Scotland's shame: Dungavel Removal Centre

The ConDem government has announced what should be good news: the practice of detaining children at Dungavel is to end.

Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre is a prison for asylum seekers who are to be deported. Parents with children have been held there, in some cases for more than a year. However, the fact that in Scotland we imprison kids horrified many, and the centre has been the site of repeated protests. More than that, there has been in a political consensus in Scotland that this is wrong, and that it must be ended.

This was something the Lib Dems had pledged to do, something which, alongside their pledge to scrap Trident and introduce a fairer tax system (neither of which will now happen since they jumped in to bed with the Tories), helped give people the impression that they could vote for a mainstream alternative. This has since proved to be a cruel lie.

However, it has emerged what the ConDems plan to do about the imprisonment of children in Scotland: they’ll move them to England. Great work guys!

It’s been announced that families will now be taken to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire, supposedly because this has the facilities to accommodate them. You can paint this whichever way you want, a child in prison is still a child in prison.

As we’ve reported previously, Yarl’s Wood was recently the site of a major hunger strike of inmates, who were demanding their freedom and better conditions. They were subject to physical and verbal (racist) abuse. It’s a privatised prison, run by the sinister company SERCO. It’s no place to send children.

Although there are many great groups down south operating to help refugees and those locked up in Yarl’s Wood, it’s no accident that the new government wants to get them out of Scotland. The debate on asylum in England is further to the right than it is here, with all the focus on cracking down. That isn’t to imply that Scotland has some amazing record of welcoming people and anti-racism. But there is a consensus that locking up kids in Dungavel is wrong, due at least in part to the tireless support work of SSP MSPs on the issue from 2003-7. This means that what’s politically unacceptable here can be got away with in Bedfordshire. The Lib Dems should receive absolutely no credit for stopping kids imprisonment in Scotland only to continue it in England. They should instead by mercilessly hounded for the lying hypocrites they are.

But to get practical about what we need to do: Despite the fact that the ConDems had already announced that child detention was to end, on Monday Seher and Wania Shabaz were detained at Brand Street Reporting Centre in Glasgow, and sent to Dungavel.

Seher and Wania Shabaz

Twenty-five year old Seher has been living in the UK for three years, after she was forced into marriage against her will. Her husband was physically and sexually abusive, and threatened to kill her. She was locked in his flat in Blackburn for days at a time. She begged her family in Pakistan to take her back, but they were unsympathetic.

In May last year her daughter Wania was born, and she decided she couldn’t cope with the abuse any more, so she phoned the police. They referred her to Social Work, who said they couldn’t help her because she wasn’t a British citizen. In December she left and came to Glasgow.

Here, she was put in homeless accommodation and assisted to make an asylum application. Her husband followed her to Glasgow, and she had to be moved to avoid him. Her in-laws have been harassing Seher’s family, claiming there was no abuse and that she ran off with another man. If Seher is returned to Pakistan she faces at the least being ostracised, and possibly much worse, as deserting her husband is viewed as a serious matter. Seher said:

“This is the system I would be returning to if they deport us. They won’t spare me, it’s not a small issue if a girl runs away from her husband or in-laws. Our only value in Pakistan now is if I am dead.”

Seher arrived at Brand Street to report in, as all asylum seekers have to do every two weeks. Despite never having shown any risk of absconding, she was detained and taken to Dungavel. She said:

“I told them I was signing every two weeks and I am continually running from a very bad situation, why are you detaining me? They said to me “This is what we have decided”. I said I have a small baby and I have none of her clothes or baby things. They said that was not their problem and I was put into the back of a van and after an hour my baby and I were taken to Dungavel. I just could not stop crying. My baby was due for medical treatment today (Tuesday, May 18th) and despite giving them a medical letter at the detention centre they insisted on detaining me.  This is just a prison. We are kept locked in in the family area. But why? We have never ran away or tried to break the law. I can’t take my baby out for fresh air when she needs it. That is the worst thing, not being able to play in the open with her, and I don’t like her seeing the barbed wire or to know what it means – that we cannot leave.

“I just want to be able to raise my daughter in peace, find work and stand on our own two feet and make a simple life for us. Nothing else. My daughter is just a baby, she has done nothing to harm anyone. I just ask the government to release us from here.”

Groups working to support Seher, like the Unity Centre and Positive Action in Housing fear that she will be taken to Yarl’s Wood today. The journey will probably be in the back of a van, completely inappropriate for an 8-month old baby suffering from diarrhea, and who has been denied medical treatment. This morning Seher says she has been vomiting and is extremely distressed. When she tried to protest what was happening to authorities in Dungavel, they threatened to take her baby from her by force and transport them separately to Yarl’s Wood. Once again, the people responsible for detention have been shown to be cruel racists, who should not be given any authority over a young mum and her baby.

Tory Immigration Minister Damian Green, who apparently has a servant to carry an umbrella over his head like P. Diddy

What you can do: Urgently, get in touch with Damian Green, the new Tory UK Immigration Minister. You can email him on greend@parliament.uk. Better still, phone him up and give him hell about the way Seher and Wania have been treated. His Westminster office is on 020 7219 3911, and the fax number is 020 7219 0904. And his constituency office in Ashford is on 01233 820454, fax 01233 820111.

Also, get in touch with your own MP and MSP, and demand that Seher and Wania are not removed, and allowed to return to their home. You can find the details of how to contact them here.

It’s a simple demand we’re making of the government: let asylum seekers live at home while their claims are being processed. No children, anywhere in the UK, should be in prison. Make your voice heard!

Update: On Wednesday Seher and Wania were taken on a nine hour journey by van to Yarl’s Wood, where they are currently incarcerated, and facing deportation to Pakistan tomorrow. Her solicitor is making representations to the Home Secretary, and is waiting for a response. Now is the time we all urgently need to add our voices to those contacting the government to demand that they be allowed to stay in the UK. Click here for model letters and where to send them.

What’s sickening is if she had remained in a violent relationship she wouldn’t now be facing deportation.

Yesterday all 12 families locked up in Yarl’s Wood sent a jointly signed letter to Nick Clegg pleading that they be let go, and their children, who were born here and speak English as their first language, are allowed to return to school and try and pick up a normal life. The families include two pregnant women and 14 children and babies, who have received no education whilst imprisoned by the UK.

If the ConDem government is really going to end the detention of children, then they should release these families immediately. Please write to cleggn@parliament.uk to let him know how you feel about being a citizen of a country that imprisons children who have done nothing wrong, depriving them of education. Demand that he release them now.

Update, Monday 24th: Despite the best efforts of many, Sehar was deported on Saturday. Despite appeals to Nick Clegg, Home Secretary Theresa May and Immigration Minister Damian Green, guards forced her on to a plane to a country where she faces an uncertain and dangerous future. Whatever happens to her now is on the hands of these assembled scumbags.
We mustn’t ever let people forget that the Lib Dems are full of shit when it comes to asylum. When they claimed they were ending detention for children, ON THE SAME DAY they imprisoned a baby. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. We must now be very concerned about what exactly the government does have planned, as we can put nothing past these bastards. Does ending detention mean they’ll lock up parents and put the kids in care for example?
Disheartening as this news is, our efforts must now to turn to building awareness and solidarity with the remaining 11 families locked up in Yarl’s Wood, four of whom are on hunger strike.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 10:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.