Detainees fight back as the government builds new jails for asylum seekers
Detainees fight back as the government builds new jails for asylum seekers
Bill MacKeith (President, Oxford Trades Council, personal capacity)
TWO DETAINEES from India started the latest rooftop protest at Campsfield immigration prison (near Oxford) on 14 November: one had been held 15, the other 11 months. During the day 18 other Indians joined them on the roof. None was subsequently victimised.
Two weeks later, some 300 people were at the "Six Years Too Long" demonstration outside Campsfield on November 27 to mark six years to the day of campaigning by detainees and supporters since the detention centre opened.
They came from Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Swindon, Kent, Cambridge, Stafford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Norwich, London and Oxford – a great show of solidarity and determination.
There was a lot of music, noise and chants. Balloons and paper planes carrying messages were sent over the 20-foot-high razor-wire-topped fence.
Anderson Loa from Ivorian Relief Support Group spoke. There was a big CAGE contingent (against the current prison, police station and detention centre construction programme), and others from Hackney Migrants Group, Campaign Against Institutional Racism in Oxfordshire, and messages from FASTI (Federation of Associations in Support of Immigrant Workers) in France, and Winchester Action Group for Asylum Seekers.
Bolts securing the fence had been welded on, and all 190 detainees were locked inside during the 2-hour protest. There was a heavy police presence including four mounted police: they filmed everyone, and at one point demonstrators banging the fence were charged and thrown to the ground but no one was arrested.
On 3 January, a week after the regular monthly demonstration at Campsfield, the Cardiff Red Choir performed a concert of socialist and solidarity songs inside Campsfield, to the delight of detainees and choir alike.
Harmondsworth
Campaigners held a Christmas picket outside Harmondsworth detention centre near London’s Heathrow airport. Raised Voices Choir led singing of protest songs.
Two weeks earlier, local Labour MP and Campaign Group member John Macdonnell spoke at the Close Harmondworth Campaign’s public meeting in Ealing Town Hall.
Harmondsworth (capacity 90 people) is due to be replaced soon by a purpose-built prison for the innocent ("detention centre") at nearby Feltham/Hatton Cross.
Harmondsworth Campaign contact: 0181 571 5019 - evenings
Oakington
On January 15 the full meeting of South Cambridgeshire District Council was lobbied as it met to rubber-stamp a sub-committee’s go-ahead to the Home Office to turn part of nearby Oakington army camp into a "reception centre" to detain up to 400 children, women and men.
Group 4 have got the contract to run it, and are running recruitment days at Gonville Hotel later in January.
The Home Office has said Oakington detainees will be: all people seeking political asylum who arrive without papers "clandestinely" at Dover, and all asylum seekers who enter "legitimately" at Stanstead airport.
(Oakington Campaign contact 01223 457047 days)
Liverpool council opposes "floatel" detention centre
Shortly before Christmas the Home Office said it was considering proposals from Securicor Custodial Services, another private profiteer from injustice, to incarcerate up to 250 innocent asylum seekers on two "floatels" in Liverpool harbour. The City Council opposes the plan. (The barges are among 10 "floatels" owned by Bibby Line; one is a prison ship in Weymouth harbour under the name HMP Weare.)
Perhaps the barges are intended to be the "new detention centre in the north" referred to in a government announcement last summer?
In the same July statement the imminent closure was announced of HMP Aldington, near Folkestone in Kent, pending its conversion into an immigration detention centre.
(Other main places of detention in the UK are HMP Rochester, Kent (two designated detention wings holding a total of 170), HMP Haslar, Gosport, Portsmouth (100), and Tinsley "House" detention centre by Gatwick airport (140).
Victory for Campsfield Nine
Ghanaian detainee John Quaquah, is one of the nine West African Campsfield detainees acquitted in June 1999 of riot charges arising from the August 20 1998 mass protest at Campsfield.
The trial was closed by the prosecution barrister after his key evidence – from Group 4 guards – was exposed by the defence lawyers to be false.
John Quaquah (along with the others of the Nine) then sought damages from Group 4 and the Home Office for malicious prosecution. The Home Office served him with a deportation order. (Nearly all the other eight have either refugee status or "leave to remain.")
In December the High Court quashed the deportation order. The judge based his decision on Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights, the procedures of the new Civil Procedure Rules, and the recent ruling on bias in the Pinochet case.
John Quaquah had the right to stay in order properly to prepare his case against the Home Office, the very body that had sought to deport him, and against Group 4.
The next step in the Campsfield Nine’s long fight for justice depends on a High Court decision on the latest attempt by the Home Office and Group 4 to escape the consequences of their actions.
Both seek to be "struck out" of John Quaquah’s case on the basis that "it was Group 4, not us" (Home Office) and "it was an employee who provided the flawed evidence, not us" (Group 4).
There will be a lobby of the High Court on 23 March from 9.30am.
(Close Campsfield and Campsfield Nine Defence campaign contacts 01865 558145 / 557282 / 726804)