Felicite and Arouna Gaye
At the age of just four, little Arouna Gaye has the unpleasant distinction of becoming the 21st refugee child this year to disgrace the Westminster government by being taken into custody at Dungavel Detention Centre despite promises by the Home Office to end the reviled practice of incarcerating families and their children in Scotland.
Arouna and his mother Fatou Fecilite Gaye, 38, were awoken by immigration officials in the early hours of Thursday and taken to the Lanarkshire immigration removal centre for the third time in two years. The incarceration belies the Westminster government’s commitment to end the detention of children of asylum seekers and the distressing deployment of dawn raids which feature heavy-handed immigration officers bursting into family homes and often cuffing those targeted for detention.
The practice of dawn raids and the imprisonment of families, under the threat of deportation from Britain, has been damned by Holyrood, but as immigration is a devolved issue Scotland’s call for the detention of children to end once and for all is in the lap of the Westminster authorities. And so, Arouna is the latest casualty of London’s failed promises.
His mother spoke of her and her little boy’s distress at their third imprisonment. “We are not doing well,” she told the Sunday Herald from behind bars. “Arouna is crying a lot. He wants to go home, he wants to see his friends. We are very stressed. The Home Office needs to stop coming to houses and taking people. I thought they did not detain children anymore. Arouna is the only child in the family unit. He is all by himself with no one to play with.”
Arouna suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of his multiple detentions, and is receiving counselling. Fecilite also receives counselling from the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture. She fled Ivory Coast following the disappearance and probable murder of her husband amid civil unrest and armed uprisings. She was unable to escape before being subjected to multiple rapes by rebel soldiers.
Friends at St Rollox Church, where Felicite volunteered at a project to help other asylum seekers, speak of a “woman of integrity eager to help others”. The local minister Rev Frank Murray went to her house after Felicite was taken into custody. He said: “It’s the snapshots of what went on that morning when she was raided that are so harrowing: the front door dented by a ram, the half eaten breakfast, the lights still on, the unmade bed, photos of Fecilite and Arouna hanging on the wall.”
Murray and his wife Christine took clothing to the mother and child at Dungavel – they hadn’t been given time to take anything with them. Christine said of Dungavel: “It’s very obviously a prison. The doors are locked and opened by guards, and we were fingerprinted as well. Arouna seemed shell-shocked. He frequently came to check on his mum, because she was quite upset and crying. He was really sad and not sure of how to comfort her.”
The Murrays also brought a friend that Arouna had made near where he lived in Sighthill in Glasgow. “As they were taken away from us at the end of the visit, Arouna’s wee friend screamed and ran after them. He is only four, but he knew that something was at an end. When we went to Fecilite’s home earlier, he had stood in the living room saying ‘Arouna’s disappeared, Arouna’s disappeared’.
“This does not just have an effect on the child of an asylum seeker, but also on other children. Arouna is a member of Sighthill Primary and there are another asylum seeker children there. What impression do they get – ‘is this going to happen to me, are people going to come and take me away?’ This is obviously having a psychological effect on him and other children.”
Published in the Sunday Herald May 15 2009.
