PROTESTORS are to demonstrate outside a Scots detention centre next month calling for an end to the “unacceptable” practice of holding asylum seekers for indefinite periods.
The move follows the rejection by the Home Office of a request by trade unionists and church leaders to visit the facility.
Helen Martin, assistant secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, told The National she hoped hundreds of people would turn out for the protest outside the Dungavel Immigration and Detention Centre in Lanarkshire on May 30.
“We want to raise awareness about the plight of people being held at Dungavel,” she said.
“We are particularly concerned that asylum seekers are being held for an indefinite amount of time and that this can severely impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing. We believe holding people for indefinite periods is not acceptable and should be stopped.”
She added: “There is a lot of focus on immigration and border controls but we want to shift the focus and create more humanity in the system. We have lost sight of the plight of people coming to this country for legitimate reasons.”
The move comes as SNP MEP Alyn Smith writes in The National today calling for a rethink of the policy of indefinite detention and for a more humanitarian approach to immigration following the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean.
“Last week, myself and local SNP candidate Dr Lisa Cameron saw one of the most worrying sites in Scotland. Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre is a prison where some of the world’s most vulnerable people are locked up, without trial and without time restraint,” he said.
“The UK Government calls such places migrant detention centres but let me be clear, I have seen the razor wire and if Dungavel isn’t a prison I don’t know what is.”
“The UK is the only member of the EU to permit indefinite detention of migrants. That this is going on right now in Scotland is chilling, and is representative of the main Westminster parties’ attitudes towards migrants. The anaemic response to the on-going and avoidable tragedy in the Mediterranean is a further graphic illustration of this. We need change.”
He added: “This is not a small-scale issue. In 2013 the UK locked up more migrants than it received asylum applications; 228 children were amongst the more than 30,000 people that were cast behind bars in our name. Just think about this for a minute: what sort of a government has a system in place that treats the vulnerable and dispossessed in this way? The Home Office must change its mind. We need to know what is happening behind the wire.”
The STUC had previously helped to spearhead a campaign to stop children being held in the centre, a decision that was taken by the UK Government in 2010.
However, children continue to be held at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal detention centre in Bedfordshire, in the south of England, though the unit there includes a dedicated family facility.
Martin said: “We hope the demonstration next month will reinvigorate previous campaigns led by the STUC and remind the public that this is still an ongoing issue.”
The STUC had written to the Home Office and the boss of the Dungavel centre following a series of reports highlighting concerns asylum seekers were on hunger strike.
They had requested permission to send a delegation that would have included trade unionists as well as senior members of the Church of Scotland, the Catholic Church, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Scottish Refugee Council. But while the Dungavel centre manager gave the go-ahead to the visit, the Home Office refused.
The STUC asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Scottish Human Rights Commission to inspect the centre.
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