A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change.
We are currently recruiting graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
- News Service
- Multimedia
- Global Issues
- On The Record Archive
- Covering the UN
- Civil Society in Albania
- Afghanistan's Women & Girls
- Africa – Pygmies
- Bangladesh – Empowering the Blind
- Bosnia – War and Recovery
- Ecuador and Oil
- Guatemala – Indigenous Advocacy
- India – The Global Movement for Children
- Kosovo – Civil Society after the War
- Nepal – Democracy and Discrimination
- Nigeria – Trafficking to Europe
- Occupied Palestinian Territories
- Peru – The Search for Truth and Justice
- Roma and Gypsies
- Serbia – Fighting Repression
- Sri Lanka – Rebuilding After the Tsunami
- The World Bank and Human Rights
- Training at the UN, Geneva, May 4-11, 2007
- UK Travellers and Dale Farm
- Dale Farm Biographies
- Reports from Dale Farm
- Judge Stops Council Destroying Dale Farm Community School
- Gypsy School Faces Demolition by Council
- They're Taking Away our School and the Children
- Letter to Comissioner
- Secret Plan to Seize Over a Hundred Gypsy Children
- CRE Joins Dale Farm
- Government Intervenes at Dale Farm
- Roma Lobby to End Anti-Gypsy Racism
- Roma Call for Change
- Council Says Bulldoze
- IRWN Report
- Britain's Answer: Send in Bulldozers
- UK Forum Talks
- Judge Rules Gypsies Eviction Unlawful
- Roma Forum Boycotts Enforcement Task Force
- We Want Justice
- Eviction Moratorium Call Goes to Brussels
- Dale Farm: Let Us Build New Homes
- Buckley's Christmas Gift is to Bulldoze Village
- Travellers Score St. Valentine's Day Victory
- Evictions Continue as Government Consults with Gypsies About Legal Site Provision
- Basildon Drops
- Town Council Drops Race Equality Group for Aiding Dale Farm
- Law Reformers Back Complaint Against Bailiff
- The Village that Refuses to Die: Dale Farm Builds itself a Centre
- Avoid Eviction Trauma Say MPs
- Gypsies Under Seige Talking to Russians
- Education and Welfare of Children at Dale Farm
- Forty Minute Warning of Community Assault
- Judge Says Travellers Can't Stay on Own Land
- Letters of Support Needed
- Dale Farm Bulletins: Summer 2007
- Dale Farm Documents
- AP Diaries and Staff Blogs
The Impact of Service
|
Translate this page:
Secret Plan to Seize Over a Hundred Gypsy Children
By Grattan Paxton
Dale Farm Housing Association
A whistle-blower has revealed the existence of secret plans to seize more than a hundred Gypsy children from the besieged Dale Farm Travellers' community and take them into temporary care.
If a judge gives the go-ahead, the children will be taken by force from their parents as part of the biggest anti-Gypsy operation ever mounted in Britain.
Basildon District Council has set aside five million euro to bulldoze Dale Farm and drive over a thousand so-called illegal Gypsies and Travellers from the area. It has already demolished a dozen Gypsy properties at nearby Hovefields.
According to details obtained by Ustiben, Essex County Council welfare officers would enter Dale Farm village in a fleet of coaches and mini-buses, accompanied by bailiffs and police, some in riot gear.
The media will be told the removal of infants and youngsters, among them some seventy primary-school children, along with the elderly and vulnerable, is for their own safety.They will be detained at a holding centre some miles from Dale Farm.
Officials anticipate that within hours frantic parents will call to demand their children back. According to instructions, they are to be released providing families agree immediately to leave the county under polic escort.
Heavy vehicles, including JCBs, earth-movers and lowloaders will be employed for at least a week raising the village. Its five tarmacked streets, lined by fenced and walled yards, comprise 132 chalets, mobile-homes and caravans, as well as the new Saint Christopher's community centre and chapel.
Saint Christopher's is named after a school built by Travellers in Ireland 45 years ago and burned down by Dublin Corporation. It's the headquarters of the Dale Farm Chaveys Youth Club, formed this summer with the help of the Essex Racial Equality Council.
The Gypsy Council is meeting in the centre on Tuesday (9 Sept) to discuss the threat. It has asked for and obtained a confrontation with top Essex officials at County Hall, Chelmsford, which is expected to take place later in the week.
Gypsy Council president Richard Sheridan, chair of the Dale Farm Housing Association, views the county council plan as an abuse of welfare legislation.
"This is county council collusion with Basildon's policy of ethnic-cleansing," commented Sheridan, who is attending the Roma Summit in Brussels later this month. "They want to crush our homes and take away our children."
Gypsy Council secretary Joseph G.Jones, recently appointed a technical expert to the UN Advisory Committee on Forced Evictions, has submitted a report on the situation for the UN body, which met last week in Nairobi.
The issue as to whether Basildon can destroy Dale Farm, located in a greenbelt zone and lacking planning consent, without alternative accommodation being provided for the 90 families, is to be decided in the Court of Appeal on 5 December.
Back