The Manchester based Human Rights organisation working with displaced people
PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Tuesday, 3rd March 2015
RAPAR WELCOMES “ROBUST” DETENTION REPORT BUT SAYS THERE ARE KEY OMISSIONS
Human Rights lawyer warns about possible dangers of proposed 28 day detention limit
RAPAR questions Report's failure to focus on:
· Policing practices which enable detained fast track and detention
· Use of solitary confinement in detention
· Men as victims/survivors of sexual assault, rape, gendered violence
The substantial increase in the number of people kept in Fast Track Detention is creating “huge unfairness”, a leading Human Rights lawyer says.
Louise Christian was responding to the findings in today's report from the Inquiry into the use of Immigration Detention in the UK.
The Report has been generally welcomed but Louise Christian sounds a warning about the dangers of the proposed 28 day limit to detention being used as an excuse to remove detained fast track asylum applicants “before they have had full access to lawyers, screening for torture and abuse, and due process.”
RAPAR, while applauding a robust document that highlights several key issues, is opposed to the use of detention per se and, as such, does not support the Report's call for a 28 day limit.
RAPAR is also extremely troubled by three serious omissions:
· Description of and challenge to the racist policing practices that enable detained fast track(DFT) and detention
· The use of solitary confinement in detention
· Men as victims/survivors of sexual assault, rape, gendered violence
The policing practices used to arrest, detain, and transport refugees to Immigration Removal Centres throughout the UK are fundamental to DFT operations and detention and they reveal an approach which assumes that people seeking asylum are criminal from the outset. RAPAR has found that overwhelmingly black refugees are often detained through the use of violence: privately-run security firm personnel breaking into homes or pursuing refugees on the streets of Manchester (Montano, N. (2014). “Seeking Asylum is not Criminal” The detention and policing of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. RAPAR. Manchester, UK. Available on request).
Some IRC facilities, such as Harmondsworth, use solitary confinement (Montano, 2014) This is unacceptable, and any use of solitary confinement must be ended immediately.
The report explicitly states that women who have experienced sexual assault should not be placed in detention, but ignores men who may have been victims of sexual assault, rape, or gendered violence [pg 64-67]. Although the statistics on sexual violence experienced by any demographic are hard to discern from the available data, men also experience sexual and gendered violence, and refugees may be at a higher risk of sexual/gendered violence, regardless of sex. This omission may have serious unintended consequences for victims of sexual/gendered violence, especially those who identify as LGTB.
ENDS
For further information please contact Kathleen Grant 07758386208 or Dr Rhetta Moran 07776264646