Step up the fight for Asylum rights
The Conference to Defend Asylum seekers in Manchester on March 23 presents a welcome opportunity for different organisations who have been campaigning on this issue to get together and co-ordinate and strengthen their activity.
Organised by Barbed Wire Britain, Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers (CDAS), the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation campaigns (NCADC) and the National Civil Rights Movement with the backing of the Network of Socialist Campaign Groups, the day looks set to bring together activists from all over the country who have been working in a variety of different local campaigns.
It is particularly positive that the speakers at the conference include a large number of asylum seekers. The fight against the deportation of individuals, the fight to close particular (and all) immigration detention centres, and the more general fight against all immigration laws are strengthened enormously when they are led by asylum seekers and refugees themselves.
The developments at Yarls Wood on February 14 which yet again saw immigration prisoners rise up against the intolerable treatment they receive from both the state and Group 4, reminds us that this resilience is something the movement as a whole cannot stress too much.
The protests at Yarls Wood and the massive fire that followed were sparked by attempts by security staff to remove a elderly sick detainee in handcuffs to hospital. The detainee had been ill for three days and other detainees felt she should have been moved to hospital immediately.
As George Binette, secretary of CDAS said "There was a tragic inevitability to the fire, but above all the Yarl’s Wood events spell out how fundamentally wrong the whole policy of arbitrary detention has been."This massive blaze comes at a time when the Home Secretary is seeking to push through Parliament a major extension of the detention regime. This will more than double the number of asylum applicants held in facilities like Yarl’s Wood to some 4,000.
Emma Ginn of the Campaign Against Arbitrary Detention at Yarls Wood said, "The aftermath of last nights fire has really brought home the contempt with which these people [the detainees] have been treated. The authorities have been far more concerned with how many asylum seekers might have ‘escaped’, rather than with the possibility of fatalities or serious injuries among the detainees. There was no helpline set up for the families and friends of detainees. Partially clothed women and children, including a two month old baby, were left to stand outside in sub zero temperatures. We already knew that some of these detainees were in need of medical treatment."
Home Office officials deliberately ignored advice from Bedfordshire Fire Service that sprinklers should be fitted at Yarls Wood Detention Centre. Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service Acting Deputy Chief Fire Officer Clive Walsh said the Yarl’s Wood centre had no sprinklers. "We were asked for our opinion at the end of 2000, early 2001, and it was our advice to have sprinklers in a building of this type. Damage so far has been estimated at £35 million."
The NCADC said "The blame for what happened at Yarls Wood lies squarely with the Government. Their latest Draconian proposals for asylum seekers, unveiled in "Secure Borders, Safe Haven", will lead to more incidents like these.
NCADC demands the immediate closure of all detention centres, a end to dispersal, scrapping the vouchers today, (not next autumn). To be blunt only the complete repeal of all the UK’s racist Immigration laws, will prevent a repeat of the events at Yarls Wood."
The Campaign Against Arbitrary Detention at Yarls Wood and CDAS are calling for a full public enquiry into the events at Yarl’s Wood.
This was just the latest of a series of continuing protests at Yarls Wood Detention Centre since it opened on 19 November. Detainees at Europe’s largest detention centre - have been suffering punitive conditions since the camp opened.
On December 10, just 3 weeks after the centre opened, five Roma began refusing to eat. The hunger strike soon broadened into a opposition to detention itself. Since then there have always been people on hunger strike. One detainee from Eastern Europe went with out food for 34 days.
On January 18 nearly all the detainees went on hunger strike for 24 hours. One of the main complaints was the handcuffing of detainees being transported to hospital.
Nor have protests by immigration detainees been confined to Yarls Wood. Everywhere that refugees have been locked up and criminalised, they have tried to organise and fightback- from Campsfield Detention Centre near Oxford to Rochester prison in Kent.
We may not have seen a "sans papiers" movement in Britain like that in France, but that certainly does not mean that asylum seekers here and not developing their own methods of struggle.
What it does mean is that others involved in the movement to defend asylum seekers do have the responsibility to try to allow the space for more developed forms of self-organisation to be created.
Hopefully the Manchester conference will be a step on this road.
Demonstrate at Yarls Wood Saturday March 30 12-1.30pm. Protest in Bedford town centre 2.00-4.00pm Transport may be available from Bedford to the camp: contact Emma Ginn, 07786 517379.