On 15 September, The Observer published the testimony of ‘Tanja’, a former detainee at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre (IRC), run by private company Serco. Tanja described the blackmail and sexual abuse heaped upon detainees by Serco employees in graphic detail. Her testimony ranged from accounts of guards promising favours or offering to make life easier, saying they would have more chance of winning their case or staying in the country in return for sexual favours, to accounts of rape: ‘There were two occasions when I was made to do “blow jobs”… [The guard] was well aware that I did not want to’. Tanja’s experience is by no means unique. In her testimony, she stated that several other women were abused, one guard boasting of sexual behaviour with at least four women.
Exact statistics for abuse in IRCs are difficult to find. The Home Office admits to only four complaints of a sexual nature from detainees since 2008. However, as Tanja’s case shows, sexual assault is accompanied by blackmail to ensure silence. Following her initial complaint in December 2012, Tanja was bullied by Serco staff: ‘Some of the officers said I was lying, they started giving me the cold shoulder. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my room for weeks. I felt very isolated and started self-harming’. This intimidation was used to make her withdraw her complaint: ‘They told me that they are going to take me to court about making the complaint because there is no evidence.’ This internal bullying was complemented by racist persecution from the Home Office. Within days of Tanja’s complaint, another notice for her removal was issued. A key witnesses in the Yarl’s Wood sex inquiry, Sirah Jeng, was detained on 31 October, and threatened with deportation to Gambia before being able to give testimony. Sirah has since been released and has spoken out publicly against the abuse of detainees.
As Harriet Wistrich, Tanya’s lawyer, has stated, this is the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and has only become public because of Tanja’s determination and persistence. Wistrich also points to cuts in legal aid as aiding this kind of abuse: ‘The women in Yarl’s Wood are some of the most vulnerable you can imagine…The state has a duty to investigate such serious allegations, but it has repeatedly failed. Now the government wants to remove legal aid altogether for detainees and foreign nationals, giving a green light to abuse at Yarl’s Wood to continue.’
On 29 November, Isa Muazu, who was detained at Harmondsworth IRC, was put on a plane to Nigeria, having been on hunger strike for over 100 days. He told supporters: ‘I am refusing to eat because my asylum claim was not treated fairly and I will not give up my protest … now I am a skeleton and almost dead. There is so little of me left and I am not afraid. But [the authorities] have not treated me as a human being and that is wrong’. On 25 November Isa lost an appeal to be released from detention in order to receive medical treatment. Although he was close to death, the Home Office judged Isa ‘fit to fly’ and arranged to deport him on a privately chartered special flight, at vast expense. But the Nigerian government refused to allow the plane to land and Isa is now back in detention in the UK.
The determination of detainees to resist the racism of the British state has a long history and shows the way forward for all anti-racist campaigners. In 2012, hundreds of women at Yarl’s Wood went on hunger strike in solidarity with a women dragged naked from her cell by guards. Our response must be to support detainees and their resistance.
James Bell
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 236 December 2013/January 2014
