3mHome Office under pressure to resettle stranded child migrants living in island camp
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is under serious pressure to resettle a group of Tamil migrants who’ve been stranded on a British-owned island in the middle of the Indian Ocean for more than a thousand days.
The group, including 15 children aged between five and 14, have been living in tents in a camp no bigger than a football pitch, surrounded by an eight-foot high wire fence and guarded 24/7 by security guards employed by G4S.
The camp is on the island of Diego Garcia, which, while part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), has been an important strategic US military base for more than 40 years.
The Americans have consistently opposed the migrants being allowed to leave the camp and to travel to any other part of the island on the grounds of national security.
But yesterday a British judge brushed aside US objections and granted immigration bail to 47 of the camp’s inhabitants so they can go on escorted walks outside, despite warnings from a foreign office minister that such a move may seriously threaten UK/US relations.
A recent investigation by a senior social worker into conditions in the camp, which houses a total of 56 migrants, concluded the children are in immediate danger and cannot be safeguarded on the island.
The Commissioner for BIOT, Paul Candler, said in a statement: “We consider that there is and remains an immediate risk of harm to all children on the island, and that that risk is serious and growing…. I have formally requested that the UK Government allow the most vulnerable migrants, including the children, to be transferred to the UK immediately on the basis of exceptional humanitarian considerations. “
A subsequent meeting with Foreign Secretary David Lammy led to talks with the Home Office on bringing the children and their families to the UK, along with another five vulnerable adults who were flown to Rwanda for treatment after suffering serious mental health problems.
Lawyers acting for the migrants have been fighting for their resettlement in the UK for nearly three years.
The families were all rescued by the Royal Navy when their fishing trawler ran into trouble off the coast of Diego Garcia in October 2021 after sailing 2,000 kilometres across the Indian Ocean. They had escaped a refugee camp in India and said they were hoping to make it to Canada on the other side of the world.
On Diego Garcia, they have few links with the outside world. As well as not being allowed out of the camp, they have no access to TV channels and no access to a mobile phone network.
A British judge is to visit the camp in the coming months to see for herself the condition before deciding whether the migrants are being unlawfully held in what amounts to a detention camp.
But it will now be a political decision which will decide the future of these migrants and whether Yvette Cooper will accept their situation amounts to a humanitarian crisis.