Today is not only Valentine’s Day, but also the day, one year ago, that Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre, the government’s flagship, was burnt, almost to the ground. The government’s asylum policy of ‘faster, firmer, fairer’ was dealt a severe blow. Now, the victims of British asylum policy, those asylum seekers who were locked up
Issue: Briefing Papers & Reports - UK
Afghan asylum seeker killed in Southampton
Police have launched a murder inquiry after a 22-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was found unconscious at his home in Southampton on Monday 10 February. Mohammed Isa Hasan Ali had survived imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Taliban regime. But a year and a half after seeking asylum in Britain, he was murdered. According
Now asylum seekers blamed for dwindling fish stocks
In a bid to win the anglers’ vote, the British National Party has drawn attention to the declining numbers of carp and roach in the River Lea, Hertfordshire. In a surprise move, asylum seekers and refugees have been singled out for blame. According to the January issue of the BNP newspaper, Voice of Freedom, illegal
Blunkett expands prison-asylum complex
Asylum seekers in Britain are increasingly facing a system of imprisonment, detention and slave labour. Despite the government’s softer language on asylum at the Labour Party conference in September, when it feared a fight with the grassroots membership, more asylum seekers are being imprisoned. Then David Blunkett conceded that the practice of putting asylum seekers
Prison for asylum seekers
The government has been drawing up secret plans to increase the numbers of asylum seekers held in prisons. With Ann Widdecombe proposing to lock up all refugees in what are euphemistically called ‘secure reception centres’, Jack Straw is responding with the promise of new immigration detention centres. But in the meantime he has ordered the
Learning the lessons of Dover
The Dover Express calls it ‘Shanty Town’ or ‘Asylum Alley’. The busy main Folkestone Road is not one of Dover’s pretty affluent tourist streets. In this traditional working-class part of Dover, asylum-seekers are cramped in bed and breakfast hotels, the line of which is only broken by the presence of several high-rise housing estates. If