Deported To Death.

   More on the latest death at Yarl's Wood, from Act For Freedom Now:

       Here in England, yesterday (Monday) a man died in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. According to a corporate media report: One female detainee, who asked not to be named, said the man who died was 33 and his wife was also in her mid-thirties. Both were on a visit to the UK from their home in India when they were arrested and detained in the family unit at Yarl’s Wood. The detainee said she thought the couple had children back home in India. “The man’s wife is in a state of shock. She was taken to the legal corridor but she is not speaking,” said the detainee. “The couple had just had breakfast and the man had been drinking an energy drink. Suddenly he collapsed and died.” She added that the couple had been in Yarl’s Wood for two months. “I think they came here with visitors’ visas. They said they wanted to see London but they were detained at the airport and brought to Yarl’s Wood. As far as I know he was healthy and not on any medication. He was very nice and so is she, they would make us all laugh. They were a lovely couple but now she is quite alone.”

   And what happens to some of them that are deported from detention centres?

  
    On Sunday, the islamic fascist scum of ISIS released a video claiming to show the killing of 28 Ethiopian christians by their soldiers in Libya. Today, three of the people killed were identified by their friends and loved ones as Eritrean refugees who had been deported from migrant detention camps in Israel. Media Report HERE.

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Death At Yarl's Wood.

      The UK, a country that proclaims to be a democracy, yet has detention centres jammed full of migrants who are treated as less than human. No human is illegal, we are all citizens of this earth, yet we allow these unfortunate people to be caged like animals. People who in many cases are fleeing war, persecution and death, and all we can do is lock them up. Others are detained on the arbitrary decision of some officious pumped up uniform.

A special call-out for solidarity from The Unity Centre:

EMERGENCY DEMO End Detention Set Them Free.

Thursday, 22 April at 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Festival Court, 200 Brand St, G51 1DH (turn left out of Cessnock Underground)

      Enough is enough, no more DEAD in detention. Calling out all our supporters to join us to protest for the death of Pinakin Patel in Yarl's Wood's family unit (Hummingbird) that happened yesterday (20/04/15)
     The demo will be at Glasgow Immigration Reporting Centre, during lunch break so people can join us. This is nation wide emergency as deaths keep on happening due to lack of adequate medical care and an abusive immigration system that keeps criminalizing migrants.

Feel free to bring placards and musical instruments or similar

Info on Pinakin Patel
      Two months ago Mr Patel and his wife, Bhavisha Ben Patel, came to Britain from India lawfully, on visitors visas. Immigration officers simply decided not to believe that Mr & Mrs Patel were genuine visitors, even though they have an 8 year old son in India. They were sent straight from the airport to Yarl’sWood, where they have been ever since. Two day ago the Movement for Justice demonstrated at Yarl’s Wood and women gathered at the windows, waving and joining the shouts and chants to shut down Yarl’s Wood and end detention. Today Yarl’s Wood women are angry. They know that, like so many others, the Patels were victims of Britain’s arbitrary, racist immigration controls and immigrant-bashing policies.
      They saw police, forensics and an ambulance come into the centre while Hummingbird detainees were shut in their unit; Indian women were angry that they could not speak to Mrs Patel because her phone was taken from her and she was confined to a room. They all know the Home Office &
Serco are preparing a cover-up. Far too many people have died in immigration detention just as far too many have been allowed to drown in the Mediterranean. We are building the movement to tear down this barbaric Europe-wide racist policy.

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!
LOVE AND SOLIDARITY

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The UK's Gulags.

        From Athens to Harmondsworth, solidarity with the hunger strikers and all prisoners in revolt.

       Prisons are the state's last resort before execution, though a number of state's have abolished official state murders, (executions), but prisons remain and become more brutal in there surveillance and isolation techniques. Degrade, humiliate, harass and repress, all strategies to control that are common in prisons across the world. The state will introduce whatever legislation it pleases to make something a “custodial” offence. In the case of many migrants, there has been no offence, no sentence, no defined term, just the indefinite custodial act, at the whim of the state apparatus. What is more repugnant, is the fact that lots of these hell-holes are run by private companies on a strictly for profit basis. The detainees are secondary to the profit, it is to the companies benefit to hold as many as possible, for as long as possible, for as cheaply as possible. A sure recipe for abuse and deteriorating conditions. As always, as conditions deteriorate, so the anger grows, and rightly so. However those unfortunate enough to be caught up the the state's repressive prison/detention Gulags, should not have to fight their battles alone from the inside. Their conditions, and justice, demand our solidarity. Without that solidarity the state will brutally crush any internal protests, all hidden from the public gaze, all behind high stone walls. An abundance of repression and brutality goes on on a daily basis behind those high stone walls. We can't be deaf and blind to their call for help.

This from Rabble:

      Tuesday evening 10 March. Rebellion is spreading across the UK’s “gulag archipelago” of migration prisons.

     Hunger strikes and yard occupations and other protests are now taking place in at least 6 UK detention centres. The protests started last week in Yarl’s Wood (Bedfordshire) and in the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook migration prison complex near Heathrow airport. (See previous reports here and here.)

     Today we heard that 50 people were on hunger strike in Tinsley House, with protests also at nearby Brook House, both inside the perimeter of Gatwick Airport. Hunger strike has also started at Moreton Hall (Nottinghamshire). There may well be others.

     In Harmondsworth, some prisoners have now been on hunger strike for a week (picture above from yesterday). See this video featuring interviews by phone with some of the people detained there. Also see the Detained Voices website which is receiving and spreading words from friends on the inside.

      Today there were due to be three mass deportation flights of prisoners from UK detention centres to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Albania. In particular, it is known that a number of people deported to Afghanistan recently, particularly from ethnic minorities, have been killed or imprisoned and tortured by state and para-state forces upon arrival in the country.

Full article and photos HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Democratic Detention Of Victims!!!!

      Here in the UK the government spouts about us being a free and democratic country, yet there are hundreds of victims being locked in detention centres. It is certainly very undemocratic to lock up victims, instead of offering safety and support.

This from one who has been there:

     When I was 13 years old I was locked up by British authorities. My family was persecuted in Turkey for being Kurds and left in fear. My mother and I came to the UK for safety, to seek asylum. Instead we were locked in a detention centre in Bedfordshire. I saw what women go through when they are detained.

    Right now there are hundreds of women locked up in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. They need to be protected, not punished. That’s why I’m calling for the Government to end the detention of women who seek asylum.

     These women have not committed any crime. Many of them are held in detention while their asylum request is processed. But it’s possible to create an asylum process in which their cases are heard while they are living in the community. The Home Office should treat women who have survived rape and torture with dignity and humanity.

     Detention is very traumatic for women who have already experienced persecution. Allegations of abuse have been made against staff in Yarl’s Wood. Many women who are detained become suicidal and some of the women are pregnant. This is no place for these vulnerable women.

     My mother and I were finally released and granted leave to remain in the UK. I then spoke out for the campaign to end the detention of children. In 2010 the Government announced that it would end the shameful practice that saw "innocent children imprisoned". I know we can do it again, but need you to help me.

Sign my petition to Theresa May to stop the detention of women who have sought asylum.

Thank you for your support,

Meltem Avcil

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Dignity And Respect Are Universal Rights.

       Grabbed in a dawn raid, sent to a detention centre to be returned to a land where your life might be in danger, and before you are dispatched, you are raped. Not in some far-away dictatorship, but here in the so called civilised UK.

This appeal from The SumOfUs:

       Serco, one of the largest and most powerful companies in the UK, privately runs Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire -- an immigration removal centre where vulnerable women are detained and in some cases, raped and sexually abused by the staff who are there to protect them.

        The Chief Inspector of Prisons released a report this week on Yarl’s Wood, urgently calling for a ban on male staff entering the rooms of female detainees uninvited and for the urgent recruitment of female staff. We want more than that. We want Serco to get out of the detention business altogether.

Tell Serco the sexual abuse of women by guards proves it has no business being in the detention business.

      “They choose younger girls, the most vulnerable. They do whatever they want." That’s what “Tanja”, one brave witness and detainee at Yarl’s Wood said. The staff have worked out a convenient way to abuse the women in their care - in the upstairs room set aside for asylum-seekers to take family photos. There's a nice sofa, curtains, and no CCTV up there.

      We have to act quickly. The alleged victims and witnesses who are coming forward and testifying are being deported by the Home Office. Several of them were put on a flight to Pakistan on 1 October. We can’t let this go on another minute.

      Serco will hear us. Their reputation is already in tatters. They’re hoping that if they make a few concessions, and sack a few staff, the controversy will die down. We won’t let it. We won’t accept the sexual abuse and rape of vulnerable women by Serco staff.

       This is part of a pattern of abuse. In 2010 a 30-year-old woman became pregnant by an officer in Yarl's Wood. And many other women may be too fearful to testify or are deported before their case is sufficiently examined. These women are not criminals - many have been victimised by traffickers or were in abusive relationships before they were detained.

Corporations have been left unaccountable for too long. Help hold Serco to account for their behaviour.

Thanks for all that you do,

Hanna, Kaytee, and the rest of us at SumOfUs.org

      p.s. To make things worse, Serco also services our schools. They manage the Local Education Authorities in Bradford, Walsall, and Stoke-on-Trent... that’s right.

 

**********
More information:

The truth about sexual abuse at Yarl's Wood detention centre, 29 October, Open Democracy
Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre 'needs more female staff' after detainee abused by officers, 29 October, Independent
Yarl's Wood abuse allegations: Tanja's story, 14 September, Guardian

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

THERE SHOULD BE NO LINK BETWEEN CHARITY AND ABUSE.

    This action is called for Thursday November 8th. in spite of the short notice I hope you will all give it your support. Why should a charity that claims to care for children do the state's dirty work?

     The No Borders Network has called for a 'day of action' against the charity Barnardo's, to highlight their involvement in state-sanctioned child abuse.

    The 'UK's leading children's charity' continues to facilitate Cedars, the mock-Tudor version of Yarl's Wood and Dungavel, despite repeated breaches of the charity's own 'red line' basic standards for involvement. These breaches include the use of physical force to remove "a pregnant woman, posing an unacceptable risk to the unborn child", "intimidating behaviour", "offensive language and gestures" and "inappropriate language" on the part of staff, and a parent being "asked questions about torture and self-harm in front of her children" (HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, 2012). Barnardo's staff were intimately involved in incidents of physical coercion being used in forced removals, parting parents and children in a fashion criticised by the prisons inspectorate's report.

     Locally, No Borders Glasgow has asked for a presence at Barnardo's premises at 250 Great Western Road and 116 Dumbarton Road.

No Borders callout: https://network23.org/barnardosout/day-of-action/

    Comment from NCADC on HMPI report: http://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=9175e7ebdf93b7e5581be2c51&id=1d4ee38f35#detention

Unity Centre website: http://unitycentreglasgow.org/

ann arky's home.