END CHILD DETENTION

Imagine a country where innocent children are jailed for the supposed crimes of their parents; a country where even toddlers are detained. Where these same children suffer nightmares, sleepless nights, mental and physical illness and injury. You don't need to go imagine too much. It's not some Taliban stronghold or the return of the Nazis. The country in question is ours.

 Save The Children and other concerned groups, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, agree that an estimated two thousand children are jailed each year, simply because they are the children of asylum seekers. Whatever the issues and arguments about asylum and immigration, is it really justifiable, legally and morally, to lock-up children who are sometimes barely toddlers? Well I don't think so. And neither do the organisations set up to protect children and their well-being.  

 The children involved have no right to appeal and no recourse to legal action. They suffer from bed-wetting, depression, anxiety, various injuries and illnesses, eating disorders and many other problems. Doctors tell us that such problems are long-term in many cases. These children are taken during surprise raids and ripped away from their normal lives. Often they are detained, released and then snatched again. Such action is in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet nothing is done.

 In fact the UK is the only country in Europe to practice this barbaric system. Even the Australian government, for years the subject of campaigns over its detention methods, has stopped jailing children. Yet we continue. The UK's health professionals and childcare experts are united in their condemnation. And if they are protesting, we have to listen. After all it's their duty to help keep children safe from harm. All children, regardless of their origin.

 There are many alternatives to locking up the kids of asylum seekers and failed immigrants. In the rest of Europe families are kept together. There are open centres and special housing units for mothers and small children. They are given access to education and social facilities. These are humane practices. What we do in the UK is far from humane however.

 The shocking and brutal act of locking up children is unacceptable. To take the poor, frightened and needy and to criminalise them, to subject them to such terror, is nothing short of child abuse. It is a clear contravention of legal and moral duties. Yet where are the protests?

 Are we the British people really willing to excuse this abuse simply because it happens to the children of 'outsiders'? Well not in my name. Child detention is a shameful and inhuman policy, accepted only in the worst of illiberal regimes. It is NOT acceptable in the UK and must stop now.

 www.ecdn.org