"Of the three main parties, only the Lib Dems have not been part of the witch-hunt against asylum seekers. Labour’s crusade against asylum seekers, emboldened by Tory racist claims that they will be even tougher, has opened the way for immigration officials to target women with kids for deportation and detention, describing them as "easy pickings."

Speakers included:

Uwamahoro from Burundi for All African Women’s Group, formed two years ago as a self-help group for women asylum seekers. She described the persecution and torture she and her family, who are Hutu, suffered from Tutsi authorities: her mother was killed and father disappeared; her husband was arrested; her 14-year old son disappeared and her brother was decapitated in front of her. She hoped her three children would be safer without her so they stayed with a neighbour. She was detained in prison for 6 months and repeatedly gang-raped, becoming pregnant and giving birth in November 2003. Her asylum claim was refused as a result of negligent legal representation, and a new claim has now been submitted.

"The Home Office sent immigration officers and police with a refusal letter to my house at 5.30am on Easter Sunday wanting to detain me. Because I was attending midnight mass and had gone to stay with a friend, I was not home. Now I am terrified that any time they might come and take me from my home. I cannot even imagine being detained again, with a young child who I love so much despite the fact that she was a result of rape and she is a constant reminder of what happened to me. I live with unbearable pain, guilt and I hate myself for having had to leave my children behind. I have terrible nightmares about them going hungry, my daughter being raped, and I also hear them calling me asking where I am. I have scars due to torture but the wound in my heart is so fresh and bleeds day and night. Where are the politicians who pledge to support mothers and free women from fear when mothers with children are targeted? I may be an asylum seeker, but at the same time I am a mother and I have a little girl to bring up. I need support not torture."

Several women who have no contact with their children left behind spoke. One woman from Democratic Republic of Congo whose husband and four children were arrested, was told by an Adjudicator that it was safe for her to go back and accused: "What kind of a mother would leave her children behind?" The official who interviewed her said: "I don’t want to hear what happened to you, just answer the questions." She broke down as she described thinking she could hear her own children’s voices whenever school kids got on the bus.

Rose from Uganda who fought publicly to win the right to stay is now fighting for her two youngest children to join her. The Home Office has appealed against an Adjudicator’s ruling that they should be allowed to come here, on the grounds that she is not their biological mother - the children are her sister’s, who died when the children were very young and Rose has raised them from babyhood. Even they don’t know that she is not their biological mother. Ms C from Uganda described being detained twice, once when she was 8-months pregnant. The terrible anxiety and stress took their toll and her baby was born with a serious heart condition. Both were recently detained again for over a week.

Nushra Mapstone, British Association of Social Workers: "We have spoken out against the Asylum & Immigration Act which gives powers for children to be taken into care if their parents are destitute. This goes against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and UK childcare legislation as well as all our social work principles. We have challenged individual practitioners and tell people to follow their own conscience. It is unethical to implement this legislation."

Cristel Amiss, Black Women’s Rape Action Project: "It is estimated that 50% of women seeking asylum in the UK are survivors of rape and other torture by soldiers, police, others in authority and family members. Yet despite the compelling and often overwhelming evidence of women’s ordeals, rape is ignored, dismissed or downgraded as "lust" not persecution. The Observer just reported the shocking fact that less than 6% of reported rapes end in conviction and those of us who are Black have always been up against the racism of the police and courts when we report. How much worse is this for asylum seekers who are overwhelmingly women of colour, who are told that it is safe to return to countries like the DRC and Uganda where wars still rage and rape is used as a weapon of war.

An AAWG member from the DRC described how the UK and US governments fuel the arms trade which creates and sustains wars in Africa, where they are also stealing the natural resources. She said: "They have us up against the wall back home and they want to kill us; then when we come here, they say we are "bogus". Our lives are treated just like a housefly – you can just step on it and it dies."

Speaking from the floor, a woman concluded that: "Watching the election, it is clear that the racism being whipped up against asylum seekers is where politicians hide from the issue of war. They make out the problem is not the war but asylum seekers, but the two go together: the persecution of people outside and those inside are one and the same policy."

More information: Legal Action for Women & All African Women’s Group