February 2002. A subsequent show trial failed to convict any detainee for arson; the judge condemned Group 4 that ran it as incompetent.
At Harmondsworth a revolt following a suicide in July 2004 closed the centre for a time. The Colnbrook centre -likewise next to London's Heathrow airport - with over 500 places is currently the UK's largest. Beatings
Beatings of people being deported have been well documented (Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Harm On Removal: Excessive Force Against Failed Asylum Seekers, October 2004). Television programmes have exposed this and also the racism of detention guards. A recent overview of detention of
seekers was Amnesty's Seeking Asylum Is Not a Crime: Detention of
Who Have Sought
In August 2004 Asylum Aid and Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) published They Took Me Away: Women's Experience of Immigration Detention in the UK, focusing on violent treatment during deportations, length of detention, and failure to meet specific needs of women and children; the report is available via their websites. Children continue to be imprisoned Dungavel, Yarl's Wood and Tinsley.
The year 2000 saw the first suicide in ten years by an asylum seeker detained in the UK. Since then seven more young men have killed themselves while in the care of UK detention centres.
At least four others have killed themselves in prisons, and dozens more men and women in the community.
The devastating effect of detention upon the mental health of detainees was Kalyx is the company that manages many of Britain's detention prisons, including Harmonsworth, making profit from misery. At the end of November 2006 detainees at Harmonsworth mounted a major protest at the appaling conditions they were being held in. London no borders held two successful, lively pickets of Kalyx's London HQ to demand the closure of the centre and will be back for more in the new year. described in an editorial article in the British Medical Journal, of Refugees', by Mina Fazel and Derrick Silove (332:251-252, 4th February).
The UK government figures show that in the ten months to January 31st 2006,
in attempted self-harm, requiring medical treatment, and 1,467 were considered to be a