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End 'shameful' locking up of children - Yorkshire bishop
A Yorkshire bishop has called for an end to Britain's imprisonment of the children of asylum seekers.
He condemned the policy as "a shameful practice" and said the "distressing experience" of children's arrest and imprisonment in detention centres "must be stopped."
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The Anglican Bishop of Ripon and Leeds the Rt Rev John Packer is chairman of the Church of England's Urban Bishops Panel, representing urban church communities and congregations.
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The bishops are supporting a national campaign entitled End Child Detention Now, and has called on the Government to introduce "humane-community based arrangements for children and families which recognise the need to put the welfare of children first."
Bishop Packer said: "In the UK the value and potential of many children is denied through the continued practice of detaining children in immigration detention centres. Each year over 2,000 children are detained in prison-like conditions. No limit is set to the time in which children may be detained.
"As Bishop of Ripon and Leeds I am aware of the impact of removal and detention on those who experience it as well as those left behind, in our schools, communities and congregations.
"I welcome the initiative of the End Child Detention Now Campaign.
"Children are detained through no fault of their own. They are often removed from familiar settings in sudden and alarming circumstances leaving behind friends, toys and personal possessions.
"Detention is a distressing experience. Child detainees experience insomnia, bed wetting, weight loss, speech regression, depression, and are known to self-harm.
"The children of asylum seekers are a vulnerable group, made more so by this policy which has no regard for their mental health.
"With the Children's Commissioner, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of General Practitioners, the Children Society and many other bodies concerned with the wellbeing of children, I believe the continued incarceration of children to be a shameful practice for our society in terms of child welfare and human rights and must stop."
For two years the Yorkshire Evening Post highlighted the plight of asylum seeker Elsa Temesgen and her schoolgirl daughter Betty, 12.
They were twice seized in their south Leeds home in dawn raids and driven to imprisonment in Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire
to await deportation.
Betty wrote movingly to schoolfriends about the effect on her of imprisonment.
In December the two were granted leave to stay in Britain.
Another Leeds asylum seeker, Manuel Bravo, was seized in a dawn raid at his home in Armley in 2005 and imprisoned with his 13-year- old son, Antonio.
The law forbids the deportation of children under 18 without an adult.
Mr Bravo hanged himself in Yarl's Wood detention centre.
As a result the authorities were unable to deport his son, who remains in Britain.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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