Ugandan children suffer under UK immigration

Sep 11, 2010

UGANDA children whose parents’ UK asylum applications await clearance are suffering psychological fortune while under detention at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre.

Raymond Baguma

UGANDA children whose parents’ UK asylum applications await clearance are suffering psychological fortune while under detention at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre.

The findings were revealed in a report titled ‘State Sponsored Cruelty’ published on Thursday by the UK Charity Medical Justice.

The report is UK’s first large scale investigation into the harm caused by detaining children for immigration purposes.

It showed the extent to which detaining children causes harm, suffering and anguish. The findings were based on medical evidence, the facility remained open.

Despite the promise by the government to end the practice and to close the family unit at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire.

Ugandan families narrated experiences of being detained after being raided while they slept, by officers from the UK Border Agency (UKBA).

While in detention, the children suffered from fever, vomiting, abdominal pains, diarrhoea, musculoskeletal pain and coughing up blood.

Affected children had symptoms that included bed-wetting, loss of bowel control, heightened anxiety, food refusal, withdrawal and disinterest, persistent crying, developmental regression, attempted suicide and post-traumatic stress disorders.

The UK child heath campaigners in response to the report called on the coalition government to ensure that children are protected while in detention.

The report features 141 cases of children from 87 different families detained between 2004 and April 2010.

During a raid on their home while they slept, a Ugandan political exile was handcuffed and not allowed to comfort her crying baby. She was also refused from using the toilet and instead handed a plastic bag.

The Independent newspaper also quoted Stephen Ssentongo a Ugandan exile, who spent three and a half months in detention and his sons Ibrahim, 4, and Imran, 1, suffered mentally and physically.

Ssentongo, 36, fled alleged persecution in Uganda in 1998. He met his wife in the UK and their two children were born there.

The Ssentongo family was taken into detention in February, when the authorities discovered he was given fake residency documents by a solicitor, who had since been prosecuted.

The Independent contacted the UK Home Office, which rejected claims that it did not properly care for children held in detention.

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