UK inhumanity.

         The mainstream media quite often carry stories and photos of "illegal" migrants being picked up on the beach on this side of the Channel. They tend to leave the story there, they have done their bit, created the illusion of an "invasion" of "illegal" foreigners coming here to use our wonderful benefits system and destroy our very special way of life. The rest of the story is of little interest to them. The fact that these people have, in desperation, taken on a horrendous and dangerous journey, half way across the world, fleeing unimaginable violence, deprivation, persecution, death and destruction. All of these conditions mainly due to the foreign policy of the Western powers, that they run to for help, is not news worth to them.
         So they get picked, what next? They get a welcome and help? Well no, they get locked away from any social connection in detention centres, (prisons for desperate foreigners), they are trapped in a system of policing, devoid of any rights, caged. For how long, well nobody knows, weeks, months and in some cases even years. This being a truly capitalist country, all of this has to make a profit for some corporation, it has to stuff some CEO's bank account with tax payers money. So the UK's detention centres (prisons for desperate foreigners) are mostly run by private companies, human storage and cargo at a profit. As long as the corporate world can make money from this inhumanity, it will persist, it is a capitalist system, not a humanity based system.

The UK holds many accolades, not many of them for worthy causes.

         The UK has the largest Immigration Detention estate in Europe. UK policy results in asylum seekers facing detention at any time, even if they have committed no crime whatsoever. Detention has no time limit and is not automatically subject to Judicial Review. Many endure months and some endure years of indefinite detention.
          There are no safeguards in place to prevent the detention of vulnerable persons, including those who have faced imprisonment, torture and /or sexual violence in the countries from which they have fled. This harmful and expensive practice is unnecessary and deprives people of their freedom, their dignity and is damaging to their mental health.
         Detention Action Frequently Asked Questions about Detention and reports including Detained Lives. They also have a freephone number 0800 587 2096 for advice. 

         Conditions in these prisons for innocent foreigners, are far from decent, and far short of how any civilised society should treat desperate people in need of help. 

        Some detainees are being held for too long and in insect-ridden rooms at Europe’s largest immigration centre in west London, inspectors say. Conditions at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre were “desolate”, with bare rooms, broken equipment, bed bugs and cockroaches, the report by Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke said. Some detainees were held for over a year, with one man held for five years.

And:

      The outbreak has led to renewed calls for all detainees to be immediately released. “The outbreak of COVID-19 at #BrookHouse detention centre was completely predictable - and utterly preventable. Nobody should be detained for immigration purposes during a global pandemic,” tweeted Freedom From Torture. Celia Clark, the director of Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), similarly argued: “The government should now recognise that the use of detention and deportation in the current climate helps to spread coronavirus and puts lives at risk.

        Another of the UK's accolades is, we have the largest detention centre, (prison for desperate foreigners) in Europe. 

        Harmondsworth IRC currently has a capacity of 676, which makes it the largest detention centre in Europe. It holds only men and the security in several of the wings is comparable to a Category B (high security) prison. Harmondsworth is run by private security company Mitie, under contract to the UK Border Agency.
        The last inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons was released in March 2018. The report found that there were considerable and persistent failings in the safety and respect afforded to detainees.

       In matters of detention, control, surveillance and policing, the UK punches well above its weight. 

 

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No Borders.

 

      The "migrant" question is still top of the agenda for most of the political parties, the usual cry being, "control must be restored" which is an admission that the state's control is far from complete, they always wish to go further down that road. A excellent excuse for more draconian rules and regulations, which don't just apply to migrants, but can be used in a blanket form against the general public. What always puzzles me is the wide acceptance across the population, of these new Orwellian rules. The "Calais Jungle" may have gone, but the people are still in transit, and still branded as illegal. Instead of congregating in self managing groups, they are being transferred to state managed "detention centres", in simple language, prisons. The following is an extract from an interesting article from Bordered by Silence.

Anarchist texts on the Calais Jungle
       Although by now the Jungle of Calais has been destroyed, these two texts by Paris Sous Tension are still very relevant for understanding the situation of migrants in France today from an anarchist perspective. Many of the migrants were moved from the Jungle to various detention or housing centres, but all of those spaces are temporary and they will soon be back with the others in the camps that appeared or grew following the Calais eviction. In November, several thousand people were evicted from the Stalingrad neighbhourhood of Paris, where a camp had grown on the grassy medians of busy commercial streets. With right-wing politics ascendant here in the lead-up to presidential election in the spring, it is likely that the attitude of the state towards the migrants will harden and that the two strategies described in these articles, repression and management, will take on an increasingly violent character. 
“I don’t want to go there. That camp is a prison, a sneaky way of imprisoning us.” from Paris Sous Tension, January 2016
       In Calais, the year 2016 begins in the same way the previous ended: by further repressive measures against the undersireables (undocumented people, outlaws, rebels…), by declarations of war against them by the government and its police. All with the explicit support of the most despicable segment of the population, those who have turned to xenophobia to soothe their miserable existence and who rejoice to see the government — who, in their opinion, never does enough —  go all out and resort to drastic measures. Those who, when things get serious, always line up behind the state and demand as the price of their passive adherence that the order be restored. Their only concern is to preserve their small comforts, their precious bank balance, their precious car and daily routine, their precious space of mental peace that all allows them to live their lives without paying attention to the world around them.
       Like many places around the world, people have been flocking to Calais for years now in hopes of crossing to England, crossing a border that is closed to them because they don’t have the required documents, because they don’t meet the legal requirements , because they don’t have a degree or a resume to help them sell themselves on the labour market, or rather because keeping this cheap labour pool living day to day and in fear is a good way to domesticate them and keep them readily exploitable. For years, these people have been organizing among themselves for survival, in hopes of managing to slip across the border illegally, of overcoming the many obstacles that separate one bit of territory from another for those who are seen as undesireable by the state and the market. And as is often the case in hostile situations, there is strength in numbers and so they’ve come here by the thousands (between 4500 and 6000 [1]) in an informal camp in an area now known as “the Jungle”. The cops, who used to simply destroy cabins and tents back when they were isolated from each other, don’t dare to enter “the Jungle” to evict the inhabitants. And these inhabitants, no longer being chased off every few days, are now able to organize themselves in small groups to sneak into cargo trucks in order to enter the tunnel under the English channel or to enter the port.
        And so we see in the past few months that companies like Eurotunnel and the SNCF rail network have restricted access to the tunnel and drastically increased security — the former by hiring a hundred dog handlers and the latter by erecting barriers along the roadways that are several metres tall and topped with barbed wire. As for the cops, more numerous and recently equipped with drones, they are happy to take advantage of a decree (a gift for the cops as part of the state of emergency) allowing them to stop any pedestrian on the road leading to the port and to pass them on to their friends, the judges, who can then condemn them to six months in prison. Oh joy, proclaim the the president of the region (who is calling for the support of the army to main-tain or-der!), the mayor of Calais, and the police chief  as they demand the deportation or imprisonment of every migrant found guilty of: trespassing around the port or near the Eurotunnel (which is necessary, considering the absence of a space-time portal to cross the border); conflict with the police (which has become necessary in order to access the sites in question, in addition to its general value); vandalism; or “by-law violations” (healthy reactions in the face of frustration, disappointment, anger, despair, rage…). It’s a way of oiling the judicial meat grinder, to wave the cleaver of prison or expulsion (which means, at the very least, starting again) over the heads of those migrants who don’t act the way the bureaucrats, functionaries, judges, and politicians expect: as victims.
        Governments of all stripes dream of order and pacification, but this isn’t in the cards for the near future. As proof, on December 17, about a thousand people set out along the highway towards the tunnel. With Christmas approaching and big traffic jams all around the commercial centres, they figured there would be more chances to sneak onto a truck. But the police didn’t agree, which lead to hours of confrontation. Same thing on December 25, 2500 people passed through the centre of Calais to reach the tunnel under the channel, but the police pushed them back. On their return trip, cars payed the price of their frustration and rage: rear view mirrors and windshields smashed, wipers bent back. A few uniformed goons were hurt. In these dark days, the blindest hatred meets the pettiest arrogance and cowardly submission prospers in the absence of any broader hope for a radically different life. We didn’t have to wait long to hear the half self-interested, half indignant grumbles and squeals of the peaceful and hardworking population as they lined up on the side of order.

Read the full article HERE:

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