Detention of Children Down 82%!
Cedars Pre-Departure Accommodation - Only 5 Kids Held in Q1/2014. No children were detained at the 'Cedars' in March 2014, four in January and one in February. 28 children were detained in the same period last year

Online Petition: Afusat Saliu Facing Deportation to Nigeria
An asylum seeker is to be sent back to Nigeria in a matter of days despite fears that her two young daughters will be circumcised in the country against their will by members of her own family. Almost 79,540 people have signed a petition calling on the Home Office to reconsider their decision to deport 31-year-old Afusat Saliu, herself a victim of female genital mutilation [FGM], and her two daughters, Bassy, three, and Rashidat, one, to Nigeria. The family currently live in Leeds but have been asked to leave the country by Friday.

Solicitor Ben Davison, head of immigration advice at Ison Harrison Solicitors said he had written directly to the Home Office on Tuesday, "setting out why we believe their decision to remove Afusat and her daughters is wrong in law." Leeds MP Greg Mulholland and FGM campaigner Leyla Hussein are amongst those supporting her campaign. Read more: Independent, <>22/04/14
You can sign the petition <> here . . . .

Flora Seggane Released from Yarl's Wood re

Flora Seggane out of Yarl's Wood IRC re-united With Partner
A lesbian previously facing fast-track deportation to a homophobic country has been granted asylum by the Home Office. Flora Seggane of Francis Road, Leyton fled Uganda and moved to the UK in 2002 on a two year working visa after being disowned by her family and 'outed' by the community because of her sexuality. The 55 year-old has now been released from Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) following an interview to determine her application to seek asylum, with the Home Office on Tuesday 15th April. Ms Seggane is "very pleased" she has been granted leave to remain in the UK with refugee status until April 2019 and can now be re-united with her partner Lulu Mgonja from Walthamstow.
Read more: Guardian <>17/04/14

Beware the Fake Patriots' Anger On Immigration

To save British culture from foreigners, the Tories and Ukip will bring in identity controls – and we will all be losers: No cause is as dead as the campaign to provide an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Far-sighted politicians once found it intolerable that criminals could abuse and exploit the half a million among us who were living beyond the minimum wage, the tax system and the rule of law.

The recession killed their humane concern. The church-led movement to turn "strangers into citizens" hardly exists now. Only in unvisited web archives can you find its arguments that we should admit people who could prove that they were honest and hardworking into mainstream society. George Osborne, a politician for whom the phrase "You could carve a better man out of a banana" might have been coined, will damn Boris Johnson by quoting his courageous support for an amnesty when they face each other in the next Tory leadership election. Conservative propagandists have found that the weapon has a satisfyingly devastating effect. They used Nick Clegg's support for an amnesty to puncture the Liberal Democrat bubble in the 2010 general election campaign.
Read more: Nick Cohen,The Observer, <>19/04/14

Afusat Saliu - Removal Stayed After Intervention by MP

A a last-minute intervention from her MP, George Mudie, has enabled her to stay temporarily in the UK. Mudie has written twice to James Brokenshire, the security and immigration minister, asking him to intervene. The Home Office has told Mudie that Brokenshire will be writing to him about Saliu's case. "The assumption is that this is a pause," said Mudie. "I would be extremely disappointed if they tried to detain her while this is still going on. This is so important and sensitive. [Brokenshire] has got to satisfy himself that he is absolutely certain that these children are not in danger. It would be unforgivable if anything happened to these children if they go back." The move to deport Saliu comes during a national campaign against female genital mutilation by the home secretary, Theresa May, in which victims are urged to come forward to talk to police. A London doctor also faces trial for allegedly carrying out FGM on a woman.
Read more: Sandra Laville, The Guardian, <>25/04/14

Asylum Housing Scheme 'Badly Managed', say MPs

A "badly managed" Home Office scheme resulted in asylum seekers being placed in "unacceptably poor" housing, the Public Accounts Committee has said. Three firms - G4S, Serco and Clearel - were awarded contracts in March 2012 to find accommodation for asylum seekers. But a report by the Commons committee concluded that G4S and Serco had lacked the required experience for the task. The Home Office said, while it accepted there were "challenges" with contracts, it was "disappointed" by the findings.
Read more: BBC News, <> 24/04/14

Spain Loses Asylum Seeker Deportation Battle
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Spain could not go ahead with plans to deport 30 Sahrawi asylum seekers from the Western Sahara because Spanish authorities had failed to properly hear their claims. The immigrants claim that they fled the Gdeim Izik refugee camp in the territory of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in 1975, after it was forcibly dismantled by the Moroccan police, according to a Council of Europe press release. They arrived on makeshift boats on the coast of Spain's Canary Islands in 2011 and lodged applications for international protection.
Source: Spain News,<>22/04/14

Rebels Kill 200 South Sudanese Civilians Sheltering in Mosque
The UN condemned what it called "the targeted killings of civilians based on their ethnic origins and nationality" in a disputed town that is now under the control of anti-government forces. The civilians were killed as rebels seized Bentiu, capital of the oil-producing Unity state. The UN mission in the world's newest country described an apparent massacre after fighters ousted government troops. Individuals "associated with the opposition" used a radio station to broadcast hate speeches, the UN said, even urging "men from one community to commit vengeful sexual violence against women from another community". After rebels captured Bentiu on 15 April, "they searched a number of places where hundreds of South Sudanese and foreign civilians had taken refuge and killed hundreds of the civilians after determining their ethnicity or nationality", the UN added, citing the accounts of its human rights investigators on the ground.
Read more: Indpendent, <> 21/04/14

David Cameron 'Fuelling Religious Sectarian Division'
More than 50 prominent public figures including novelist, diplomats, Nobel prize winners and playwrights have accused David Cameron of fostering divisions in the UK by repeatedly referring to Britain as a Christian country. Signatories to the letter asserting that Britain is not a Christian country include Philip Pullman, Ken Follett, Prof Alice Roberts, Prof Harold Kroto and Sir Terry Pratchett. The authors say they respect Cameron's own religious beliefs but say they "object to his repeated mischaracterising of our country as a 'Christian country' and the negative consequences for our politics and society that this view engenders".

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, they assert: "Apart from in the narrow constitutional sense that we continue to have an established church, we are not a 'Christian country'. Repeated surveys, polls, and studies show most of us as individuals are not Christian in our beliefs or our religious identities and at a social level, Britain has been shaped for the better by many pre-Christian, non-Christian, and post-Christian forces.
Read more: Guardian, <> 21/04/14

French Traveller Shot Dead by Police - Violation of Article 2
Guerdner and Others v. France (no. 68780/10)
The applicants are twelve French nationals who were born between 1958 and 2007 and belong to the Traveller community. The case concerned the death of Joseph Guerdner, a member of the applicants' family, who had been taken into police custody and was killed by a gendarme while attempting to escape. In May 2008 Joseph Guerdner was arrested and taken into custody at Brignoles gendarmerie station following an investigation into offences of armed robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment, committed as part of a gang. At the end of a police interview, he managed to open a window and jump out of the building where he was being held. A gendarme fired several shots in his direction. Joseph Guerdner died of gunshot wounds shortly afterwards. In a judgment of 17 September 2010 the Assize Court acquitted the gendarme on the grounds that his actions had been prescribed or authorised by legislation or regulations. Relying on Article 2 (right to life), the applicants alleged that their relative had been killed without any justification and that no independent investigation or impartial trial had taken place to establish the circumstances of the death.

Violation of Article 2 (right to life) - on account of the use of lethal force