The Prison Reform Trust has recently published Forgotten Prisoners – the plight of foreign national prisoners in England and Wales, which examines the increasing numbers of foreign nationals being held in British prisons, the problems that they encounter, and the inconsistency of their treatment. Key facts and figures include: 12 per cent of the prison
Theme: Education
What happens to those who die on Britain’s borders?
The body of an Iraqi would-be asylum seeker who died trying to enter Britain in 2001 has been left in a mortuary for almost three years because there are no funds to pay for its return. Omid Jamil Ali was born to a poor family in rural Kurdistan in 1980. Like many others, his family
Another asylum seeker takes own life
On 18 May 2004, 27-year-old Afghan asylum seeker Zekria Ghulam Mohammed was found dead at his flat in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow. Zekria apparently took his own life and was found by a friend who had to break the door down to gain entry to the flat. Zekria, who had been living in Scotland
Resource for opposing deportations
The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) has produced a guide to help individuals, families and supporters who are thinking of starting a campaign. Since it was established in 1995, NCADC has supported 115 successful campaigns against deportation. Its approach is simple: it gives advice and guidance to help families and individuals win widespread support
Hope in the face of despair
A new book for those involved in social work attempts to confront the challenges thrown up by working with migrants and asylum seekers within a framework of racism and exclusion. Social workers increasingly have policing and gatekeeping roles imposed on them in both the statutory and voluntary sectors. What then of the professional imperative to
Britain locks up twenty-four asylum children
A Home Office minister has revealed that the number of children held in Dungavel and Oakington detention centres has risen from ten at the end of last year to twenty-four today. Baroness Scotland of Asthal, a Home Office minister, has stated that Dungavel detention centre, in Lanarkshire, currently holds six families, with ten children, four
Destitution intensified
Section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 is not simply making an asylum seeker destitute. For destitution, itself, opens up a ‘failed’ refugee to yet more racism, indignity and uncertainty. On Friday 16 April, Ali Mohammed Sadegh, a destitute Iranian asylum seeker was viciously beaten and stabbed by a group of White
Campaign victory: Home Office backs down on Iraq deportation plan
The government has backed down on its plan to begin deportations to Baghdad this month after nation-wide protests by Iraqi asylum seekers. Home Office officials have told the Observer that the repatriation scheme, which could have affected thousands of Iraqi asylum seekers, has been put on hold. The UK would have been the first country
Hungry and homeless: the impact of Section 55
A report from the Refugee Council details the impact of Section 55 on asylum seekers and the voluntary organisations that support them. The Refugee Council has published a report, written by Bharti Patel and Saoirse Kerrigan, Hungry and Homeless: the impact of the withdrawal of state support on asylum seekers, refugee communities and the voluntary
Learning the lessons of history
A new booklet published by the Jewish Council for Racial Equality (JCORE) compares the experiences of the Kindertransporte with those of refugee children today. At a time of collective amnesia, when we look set fair to repeat the dangerous politicisation of race and immigration of an election forty years ago, it is heartening to find