Callous disregard by the British government for the human rights of asylum seekers and migrants indefinitely detained is leading to tragic consequences for many of them.
So say campaigners in a submission to an enquiry into the treatment of asylum seekers by Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (CHR).
The submission, presented by the Campaign to Close Campsfield on behalf of the Barbed Wire Britain Network to End Refugee and Migrant Detention, is backed up by extensive research. It argues that there is an increasing overlap in the injustices suffered by detained asylum seekers and some immigration detainees.
The submission reproduced here provides powerful ammunition for all those campaigning on these issues, and underlines the importance of support for the October 7 Day of Action (see p 23). other detained migrants) is grossly unjust discrimination against them compared with the treatment afforded other residents of the UK.
5. As well as its being unjust-indeed partly result of this-the detention of people in these circumstances is very damaging to their morale, self-respect and health. There is considerable anecdotal evidence of this from detainees themselves (e.g. Voices From Detention II, Barbed Wire Britain, 2006), from their visitors, and from medical researchers (Mina Fazel and Derrick Silove: of refugees", British Medical Journal, 2006: 332: 251-252).
As Dr Christina Pourgourides has put it:
the oppression people have fled from and is a hostile response To avil seeker. ITs assocated with stress and distress, but whether that is a mental health disorder is debatable" (Royal College of Psychiatrists annual conference, July 6, 2003).
6. Complaints by detainees concerning inadequate medical care are frequent.
They range from the universal dishing out by medical staff of paracetamol to cover all eventualities, to neglect of serious conditions, and failure to take sufficiently seriously the statements of detainees about their health.
7. The depths of despair to which detainees Illay be driven by the fact of their detention is reflected in the increasing number of suicides (15 in the last 5 years) by immigration detainees, and the increasing number of instances of (Driven Desperate Measures, Institute of Race Relations, 2006).
8. We do believe that families are indeed being targeted for detention prior to deportation because they are easy targets and make it easier for the government to raise the stalls. tic of numbers of "failed
seekers" who al Ci deported.
9. It is wrong in particular "The fourfold increase under this government of the use of detention appears to have been driven in part by the interests of commercial companies offering to build and/or run detention centres". to imprison children.
10. It is apparent-although the government fails to provide proper statistics - that "ordinary" prisons are being used to detain immigration detainees, despite the fact that a few years ago the Home Secretary rightly denounced the practice as unacceptable and said it would end.
11. The UNHCR guideline is that immigration detention should be imposed only in exceptional circumstances and furthermore in any case
should not exceed 48 hours.
Practice in the UK is so
grossly at variance with this
LOat LOUS deserves
allellion
12. Many asylum applicants
are detained despite the fact
Inal tney are not lable to
deportation as their cases are
still being considered by the
government. As well as being
wrong this is in breach of the government's
oWiN
policy.
13. The initial decision to
detain is made by quite junior
immigraton olncers. Inis 1s
just the first encounter of an
applicant with the
"culture of disbelief" and the often arbitrary decisionmaking that pervade the asylum regime in the UK. Many reports have referred to this phenomenon,
Seeking Asylum Is Not a Crime: Detention of People
Who Have Sought Asylum,
Amnesty, 2005). belief can be observed in operation in the immigration courts when applications for bail and for refugee status are made.
There is no apparent accountability for the deciwhen he or she is held in a detention centre. The process of detrimental changes continues even now. This would appear undermine the UK's obligation seriously to entertain individual applications for asvlum
16. Government statements that the decision to detain is reviewed regularly in each
case de wider believed to be so wide of the mark that they would be better not made.
17. In general, rights for immigration detainees exıst in print only and lack implementation. In the words of a lawyer who was detained: "It would be a delight to see at least some of them in action" (The Rights of Immigration
Barbed Wire Britain, 2006). moved from centre to centre, disrupting support they may receive from visitors, lawyers, etc. 14. The same culture of dis- movements of detainees every There were on average 34 day during 2004 from and to Campsfield, which has space for detainees. The number of 25 given by the IMB for Campsfield for 2005 excludes visits to hospitals, court hearings, interviews,
page 13 of the scan
Molly Cooper