For many autumns to come
This blog was written by Mishka, a member of Freed Voices, a group of experts-by-experience committed to speaking out about the realities of immigration detention in the UK. And Mishka would like to introduce the blog himself… This would be my final piece for Unlocking Detention 2018. It has been [...]
‘The stain of detention will haunt us for the rest of our lives, but I don’t want it to define us’: Experts-by-experience give evidence to the JCHR inquiry
This blog comes from A. Panquang, a member of Freed Voices (@FreedVoices) and Detention Forum volunteer. On 28 November, A gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ inquiry into immigration detention alongside Michael, another member of Freed Voices. I have never given evidence in Parliament before. The first thing that I [...]
Your pocket Home Office phrasebook: A dialect of dehumanisation
Patrick Page is a senior caseworker in public law at Duncan Lewis Solicitors (@DLPublicLaw). He is also founder and editor of No Walls, a forum for discussions on migration and human rights, with a focus on immigration detention. No Walls is a member of the Detention Forum. Patrick tweets at @padspage The [...]
Week 6: #Unlocked18 visits Harmondsworth and Colnbrook
From the 26 November - 2 December, Unlocking Detention visited Colnbrook and Harmondsworth, the two detention centres next to Heathrow Airport. Here, a few hundred metres from the runway, well over 1,000 people can be detained indefinitely. As well as six new blogs, this week we had a double Q&A with [...]
“Once a criminal always a criminal”, especially if you don’t have a British passport
Content warning: suicide, torture. Image by @Carcazan This blog comes from Celia Clarke and Rudy Schulkind at BID (Bail for Immigration Detainees). BID tweets at @BIDdetention “I couldn’t go swimming, or even sit on the bus in case my trousers rode up, ‘cos I was so ashamed of the tag. But [...]
Immigration detention is mental torture
Content warning: graphic descriptions of suicide and self-harm. Image by @Carcazan This blog comes from Souleymane, a member of Freed Voices. Freed Voices are a group of experts-by-experience who are committed to speaking out about the realities of immigration detention in the UK. They are on Twitter at @FreedVoices. My name [...]
“There was a chance justice would be done”
In this #Unlocked18 blog, Mishka at Freed Voices (@FreedVoices) interviews Tamsin Alger, Deputy Director at Detention Action about her experience of the Detained Fast Track (DFT) strategic litigation and campaign. The DFT litigation was one of the key highlights of the 2015 Unlocking Detention timeline. ======================================================================================== XX December 2018, Hello [...]
“I have seen that the detention system in the UK is broken”
Content warning: suicide. This blog comes from Rhiannon Prideaux, a visitor with the Morton Hall Detainee Visitors Group. I visited people detained at Morton Hall detention centre for around three and a half years. In that time I visited 6 people. All from different countries and detained for a variety [...]