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.   "A mental-health crisis, endemic self-harm, suicide and forced abandonment of children – Hazel Healy exposes the damage caused by the detention of immigrants. Abobeker is an energetic man from Darfur with a long stride and more lives than a cat. As we speed-walk through Cardiff, he greets numerous Eritrean friends, one of whom he stops to embrace, exclaiming: ‘He was with me on the boat to Lampedusa!’ Migrants make a lot of friends, moving around Europe in and out of detention. Abobeker is something of an expert. He has spent time in more than half of Britain’s 10 detention centres, and two more in Italy, for over three years in total. He can reel them all off: Four months, four days in Sicily, four months and 17 days in Oakington, nine months in Campsfield – the first time… Abobeker fled Sudan after repeated bouts of imprisonment and torture. His six-year odyssey began in 2007, when he made his first attempt to cross from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa, 300 kilometres north of Tripoli. Over three attempts, he witnessed the death of fellow passengers from Somalia, Nigeria and Ethiopia as entire families drowned and scores died of hunger and thirst. By the time he got to Italy, it was 2008. He was promptly detained for four months before reaching Britain, via Calais, in 2009. On arrival, he was locked up for nearly two years. While Britain and Italy took turns to detain Abobeker, his family fell apart. His wife was murdered, his four-year-old son died of malaria and his eight-year-old was snatched from a refugee camp. He has one surviving daughter in the care of his mother-in-law. ‘I lost my family. If [Britain] had accepted me in 2009, they would be here with me now,’ he says. Abobeker fell foul of draconian detention powers in Europe. He is just one of over a million asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants deprived of their liberty in Europe and the US each year."  (...) http://newint.org/features/2014/01/01/keynote-migrants-detention/Crédit photo : Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters.  Journey interrupted. A Somali woman waits at a detention centre in Malta, where asylum-seekers can be detained for up to 12 months on arrival. (ibidem)*Detained world, New Internationalist Magazine, January 2014, Issue 469 "Across the globe, migrants – men and women, the old and the young – are routinely deprived of their liberty. The problem is getting worse. States are holding people on the move for longer, and in greater numbers, than ever before. Between them, Europe and the US imprisoned close to 1 million migrants in 2011. This damaging, brutal and costly practise is spreading to new pastures – Indonesia, Mauritania, Ukraine – sponsored by the rich world. What can be done to stop detention? To ensure that migrants are welcomed – not imprisoned? "http://newint.org/