REQUEST FOR FATAL ACCIDENT INQUIRY INTO THE DEATHS OF SERGUEI, TATIANA AND STEPAN SERHYK

BY FAX: 0131 226 6910

Friday, March 19, 2010

FAO the Rt Hon Elish Angiolini QC
Lord Advocate
Crown Office
25 Chambers Street
Edinburgh EH1 1LA

Dear Lord Advocate,

REQUEST FOR FATAL ACCIDENT INQUIRY INTO THE DEATHS OF SERGUEI, TATIANA AND STEPAN SERHYK

Positive Action in Housing Ltd is a Scottish wide charity working with communities, housing providers, voluntary organisations and faith groups to enable everyone to have an equal chance to live in good quality, affordable and safe homes, free from discrimination and the fear of racial harassment and violence. We offer advice, information and support to people from new migrant, refugee and minority ethnic communities. We run a free, confidential and impartial casework service for those facing poverty, homelessness, racism or poor housing. We run a Hardship Fund and provide emergency shelter and practical resources for destitute asylum seekers and their families. We support human rights and anti-racist campaigns. We inform social policy from a user-led perspective. Since 2000, over 10,000 asylum seekers were dispersed to Glasgow, the second largest asylum population in the UK. Since 2004, Positive Action in Housing has operated a destitution fund to support refused asylum seekers who are made destitute in an attempt by the UK government to force them to return to their countries of origin. In 2009, we provided 1,365 nights of free shelter and distributed a total of £18,020 from our Hardship Fund to refused asylum seekers and their families when they were forced into destitution. While the asylum population in Glasgow are relatively transient, the problem of long term destitution, mental illness, despair and hopelessness have been permanent since around 2004 and we have warned previously that things are likely to get worse if not addressed with humanity and understanding.

I am therefore writing to request that you use the powers available to you as Lord Advocate to instruct a Fatal Accident Inquiry into the deaths on 7 March 2010 of Mr Serguei Serykh, his wife Tatiana and their 19 year old son, Stepan, a family of asylum seekers who sought refuge in the UK. Based on our experiences of the way the UK asylum policy operates on Scottish soil, we believe that the Sehryk family would still be alive were it not for the way they were treated by the UK asylum system.

We believe it is in the public interest that a Fatal Accident Inquiry be carried out. There are a number of issues of concern:

1. Serguei Sehryk was a former member of the Russian Military Intelligence, and this was accepted by Canada where he first sought asylum and was granted “protected person status” alongside his family on 31 October 2005.

2. The family claimed asylum in November 2007. We have documentary evidence that the UKBA was fully aware of the family’s fear of being killed and of being prepared to kill themselves. Those close to the family state they “were extremely worried about perceived threats to their physical and mental well being”.

3. It is believed that Mr Sehryk had some psychological issues, as well as his wife and stepson. We possess evidence which shows clearly that the UK Borders Agency knew of the family’s psychological issues and that they were a danger to themselves, and possibly to others. Despite all these factors, the UKBA did nothing to support the family. Indeed, we would contend that their actions only served to exacerbate the family’s sense of fear, isolation and hopelessness about their situation.

4. On 15 February 2010, the UKBA issued a letter refusing the Sehryk family’s claim to asylum. The UKBA informed the family that they could appeal after they return to Canada. They further informed the family that if they did not leave voluntarily, directions would be given for their removal. The UKBA further informed the family that there were no “compassionate” circumstances, i.e. “no known serious medical conditions” which were “sufficiently compelling” to justify allowing the family to stay in the UK.

5. A few days later, the UKBA notified the family that they no longer qualified for support under Section 98 or 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. They were further notified that their support, ie money and accommodation would be discontinued 21 days following the notification of the resolution of their asylum claim.

6. Around mid-February 2010, the YMCA, which is contracted by the UKBA to provide accommodation to asylum seekers, also issued a letter informing the family they must leave their flat at 63 Petershill Drive by Sunday 7 March, 2010. Their benefits of £105 per week in vouchers would also have stopped around Sunday 7 March.

7. Around 24th February, eleven days before their deaths, the family sought advice about their asylum refusal to find out what the “the next step” was. They were informed that

i. their money and housing would be stopped.
ii. That they were forbidden to work
iii. they would have no “recourse to public funds”, ie they could not go to an emergency hostel, a homeless unit or apply for income support or crisis funds. They had no other means of support.
iv. They could be detained at any time, i.e. removed by force from their home or from Brand Street Reporting Centre.

Mr Sehryk and his 19 year old stepson Stepan were observed to become upset. Stepan in particular became animated and incredulous and asked “how do they expect us to survive on the street without any money or somewhere to live”. If one were to strip every basic human need from a person with good mental health it would be inhumane. But to tell a family with a clear fear of return as well as psychological issues would clearly be more than enough to tip them over the edge. I should make it clear that there are many others who are in the same position in Red Road and elsewhere in Glasgow.

8. On the same day that their benefits and housing was stopped, the Sehryk family committed suicide from the balcony of their 15th floor flat.

9. Since the deaths, there has been much conjecture about the family’s circumstances and what drove them to kill themselves. While the UKBA stated that they would not comment “at this point in time”, an “unnamed” source leaked details to the press, at a time when questions were being asked about the asylum system. The source suggested the family was mentally ill hence the reason for their deaths. We do not know whether the source was political or from within the UKBA. Either way, the desired effect was to divert public scrutiny away from the UK asylum system as it operates on Scottish soil, and place the blame for the deaths on the Sehryk s themselves. What is utterly reprehensible is that the “unnamed source” effectively cherry picked the dead family’s asylum application to discredit them, when that family could not answer back. By highlighting Mr Sehryk’s psychological state, the subsequent press coverage gives a misleading impression that this tragic incident was somehow inevitable and that Mr Sehryk was to blame for the family’s deaths.

10. I am sorry to say that this explanation does not match up with our experiences of the Red road, or the wider asylum issues affecting our service users. In our experience, the service users we deal with do develop psychological issues as a result of the asylum process and this should be one of the focuses of the Fatal Accident Inquiry. Only a few of hours after the suicides we made it clear that it was “normal currency” for service-users to inform our staff that in their minds suicide was a viable alternative to being returned to unsafe countries. We believe GPs and mental health charities operating in Glasgow should be questioned about the extent of mental health problems amongst Glasgow’s refugee population relative to the rest of the city.

11. Since that time, we have stepped up our presence in the Red road and liaised with the Police and the local community. On Tuesday 9 March, one asylum seeker from Afghanistan informed us at the Vigil for the Sehryks “I wish I was one of them [the dead family]”. When asked why he was saying that, he replied, “at least their problem is over”. Another woman, one of our service users, said she fully identified with the family’s despair. She said she had tried to throw herself and her three year old son from her balcony at Red Road at two am in the morning. She said she could not go on any longer and could not leave her son behind because there was noone to look after him. She opened her window and was trying to cut the anti-suicide wire with a knife with her son sleeping in her arms. Her son awoke suddenly and said to her “Mummy its cold”. She broke down crying and took her son to bed.

12. On Wednesday 10th March, Archbishop Conti wrote to us about the Sehryk family. He said, “I have been appalled time and time again at the way refugees, after several years residence here, are suddenly deported. During those years they have often forged relationships within the community, and people are ready to stand by them and support them and are deeply distressed when they suddenly disappear. The tragic case of the Russian family who jumped to their deaths from the Red Road Flats last weekend is a unique case but serves as a terrible reminder of the anguish faced, on a daily basis, by asylum seekers in the city. We must constantly examine our conscience as a society and ask whether we are fully respecting the dignity of the human beings who find their way to our shores. It is right that there be robust and clear rules in place to prevent abuses, but at the same time compassion must have a role, especially where children are concerned who have grown up here and have no memory of a land to which they face deportation … questions still need to be asked about the practice of stopping families’ already-meagre benefits and threatening them with eviction. It is far from humane that such families have to live in constant fear of their deportation; a more efficient and compassionate method with migrants and refugees is urgently needed”.

As a charity providing hundreds of pounds each week to destitute asylum seekers from the Red Road and elsewhere, we have seen firsthand the inhumane practices endured by our service users and the depths of their despair at the prospect of being returned to unsafe conditions. It is our contention that the UKBA was culpable in this family’s deaths and could be culpable for others, unless their policy is changed. We believe that lessons need to be learned from the systemic failures in order to prevent such a tragedy happening again on Scottish soil, or anywhere else in the UK. Certainly we want to know how much of a role the family’s imminent destitution and threat of removal or detention played in their deaths. A Fatal Accident Inquiry would assist in informing future policy and decision making affecting the lives of hundreds of asylum seekers currently in Glasgow. I would finally add that this case has resulted in conjecture and rumour and it is in the public interest that this matter is investigated properly and the facts of this case made public. We do not want any more suicides.

We would be pleased to provide documentary evidence to support our request for a Fatal Accident Inquiry, and supply any evidence which would help you to make a decision.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes and kind regards,

ROBINA QURESHI
DIRECTOR

Deportation threat woman fears death – Currently being held in Dungavel

A CAMPAIGN has been launched against the planned deportation of a woman living in Sheffield – with friends claiming she will be killed if she is sent back home.

Annociate Nimpagaritse, aged 25, fled from Burundi – an African country between Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo – three years ago after her parents were shot dead.

The Sheffield College student, from Burngreave, managed to escape with her siblings when rebel forces burst into their family home killed their mum and dad. But Annociate got separated from them at a refugee camp and does not know where they are or if they are even alive.

She was helped to get to Britain in 2005 and made her first claim for asylum, which was turned down, as was her second attempt two years later.

But she continued building a life for herself in Sheffield awaiting her deportation and was sent back to Burundi in February until immigration officials there refused to accept her paperwork and sent her back to Britain.

Last week she was again taken to a deportation centre in Scotland and told she is to be removed from the country on Thursday.

A campaign has been launched to get the Home Office to reconsider its decision, and on Monday her supporters will gather outside Sheffield Town Hall at 5pm to draw attention to her plight.

They have also written a letter to Immigration Minister Liam Byrne asking for a rethink and have collected more than 1,200 signatures on a petition asking for her to be allowed to stay in the country.

Annociate, who her friends and supporters say is “frightened” at the prospect of returning home, studies English at college, sings in a church choir, does voluntary work and speaks in churches for ASSIST – a charity set up to help destitute asylum seekers in and around Sheffield.

She was in the middle of organising her wedding to her fiance Aime – a Burundian whose claim for asylum was accepted – when she was forced out of Sheffield.

Sheffield College Chief Executive Heather MacDonald said: “The college is committed to Annociate being able to continue her education and training in this country and in a safe environment. She has been a model student and contributed strongly to her local community here in Sheffield.”

Campaigner Graham Wroe, a college lecturer, said: “Burundi has been described as the fifth most dangerous country in the world. Rebels continue to murder, kidnap and rape civilians. Burundians who know her situation say there is a strong likelihood she will be killed if she returns.

To pledge your support visit freeannociate.blogspot.com or contact Graham Wroe at gswroe@yahoo.co.uk.

What can you do?
Lobby Kenyan Airlines
Sign the Petition
Send this Model letter to Liam Byrne
Keep up to date by visiting – http://freeannociate.blogspot.com/

Four-year-old girl caged as refugee for 86 days despite being Scottish

A FOUR-YEAR-OLD girl has been booted out of Scotland by asylum chiefs after spending a record 86 days in detention – even though she was born here.

Terrified Ericka Andrew was snatched with mum Tracey in a dawn raid on her home, treated as an asylum seeker and sent to Nigeria by the Home Office.

Her ordeal is revealed days after the European Union urged UK authorities to consider “drastically limiting” the policy of holding people in detention centres.

Bill Ramsay, minister at Ericka and Tracey’s church, said: “She has never known any home other than Scotland.

“It’s not any different from grabbing any other Scottish child, locking them up then flying them to a foreign country.”

Tracey, 26, and Ericka were snatched from their home in Glasgow’s Maryhill in June. Tracey was to sit her final healthcare exams that day.

They were locked up in the notorious Dungavel detention centre, a former prison in Lanarkshire, for three weeks before being transferred to the Yarl’s Wood facility in Bedfordshire.

Despite lodging an appeal, the pair were flown to Africa at 6.30am on August 28.

It was revealed last year that families were being held alongside foreign criminals at Dungavel.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate for Education published a report earlier this year stating facilities for children were only suitable for a maximum of two weeks’ detention.

Reverend Ramsay, of Gairbraid Parish Church in Maryhill, said: “I wouldn’t treat a dog like that, much less a child.

“Ericka was kept in detention longer than any other child her age – it’s disgraceful.

“Our congregation hoped that because Ericka was born here, they would be sympathetic.”

Tracey fled Nigeria aged 21 after becoming pregnant by a Muslim man. She was rejected by her Christian family, threatened by her lover’s relatives and feared for her life.

A week after arriving in the UK, she was persuaded to use a false passport to get to Canada but was held at London Gatwic airport.

She spent two months in jail then moved to Glasgow, giving birth to Ericka soon after.

The Rev Ramsay said: “I visited them in Dungavel and it was one of the most distressing experiences ofmy life. Tracey made a mistake but she was pregnant, alone, terrified and didn’t understand UK law.

“But she made amends and would have been a useful member of society. There are foreign nationals who have committed much more serious crimes who have been allowed to stay in Britain.

“Ericka was a lovely girl who captured the hearts of everybody. It’s beyond understanding the Home Office has done this.”

Tracey was refused permission to stay due to her criminal record. Immigration rules are reserved to Westminster but the Scottish Government has demanded an end to dawn raids and child detention.

A spokesman said: “We are looking with key partners at a Scottish model of an alternative to detention.”

The Home Office Border Agency said: “In most cases, children are within our detention estate for less than seven days. We take the welfare of children very seriously.”

Children’s Commissioner Kathleen Marshall said: “Early morning removals are extremely intrusive and frightening for children and detention can cause lasting damage to their health and wellbeing. I will continue to argue for alternatives.”

‘I wouldn’t treat a dog like that, much less a child’

Rev Bill Ramsay

SUNDAY EMAIL

r.hainey@sundaymail.co.uk
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/09/21/four-year-old-girl-caged-as-refugee-for-86-days-despite-being-scottish-78057-20745777/

A fair deal for children

The government claims to be looking into alternatives to detention for minors – but so far its pilot schemes have been disastrously flawed. There are more humane and effective options, writes Lisa Nandy of the Children’s Society.

There has been much discussion about the detention of children since the New Statesman launched its campaign four weeks ago. From the Children’s Commissioner to the Home Office, there is widespread acceptance that detention is damaging to minors, but there is little discussion about what should happen instead. Is there a workable alternative to locking up children?

It’s a question that has been troubling the government, so much so that the Home Office last year began a pilot scheme to persuade families at the end of the asylum process to return home voluntarily. It makes financial sense to invest in voluntary return: in 2006, a House of Commons committee revealed that it costs on average £9,000 forcibly to remove someone from the UK. But the pilot scheme has been a disaster, with very few families co-operating in their expulsion, and with evidence emerging of the harm and distress caused to the children involved.

The pilot programme took place at Millbank Induction Centre in Ashford, Kent, and ran for ten months from last November. The idea was to house families that had been refused asylum in a hostel where an independent charity, Migrant Helpline, would work with them for a short length of time to help them consider how best to return to their home countries. It differed from conventional detention centres in that the families were free to come and go.

Initially, many charities welcomed the idea. Asylum-seeking families need to feel safe, but are often very fearful at the prospect of returning home; and, having left everything behind, they find it takes a huge change of mindset to consider going back. Children will often have no memory of the country they have left, and their parents find it difficult to imagine how they will survive or what their lives will be like. A good system hinges on trust, and giving families the breathing space to talk through these concerns with someone independent makes sense.

Yet very quickly it became clear that Millbank was not working: after three months, not a single family had entered the hostel, and the referral criteria were so unclear that some of the families eventually sent there could not leave the UK because it had already been judged unsafe for them to return home. Others were taken to the centre straight from detention, and were so damaged by their recent experiences that they were unable or unwilling to trust anybody.

We tracked down some of the families to find out from them, their legal representatives and charity support workers what had gone wrong. The families told us that it was never made clear to them why they were being sent to Millbank: they were simply given 14 days to enter the pilot or have their benefits stopped; some had less than a week to make arrangements and take their children out of school. Some families did not know where they were going until they arrived at Millbank. One mother was taken straight there after several months in Yarl’s Wood detention centre; she arrived with her baby, scared and confused, and left the hostel soon afterwards.

Support workers and legal representatives were equally unsure of what was happening, meaning there were few people to give the families informed and impartial advice. In the absence of information, rumours circulated, resulting in a climate of fear. Most of the parents we spoke to had few complaints about the care they received from Migrant Helpline and were grateful their children were allowed to attend school – but it was nevertheless clear they were living in fear and unable to engage with the process. The children, sensitive to the tensions, reacted as they often did to detention – refusing to eat, becoming ill and distressed, and behaving badly at school.

Free to go, many families did just that. Those we spoke to had returned to their original asylum accommodation and enrolled their children back into school, citing the need for normality and stability. The Home Office regards these families as “absconders”, even though they had been free to leave Millbank and many had informed the authorities of their location. One family became “absconders” when the officials went to the wrong address to collect them. The Home Office suggests that the number of families which “absconded” proves that detention of children is necessary, but our evaluation shows that this is a myth.

The essential element of any workable, humane system is confidence: without gaining the trust of an asylum-seeking family – and those who support them – there is no meaningful way to explore voluntary return. The government made it clear from the outset that it was not interested in the impact of the pilot on the minors involved; it was concerned with cost and with the number of families leaving the UK.

The merits of trust have been demonstrated by models in other countries, such as the Hotham Mission in Australia. In a two-year pilot, more than 200 asylum-seekers were given an independent charity worker to support them through an asylum process designed to integrate them into the community or help them to return home. Eighty-five per cent of those refused asylum were not detained and returned home voluntarily. None absconded.

Detention is not a sensible policy. The first presumption in any case must be freedom, and any restrictions on liberty must be proportionate: there is no evidence that families, which tend to need access to health, education and social support, abscond if they are released into the community. A study in the UK by South Bank University found that less than 9 per cent of high-risk, single asylum-seekers attempted to evade immigration control after being released on bail. It concluded that the detention of asylum-seekers was largely unnecessary and “a vast waste of public money”. It costs the taxpayer £1,280 a week – nearly £67,000 a year – for a single asylum-seeker to be detained, yet virtually nobody is calling the government to account over how the money is spent.

Neither effective nor civilised

Where there is a compelling risk that a family may go missing, the Home Office has a range of measures at its disposal. Families can be asked to post bail or to report on a regular basis to the police or the Home Office. Other methods trialled elsewhere have ranged from the coercive, such as electronic tagging in Florida, to the non-coercive, such as the supervision of asylum-seekers by a charity, in New York, and by social workers, in Sweden. These initiatives confirm that threats and coercion do not encourage families which have already suffered serious upheaval and distress to comply. The schemes that succeed work in a supportive, transparent way, so that the families and their advisers understand the system and can feel confident that they have been given a fair hearing.

Finding a humane and sensible solution requires a significant investment of energy, time and commitment. It will take a brave government to do just that in the face of public concern and misunderstanding about immigration. But there is a precedent. In July, the Australian government ended a seven-year policy of automatic detention of asylum-seekers and pledged that no child would ever again be detained. The Austra lian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said it was neither “an effective nor a civilised response”.

After the failure of Millbank in this country, we need a serious discussion about realistic alternatives. Next month, Bail for Immigration Detainees and the Children’s Society will launch an initiative to end the detention of minors within three years. In an effective asylum system, no child need be detained.

Lisa Nandy is policy adviser for asylum and refugee children at the Children’s Society

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2008/09/families-children-asylum

Innocent prisoners

Only Asylum-seekers’ children can be locked up without committing a crime. Gillian Slovo visited two families at Yarl’s Wood. What she heard made her feel “numb”.

I stood in front of the visitors’ door of Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, near Bedford, waiting for a rubber-gloved guard to unlock a door, check my fingerprints, pat-search me, unlock another door, let me into a large room, and then lock me in. Memories of visiting my parents in South African jails, of gates and turning keys, resounded. The memories knocked again, and loudly, as I watched a child dressed in pink skipping through a door that had just been unlocked. But this time, while I was still the visitor, the child was the imprisoned.

In the week that the solicitor of an eight-year-old Iranian boy, having challenged the legality of his detention, secured his release from Yarl’s Wood at the high court, 36 other children remained in detention. Marie, who “celebrated” her third birthday in Yarl’s Wood, and her baby brother, John, are two of them. They are the children of Elizabeth Kiwunga Rushamba, a Ugandan asylum-seeker, and this is Marie’s second stay. Children can only be held for more than 28 days with ministerial authorisation: by the time I visited, Marie and John had been in for 57. With Elizabeth’s bail application pending, she has no idea how long they will be incarcerated.

From the outside Yarl’s Wood, sitting squatly in a complex that includes a Red Bull wind tunnel, and a roofing and a storage company, looks more like an anonymous technical college than a detention centre. It can hold 405 women and children: at present there are around 350. With plans to increase numbers of detentions by as much as 60 per cent, there is talk of rebuilding the section destroyed in a fire soon after Yarl’s Wood opened in 2001.

The right to seek asylum was born out of a world shamed by the genocide of the Holocaust. And yet asylum has now become a political football, with the government so determined to prove its muscle that it is prepared to lock up children. Yarl’s Wood’s inmates have committed no crime: although detention is supposed to be their last stop before removal, many appeal and are then let out pending further adjudication.

Women with children are kept in a special unit inside the complex. Child protection rules mean that their section is closed off, thus increasing the number of keys that must be turned in locks every time the children leave their section. It took me, what with queuing, fingerprinting, photographing and searching, 15 minutes to make it to the visitors’ room: it took Elizabeth and her children, waiting for a guard to bring them down, another 20. As I sat at table number 25, on a blue-cushioned chair in a sea of other, identical chairs and tables, I read the rules. “Please note,” I read, “that a hug and kiss at the start and end of your visit is acceptable only,” this a result, my guide Heather Jones of Yarl’s Wood Befrienders told me, of couples becoming a little too intimate in the visitors’ room.

Three-year-old Marie made straight for the small plastic slide that stood by a television blaring out a Fifties Christmas movie. There she stayed, playing loudly for almost all the time we adults talked, while her baby brother sat on Heather’s lap. Only towards the end of the interview, as tears leaked down her mother’s cheeks, did Marie join us. She climbed all over her mother as if nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. “Perhaps she has seen her mother cry too often,” was Heather’s comment.

In her short life, Marie has seen many things. She was two when officials stormed her home at 6am after Elizabeth’s first asylum application was refused. Marie was witness to her pregnant mother being pushed out and shoved into a van. The metronome of dates that her mother narrates – October to November 2007, and 13 July until this moment – is the stuff of Marie’s young life.

Her world is this prison

She has seen her mother being restrained by a police officer while she brushed her teeth, and she has seen the same officer watching while her mother washed her. She and her baby brother were put alone into a police van, only to re-meet their mother in a police station. Now her world is reduced to Yarl’s Wood family centre, the room with its two fitted beds and squeezed-in cot, and the nursery where other children inexplicably appear and disappear, and this space where visitors may come.

If her fingernails need cutting she must go with her mother to the office so they may use the only available scissors: she stands mute as her mother pleads for juice and baby yoghurt to help her brother’s constipation. And when she sees her mother crying she acts as if she hasn’t.

Marie’s experiences are not uncommon. Take the seven-year-old daughter and the nine- and twelve-year-old sons of Margaret (not her real name). The two youngest were asleep at home in December 2007 when Margaret heard rattling. Having recently rid her house of rats, she thought they must have come back. But no – the noise was coming not from the kitchen, but from the front door. She shouted out to ask who was there and when the answer came “Police” she, who lived in an area where the police often came to ask about her neighbours, was not too perturbed. But when she opened the door a crack, 15 officials from immigration and the police – she couldn’t tell which was which – burst in.

Margaret tells me that while she was kept naked in a downstairs room, in the company of three male officers, others – only two of them women – went upstairs for the children. The two youngest were shaken awake by strangers: “Come on, we’re going for a little ride.” Because the elder son was not at home, a policeman used Margaret’s mobile phone to ring him. “We’ve got your mum,” he was told. “You’ve got to give us the address where you are.” Margaret said, “My son did not know whether somebody was telling him whether his mum was dead.” Only when the mother of the friend with whom the boy was staying insisted on driving him home, rather than to an anonymous police station as she was told to do, did he discover that his mother, although distraught, was basically all right.

And there was worse to come. Margaret is HIV-positive and, being unwell, was suspected of having contracted TB. She says that for the first 11 days of their second detention, she and her children were kept in the health centre in solitary seclusion. They were allowed out for only half an hour a day.

Of Yarl’s Wood health care, Nick Lessof, consultant paediatrician at Homerton Hospital in east London, who on behalf of Medical Justice has helped some of the detained children, says: “Apart from the intrinsic harm in detaining children, there is a very serious lack of health care in Yarl’s Wood. It is a culture in which children remain invisible, a good old-fashioned whistle-blowing scandal. What officials say is happening bears no relation to reality.”

He goes on to describe the cases of two children, both suffering from sickle cell anaemia, who turned up at the health centre with temperatures of 40 degrees and refusing to drink. “If this happened within the NHS, these children, who have a serious disease, would immediately be admitted to hospital and given IV fluids and IV antibiotics.” At Yarl’s Wood they were sent back to the rooms, their mothers told merely to make their listless children drink more.

Margaret’s children might well see more of the health centre soon: they are to be tested for HIV. When Margaret was free, she was counselled and prepared before she took her test, so that when the news came it wasn’t such a shock. But this time there has been no counselling. “The kids are going to testing on Monday,” she says. “I’m just numb. Numb.”

It is the children who bear the effects of their mother’s numbness. “If the kids don’t want to go to school,” Margaret says, “they don’t have to. They just sit in rooms.” She describes herself as always tired, unable to look after them. “The eldest boy looks after the others,” she says. “He carries my burden. He feels what I’m going through.”

Numbness is a good word for Yarl’s Wood. It is what I have felt on both occasions of my visits there. I sat opposite some of the poorest, most powerless, and certainly the most disenfranchised women in this country, as they held on to the pieces of paper that they produce over and over again to try to explain their case to strangers. Most of them have already suffered terrible harm – a fact the Home Office often concedes while adding that, the situation in their country having changed, they can now go back.

Detention centres such as Yarl’s Wood are there, the government would argue, to stop failed asylum-seekers from absconding. Yet surely women with children who go to school and nursery are among the least likely of absconders?

The children of asylum-seekers are the only children in this country who can be locked up without oversight of the courts and without ever having committed a crime. The government’s decision to detain them is not subject to judicial scrutiny. They are the casualties of a political system that demonises asylum-seekers.

Take Amina (not her real name), another former inmate, who was released from custody because, as a victim of torture, she should, even by Home Office rules, never have been imprisoned. Amina said: “I don’t think they even value us as people . . . I don’t think this would happen if this was the British public . . . They do these things because we are detainees.” After a visit to Yarl’s Wood, it is hard not to agree with her.

Yarl’s Wood is one step on from 42-day detention for suspects. It is not simply that compassion and dignity are being denied but that a fundamental principle of our democracy – that we do not imprison children – is openly flouted.

Speaking in 2007, Liam Byrne, minister of state at the Home Office, said: “I have to sign the authorisation for every child held in detention for longer than 28 days. I have never signed that authorisation without thinking of my three children at home.”

Are these not just crocodile tears? For can we really believe the minister would stand silently if his children were threatened with this kind of mistreatment? And would we? Would we stay silent if they were our children?

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2008/09/yarl-wood-children-mother