From 5 February to 19 March women asylum seekers at Yarl’s Wood immigration prison staged a defiant hunger strike in protest against their detention and treatment. Nicki Jameson reports.
They withstood physical reprisals from the guards employed by Serco, the private security firm that runs Yarl’s Wood on behalf of the UK Borders Agency (UKBA), the snatching and imprisoning in criminal gaols of some of their most vocal spokeswomen on the grounds they were the protest’s ‘ringleaders’ and the summary deportation of some participants. UKBA lied to the press, claiming there was no hunger strike and that there has merely been a short-lived protest that was ‘peacefully resolved’. As FRFI goes to press, the hunger strike has been suspended for three weeks to give the Home Office an opportunity to respond to the women’s demands. If they are not met, the protest will resume.
On the day the hunger strike was suspended, lawyers acting for four of the women were granted permission by the High Court to bring a claim for judicial review of the government’s detention policies on the grounds that their treatment breaches three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. In a separate legal action 11 women are suing for damages. Both cases relate to the women’s detention and treatment in general, with particular reference to the third day of the hunger strike, when 70 detainees (including women with medical conditions including HIV, asthma and sickle cell anaemia) were locked into an airless corridor for eight hours, with no access to toilets or medical facilities. During this ordeal some of the women were subjected to racial abuse and one was beaten with a riot shield.
Fifty-five male detainees at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre at Heathrow also staged a protest hunger strike for approximately a week in March. Both Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth have seen repeated protests in recent years. Yarl’s Wood was gripped by massive protest and part of the centre burned down in February 2002, just months after it opened. A small group of those present were made scapegoats and subjected to a protracted legal process. After a four-month trial in 2003 two were found guilty of violent disorder and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Another two had already pleaded guilty to minor charges. The remainder were acquitted. Following a major uprising at Harmondsworth in November 2006, four detainees were similarly labelled ‘ringleaders’ and put on trial in January 2008. All were acquitted, and after much procrastination on the part of the state, two were deported and one released. Two years later, the final defendant has now been released from detention.
Along with a wide range of other organisations, FRFI has demonstrated in solidarity with the detainees at Harmondsworth and Yarl’s Wood. We will continue to support all campaigns against Britain’s racist laws and in support of prisoners who rise up against the brutal immigration detention system.
FRFI 214 April / May 2010
