Resisting immigration detention

Socialist Resistance no18 | page 4-5

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

A Ukrainian asylum seeker was found hanged at Harmondsworth Removal Centre in west London on July 19. There were rumours that staff had mistreated him. A major disturbance ensued as a result of which the centre was closed and the detainees were transferred to other removal centres and a whole number to mainstream prisons.

On Friday July 23 a Vietnamese detainee who was moved from Harmondsworth to Dungavel hung himself. A fellow detainee reportedly said that he had been detained for over a year and simply gave up hope of release.

Campaigners fear that many others may have been deported secretly as it has been difficult to trace people in the chaos which followed - and which is very similar to what happened at Yarls Wood in Bedfordshire after it burnt down in??

Five demonstrations were organised across England and Scotland on the last weekend of July at HMP Liverpool, Campsfield, Dover Removal Centre, HMP and Y01 Forest Bank (in Manchester) and at Dungavel. Later protests were also organised at HMP Cardiff to which detainees were also moved.