![\"A](\"http:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/files\/zaky-mashal.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Late last year a group of U.K. citizens\u00a0launched a simple campaign to end the detention of children and babies by immigration authorities. The campaign, called End Child Detention Now<\/a> (ECDN), has since been backed by some high-profile British figures and the group has quickly gathered names\u00a0for its petition<\/a> to the U.K. government, nearly 4,600 at the time of writing.\u00a0In February,\u00a0I\u00a0joined the group\u00a0to help with online campaigning.<\/p>\n The U.K. is the\u00a0only European country to detain children of asylum seekers\u00a0without a time limit: around 2000 each year, some for months at a time. Other countries have already taken action — Australia, for example,\u00a0has pledged never to put another child in a detention center.<\/p>\n The ECDN volunteer-led campaign is also raising awareness of cases where children are treated like adults when they are\u00a0actually under 18.\u00a0This month, a 14-year-old boy from Afghanistan, ‘M' (name protected for legal reasons),\u00a0was\u00a0mistaken for an adult, arrested and was about to be deported from the U.K., before a judge ordered his release, pending a full judicial review hearing [pictured above, with his elder brother].\u00a0<\/p>\n Writing on the Web site OpenDemocracy<\/a>\u00a0campaign co-coordinator Clare Sambrook shares M's story, as well as that of 17-year-old Rima, who fled religious persecution in Eritrea. Expanding on Rima's story she says: <\/p>\n Rima fled, moved from house to house, lived rough until twelve months ago when Alison and Robert took her in as their natural daughter. In May last year Rima was seized and locked up in Dungavel, a former prison.<\/p>\n When Rima\u2019s solicitor lodged an application for judicial review, the Border Agency swept her out of its range, taking her 356 miles south by caged van to Yarl\u2019s Wood, Serco\u2019s notorious Bedfordshire detention centre. Another application for review, deportation averted. After seven days in Yarl\u2019s Wood Rima was home again.<\/p>\n And then, last month, the day after Valentine\u2019s Day, the government told Rima she would be forcibly deported to Italy within weeks. The family campaigns vigorously for clemency, fearing that each new dawn will bring the Border Agency\u2019s arrest squad to their door.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sambrook goes on to say: <\/p>\n “M\u2019s fate and Rima\u2019s hang in the balance \u2014 here, in Britain, a country where asking for sanctuary is a right, not a crime, and where, according to the government, every child matters.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Other projects\u00a0are also trying to\u00a0put pressure on the government to address the problems surrounding the detention of children.<\/p>\n NCADC (the National\u00a0Coalition of Anti-Deportion Campaigns),\u00a0for example, also raised the case of ‘M', with ideas\u00a0for\u00a0further action<\/a>.<\/p>\n The organisation Medical Justice<\/a> is calling upon doctors to raise their concerns about the issue. In its petition for doctors<\/a>, it says:<\/p>\n “The administrative detention of children is damaging to them, cannot be made otherwise, and is unacceptable in a civilised society. We call for the immediate cessation of this practice which is demonstrably\u00a0and permanently harmful to children\u2019s health, both in the short and long term.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Other related groups include the\u00a0Bail for Immigration Detainees<\/a> and Citizens for Sanctuary<\/a>.<\/p>\n So far, there has been a lot of mainstream press attention to the issue<\/a>, following the publication of a recent report. ECDN\u00a0hopes\u00a0that bloggers and social media users will increasingly engage with the issue too. The campaign can be followed on @stop_child_det<\/a> on Twitter and has a Facebook group<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late last year a group of U.K. citizens\u00a0launched a simple campaign to end the detention of children and babies by immigration authorities. The campaign, called End Child Detention Now (ECDN), has since been backed by some high-profile British figures and the group has quickly gathered names\u00a0for its petition to the U.K. government, nearly 4,600 at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n