100+ Women On Hunger Strike In Migrant Detention Centre

At Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire, more than 100 women are refusing to eat, and there have been recent reports of major disturbances at Lindholme, South Yorkshire, and at Colnbrook in Middlesex.Self-harm is particularly acute at Yarl’s Wood, which reopened in September 2003 after half of it was gutted by fire during rioting in February 2002. It now houses hundreds of women, many of whom have attempted to claim asylum in Britain after fleeing war zones.

Amid growing concern over Britain’s overstretched asylum system, the campaign group Liberty will call tomorrow for the Home Secretary, John Reid, to order a public inquiry into the large-scale riot at Harmondsworth detention centre in west London last November. If Reid refuses, the group says that it intends to seek a judicial review of his decision on behalf of seven detainees it is representing – an unprecedented move that would see Britain’s immigration system placed under scrutiny in the courts.

An investigation last year into conditions at Yarl’s Wood found 70 per cent of women at the centre had reported rape, nearly half had been detained for more than three months and 57 per cent had no legal representation.

Conditions have not improved, according to campaigners. Assaults are said to be commonplace. One woman was stripped and thrown naked into a van taking her to the airport for deportation only for the pilot to refuse to allow her to fly as she had no clothes.

The women also allege staff regularly refer to them as ‘black monkey’, ‘nigger’ and ‘bitch’. They claim vital faxes from solicitors are going missing and information on basic legal rights is being withheld. Detainees also complain they are given days-old reheated food in which they have found hair, dirt and maggots.

Campaigners are also concerned about conditions at Harmondsworth, where detainees rioted after being banned from watching news coverage of a damning report on the centre.

The Liberty report, to be published tomorrow, contains a clutch of testimonies from detainees about the conditions in Harmondsworth before the riots. One man interviewed for the study told how he was taken to the centre’s medical clinic suffering from a bad back. ‘They just abandoned me,’ the man said. ‘There was no doctor and, when I asked where the doctor was, the detention officers laughed at me … One of them stepped on the hem of my trousers to make me fall over. He then started laughing and called me a “fucking negro”.’

Solitary confinement as a punishment for speaking out at Harmondsworth is common, according to Liberty. ‘If we made a complaint we would be given a warning,’ one man known as ‘K’ told Liberty. ‘If we were given three warnings, we would be put in an isolated cell. We were scared of making complaints against officers because we expected to be treated badly if we did. We were treated like pigs and very unfairly, as if we were serious criminals.’

These prisons for people who have committed no crime are run by private corporations (misery for profit) and this litany of appalling inhumanity should be a national disgrace. To lock people up is bad enough but to then treat them as subhuman by racist bullying staff shows some deep bigotry and callousness at work in British society. I am completely ashamed of this and of my country.

Links to National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns and Liberty.

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