Rights groups condemn UK plan to return asylum-seeking children to Afghanistan

News

Rights groups condemn UK plan to return asylum-seeking children to Afghanistan

June 9, 2010 10:26:49 am

[JURIST] A UK plan that would return children who arrive in the country without a guardian to Afghanistan is being heavily criticized by human rights organizations and refugee advocacy groups. The UK plan calls for the building of a "reintegration center" [Al Jazeera report] in Kabul where approximately 12 males ages 16 to 17 would be sent per month. The UK plan is in line with an EU policy [press release] regarding unaccompanied minors, which stipulates that the best interest of the child must be considered and that returning a child to his country of origin must include a process of reintegration. Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] praised certain parts of the EU policy [press release], but added that protecting the safety of the children as well as their legal rights must be a top priority in these cases. The Refugee Council [advocacy website] criticized the UK plan [press release], questioning the decision to return children to a country where they have no family and indicating that little has been said about how the children will be kept say once they have been returned. The advocacy group Refugee and Migrant Justice [advocacy website] contends that the reintegration center will put the safety of the children at risk [press release]. The group also criticized the practice of interviewing refugee children without an adult or proper legal representation, saying the practice leads to "a miscarriage of justice." Similar plans are also being considered in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.

On Monday, Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] urged European leaders to stop the upcoming deportation of asylum seekers to Iraq [press release; JURIST report] because their human rights may be violated in unsafe regions of the country. Authorities in the UK, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands are taking part in a joint effort to return the refugees to Iraq after the asylum petitions of many of the refugees were denied. Last month, an Iraqi refugee won a suit [BBC report] against the UK Home Office [official website] in which he claimed that he was threatened illegally with deportation to Iraq after being accused of committing terrorist activities. The UK High Court found that the man's arrest and detention were illegal. The UK government also announced last month that it will review [JURIST report] the country's Human Rights Act [BBC backgrounder] after two Pakistani terror suspects successfully avoided deportation due to concerns for their safety. Certain regions in Iraq remain dangerous [JURIST comment], with violence often targeted against civilians and minorities [JURIST report].

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.