London 

- The attention of the British Home Office and the media is directed to hotels that host children and minors who are asylum seekers on the southern coast of the country, after an investigation by The Observer magazine sparked a legal and security controversy, as the newspaper stated that it had obtained data indicating that Children of asylum seekers to be kidnapped in front of reception hotels.

This applies to children who arrive in Britain without the escort of a parent, and are placed in hotels until their asylum applications are decided.

The British newspaper said that the matter is related to dozens of children who disappear in mysterious circumstances, and quoted a person who works in one of these hotels and another source whose task is to protect children, that the children are taken in unidentified cars from the front of the hotels, and then they disappear.

This news was enough to create a state of panic in the human rights community, which is pressing for the Ministry of the Interior to open an investigation into the matter, in contrast to the British police account, which says that the matter is not as it was portrayed in the media, and that the numbers are exaggerated and do not reflect the reality of the situation.

The Observer newspaper presented a frightening account of the situation of refugee children in reception hotels in the south of the country, by talking about the disappearance of dozens, and describing what is happening as a “kidnapping” process. It quoted a person who works in these hotels as saying, “Children are kidnapped by human trafficking gangs.” Where they are taken from in front of hotels towards an unknown destination, and then they disappear completely.”

What makes things worse is that the British newspaper quotes a person in the Child Protection Department as saying that the Ministry of the Interior was informed of this phenomenon, but without any real intervention to deal with it.

In the last 18 months, 600 children have arrived at hotels in Sussex, in the south-east of Britain, and 136 of them have been reported missing.

While 57 of them have been found, 79 are still missing and have not been found.

A former gathering of British children around a doll symbolizing a Syrian refugee girl (Reuters)

Half confession

Immediately after the investigation was issued, pressure increased on the Ministry of the Interior to provide clarifications on the matter, forcing the Secretary of State in the Interior, Simon Murray, to acknowledge before the House of Lords that there were 200 children who had disappeared from refugee reception centers, and that a number of these children were being traced to reach them, adding that it was Among the disappeared are children between the ages of 13 and 16.

The government official refused to generalize and say that all these children who disappeared were victims of human trafficking gangs, but he did not explain the reasons for the sudden disappearance of these children.

The important point revealed by the British official remains that 88% of the children who disappeared are of Albanian origin, and here is perhaps the key point.

A few weeks ago, the British Home Secretary raised controversy when she said that the Albanian gangs are the beneficiaries of the continued flow of small boats through the sea channel from France towards Britain.

It seems that dealing with "Albanian refugees" is still a file that haunts the Ministry of the Interior, after it appeared that more than a third of those who crossed the sea channel during the past year were of Albanian origin.

Sussex Police said that during the past year it dealt with the disappearance of 137 children, and 60 of them were found, while the search is still underway for the rest, but the question remains: Where do these dozens of children disappear, knowing that the British authorities deal seriously with the news of the disappearance what child?

The police said that they once received a report that two children were taken from in front of a refugee hotel into a car, to be tracked down and arrested for the two people who were driving minor asylum seekers to an unknown destination.

Accusations of British police inaction towards the crisis of kidnapping refugee children (Reuters)

A race against time

The British Home Office faces many accusations that it did not deal with repeated warnings about the safety of children from asylum seekers with the required seriousness. The Love146 Foundation, which works to combat child trafficking, said it had offered the Home Office assistance in monitoring and managing hotels that are witnessing the disappearance. children, but she did not receive any response.

Likewise, the Brighton City Council, which witnessed the disappearance of children, did by throwing the ball into the court of the Ministry of the Interior, and the council announced that it had asked last July for a meeting with the Ministry of the Interior, and the council said that it had informed the Interior Ministry of great concern about the situation of children in these hotels, so the Ministry’s response was that this Hotels will be closed by next February.

The Ministry of the Interior is racing against time to close the file of children who are asylum seekers, as British Home Secretary Swella Braverman announced that she is seeking to raise the pace of dealing with asylum files, in order to complete the bulk of them by the end of the year.

On the other hand, the opposition Labor Party calls for the transfer of children from these "unsafe" hotels to safer destinations. To be a reason to mobilize all the security services to find him.