Justice for Rima Campaign
Background stories
On this page you can find lots of links to articles relevant to Rima's case.
Scottish Government
The Scottish Government's official response to Rima's case (3 March 2010).
2009
Alison's article for Coracle, the Iona Community magazine (Winter 2009).
The Herald article from May 2009 when Rima was taken to Yarl's Wood.
Child Detention in general . . .
. . . and Yarl's Wood in particular
A Freedom of Information enquiry from the excellent What Do They Know? team has elicited the UK Border Agency's policy on children. More on this can be found on Free Movement's blog. Free Movement is a legal blog written by an immigration/asylum barrister. The postings are always contemporary and well-informed.
A short film about child detention by novelist and former children's laureate Michael Murpurgo. It is shot outside Yarl's Wood Detention Centre where Rima was held last year. He also takes part in live studio discussion on BBC's The Daily Politics show on 19 March 2010. The interview with Home Officer Minister Meg Hillier mentioned in the discussion can be watched here.
A BBC report (24 March 2010) on the inspection report on Yarl's Wood which sharply criticises the detention of children. The full report is available for download here. An earlier BBC report about the official Children's Commissioner report on Yarl's Wood can be found here (17 February 2010).
Hidden Children - separated children at risk. Hidden Children is the result of a participatory research project by The Children's Society with young migrants who have experienced exploitation or abuse in the UK and includes recommendations for practitioners and decision-makers based on the views of hidden children themselves.
A BBC report (2 March 2010) about the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into whether some UK Border Agency staff are racially prejudiced towards asylum seekers. You can see the Committee's entire 2 hour session on parliamentlive.tv - evidence from Louise Perrett (former agency worker at the Border Agency's Cardiff Office and whistleblower) is taken first.
There are loads of links about child detention on the Outcry! website. Outcry! is the Children's Society campaign about child detention (run jointly with Bail for Immigration Detainees).
The Migration Parliamentary Group has produced two fact-sheets prior to the UK General Election to help deliver a more balanced debate on immigration in general. Each fact-sheet challenges one big myth surrounding migration, which is often repeated in public debate, with links to research.
Age Assessment
Rima's age assessment in Cardiff was quite simply wrong, and here's a report about the inadequate way they are carried out - this time from Liverpool
Italy
There are a whole bunch of reports from a lot of different independent sources which find that Italy is not a safe country for asylum seekers:
- Time Magazine analysis of Italy's treatments of all immigrants, whether granted refugee status or not (15 January 2010).
- An article from The Independent newspaper about the deportation of minors from the UK to Italy. In particular, it reports the English High Court's criticism of the UKBA's current practice (11 April 2010). On the face of it the cases look very similar to Rima's and the full transcript of the judgment can be read here.
- A BBC report (1 March 2010) about the treatment in Europe of child asylum-seekers. The headline highlights children from Afghanistan, but the report is generally applicable.
- Report by the European Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg, following his visit to Italy on 13-15 January 2009.
- Human Rights Watch UPR Submission on Italy (1 September 2009). (UPR stands for "Universal Periodic Review" and you can find out more about these on the Human Rights Watch website.)
- "Concentration camps for immigrants". This quotation is from Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, and is reported in the Daily Telegraph (20 May 2009).
- Amnesty International Report UA 29/09 Forcible return/fear of torture or other ill-treatment (5 February 2009).
- A well-informed blog entry from Free Movement about the third country removals litigation saga.
Eritrea
Open Doors reports on persecution of Christians in Eritrea.
Newsletters and blogs
Rima's case is also reflected in newsletters and blogs . . . .
Rima is a vulnerable 17-year-old from Eritrea, living in Glasgow for two years now. Abandoned by the authorities, she is supported by a caring community, but now faces forced removal.
At 15 years of age, Rima managed to reach Europe, fleeing her family's persecution as Pentecostal Christians. Sadly, she found no sanctuary in the notorious Italian asylum system. All alone, she suffered considerable trauma, subsisting in a large derelict squat.
Charity workers managed to help Rima escape to the UK, where she was initially supported as a lone child. However, unable to prove her birth date, the social services gave her an adult age, meaning she now faced removal back to Italy. Terrified, Rima went into hiding, eventually turning up homeless and destitute in Glasgow a year later.
Denied her right to support as a vulnerable child, and spending time last year in an adult detention centre, Rima is now facing imminent removal from the UK.