was wasted on unnecessary detentions.
Labour came into power with good intentions. Before 1997, the ad hoc policy that saw accompanied children placed in care or very occasionally detained was deemed inefficient. So a year later the government, in its white paper on asylum, said that though it was "particularly regrettable", families could be held in the few days prior to removal once all legal challenges had failed.
By 2001, regret had become politically unviable. Gone was the remorse, gone was the desire to keep detentions short, and gone was any real chance of getting out. Families have been held indefinitely in purpose-built blocks since October.
The new powers are so wide-ranging that asylum seekers, previously detained only before they were deported, can now be incarcerated indefinitely if the authorities have any doubts about their identities at any stage of processing their applications.
Once inside, detainees face great difficulties in arguing for their liberty. Asylum seekers have no automatic right to a bail hearing. Unless they can contact a lawyer and arrange for two people not in detention and with money to vouch for them, asylum seekers have no opportunity to test the state's case for holding them in a court.
Children are being handed out rough justice when their only crime is to arrive in a country where claiming asylum is increasingly being treated as an offence. Until the government puts the best interests of children before political expediency, and moves to stem the misperception that the UK is awash with absconding families, ministers will be building more and more centres to imprison asylum seekers.
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