Read reports of this event in:
- The Independent on Sunday
- Premier (online Christian newsletter)
and a moving account of the day on Rabbi Sylvia Rothchild’s blog
Sunday July 5 (Ramadan and 17th of Tammuz)
Harmondsworth Moor (UB7 0PD) – nature fields 200m from Harmondsworth Detention Centre
The UK is the only European country not to have a limit on how long someone can be kept in immigration detention. The result is an expensive, ineffective and unjust system that:
- wastes millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money
- fails to achieve its goals
- treats vulnerable people inhumanely, often causing physical and mental health problems.
We call on people of all faiths and none to gather near Harmondsworth Detention Centre – the biggest detention centre in Europe – to fast, pray, listen and raise our voice in solidarity with the strangers at our gates.
It is time for the UK Government to realise this system is broken.
It is time to treat all human beings with dignity.
It is time for a time limit.
Drop in for any part of the day’s activities – families are welcome to this free event
Programme
10.30am Welcome
11am-1pm Immigration detention – the insiders’ story
The moving testimonies of Freed Voices – a group of former detainees held in the UK
1.30-4pm Interfaith teachings and discussions
- Rabbi Natan Levy – Tzelem
- Imam Mamadou Seydou Bocoum – Director of Interfaith through the Arts & Interfaith Consultant for Faith Matters
- Most Rev Kevin McDonald – Emeritus Archbishop of Southwark, Chair of the Bishops’ Conference Committee for Other Faiths and of the Committee for Catholic-Jewish Relations
4-6pm Rest, walk, discussions
6-8pm Time for a time limit: moving forward
- Sam Grant – René Cassin
- Jerome Phelps – Detention Action
8-9pm Prayers / art project
9:30pm Break the fast
For more information – email sam.grant@renecassin.org
The event is free and all are welcome – please let Sam know if you plan to attend, so we can arrange catering
“You are to treat the resident alien the same way you treat the native born among you—love him like yourself, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt,” (Leviticus 19:34)
“It is not righteousness that you turn your faces to the East or the West, but truly righteous is he who believes in Allah and the Last Day and the angels and the Book and the Prophets, and spends his money for love of Him, on the kindred and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and those who ask for charity, and for ransoming the captives” (Al Quran 2:178)
This event is coordinated by René Cassin and Tzelem
