On Tuesday 28 November 2006 detainees at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre rose up in protest against their imprisonment. The revolt lasted more than 24 hours and resulted in substantial damage to the privately-run detention centre. The protest came the day after the publication of a damning inspection report by Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers into conditions at Harmondsworth, and was directly triggered by the attempts of members of staff to prevent a group of detainees from watching a news broadcast about the report. Annabelle Richardson reports.
The uprising started in B-wing but detainees in the other three wings quickly joined in. Specialist prison riot squads, called Tornado teams, were drafted in from all across south-east England to batter the protesters into submission. About 50 detainees were taken to the courtyard around midnight and left there with no food, shivering in the cold, until 7am on Wednesday. Some did not get their medication. Other detainees were locked in their rooms even though parts of the detention centre were on fire. The fires set off the sprinkler system, which caused extensive water damage to the centre.
The protest continued well into Wednesday lunchtime when detainees in one courtyard spelled out a makeshift ‘SOS: Freedom’ and ‘HELP’ banner with bedsheets. These were photographed by a news helicopter and published widely. Clearly fearful that this would lead to support for the prisoners and make it more difficult to denounce them as violent animals, the government rapidly declared the airspace above the centre a ‘no fly zone’, citing vague ‘security reasons’.
Harmondsworth is run by private company Kalyx, a subsidiary of Sodexho. It holds up to 501 detainees and at the time of the uprising held 484. Home Secretary John Reid announced that the figure included ‘177 foreign nationals who had been convicted of criminal offences, had completed their custodial sentences and who were in the process of being deported or considered for deportation’.
Reid clearly intended journalists and the public to conclude that the detainees included violent criminals; however the Home Office’s own agreements on post-sentence immigration detention indicate that no-one convicted of a violent, sexual, terrorist or Class A drugs offence can be transferred to a detention centre. Instead they must remain in prison until their deportation. Those awaiting deportation in Harmondsworth were all serving less than four years’ imprisonment, mainly for minor drugs offences, or criminal offences directly related to immigration. The Guardian interviewed one detainee, an elderly man from Leeds who has lived and worked in Britain since the age of 13 and yet is now being considered for deportation to Jamaica following a three-month sentence for cannabis offences.
Reid claimed that all other detainees were ‘immigration offenders and failed asylum seekers who are in the United Kingdom in breach of our immigration laws and who are being held pending removal’. He omitted to mention the significant number of asylum seekers being held in administrative detention while a decision is made on their claim, under the ‘fast-tracking’ system. Such decisions are mainly based on the nationality of the applicant and asylum seekers from a list of supposedly ‘safe’ countries find themselves imprisoned and pushed through the fast-track system. These ‘safe’ countries include Afghanistan, Turkey, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
Legal and human rights organisations, such as the Refugee Legal Centre and Bail for Immigration Detainees, have demonstrated that the fast-
tracking system is completely unfair. According to Home Office statistics covering July to September 2006, fast-tracked asylum seekers in Harmondsworth had a 99% refusal rate, as opposed to 81% refusal for all asylum seekers.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons uncovered a regime obsessed with control and where 61% of detainees felt unsafe, particularly because of staff victimisation. One detainee reported that ‘The first thing they say to you when you come in here is don’t mess about or we’ll make life difficult for you’.
The report concludes that many of ‘the rules and systems would have been considered over-controlling in a prison, let alone a removal centre’. For example, detainees are not allowed to use their own toiletries; nor are they allowed to display any photographs or pictures in their rooms – rooms in which the windows do not open. The report also criticises the ‘incentives scheme’, which operates more like a punishment scheme, ‘depriving detainees of basic entitlements such as the ability to attend religious services.’ Punishments such as removal from association and temporary confinement are frequently used for ‘bad’ behaviour. Detainees reported abuse by prison guards and this is likely to be under rather than over reported. The act of resisting removal also results in privileges being removed, including the right to leave one’s room between 8.30pm and 7.30am, which is particularly harsh for smokers, as smoking is not allowed in the rooms.
Ex-Harmondsworth detainee Joseph Mande told FRFI ‘The level of respect of officers for detainees was very low, there was a lot of racism and a denial of services to detainees. On three occasions when evidence was sent from Africa, when the evidence arrived at Harmondsworth they sent it back, claiming they didn’t have that person in the centre.’
In these conditions, the high level of self-harm is not surprising. Since 2000 there have been four suicides at Harmondsworth, along with numerous acts of self-harm. However, there has also been sustained and regular resistance by detainees, ranging from hunger strikes and small protests to full-scale uprisings.
As always happens in the case of protests by the incarcerated against the fact and conditions of their detention, the state has moved to criminalise the protesters. John Reid accused them of sabotage and denounced them for being ‘prepared to destroy property and to endanger their fellow detainees’. In fact, the loss of detention capacity caused by the uprising at Harmondsworth massively assisted 50-150 detainees from other centres, who were released on bail, and therefore put in a far better position to fight their cases against deportation.
According to information provided by the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, 11 people were arrested on 29 November 2006 on suspicion of violent disorder. There are no charges at present. They have all been ‘bailed’ until the end of January pending further investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime Directorate. Of course this does not mean they have been released from detention.
If these asylum seekers go to trial they will be depicted as violent troublemakers and instigators of otherwise passive and accepting detainees. They will be sentenced to terms of criminal imprisonment and then be deported at the end of these sentences.
The uprising at Harmondsworth was not the first to occur there; nor will it be the last. Oppression breeds resistance. Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! stands in complete solidarity with all those in struggle against immigration detention and salutes the resistance of all Harmonsdworth detainees involved in the uprising.
Close down Harmondsworth!
End all immigration detention!
Inside Harmondsworth
This is an extract from the diary kept by Clive, who was a detainee in Harmondsworth in August 2006 and who is fighting against his deportation to Jamaica. FRFI would like to thank Clive and his partner Kim for providing us with this insight into the day-to-day treatment of detainees.
Sunday: Went on visit to see Kim and was told that if we had any contact at all between us that I would be put in the block.
Monday: Went on visit yet again with Kim, and yet again we were told that we could not hold hands.
Tuesday: Went to see the doctor as I have lost a tremendous amount of weight…and the doctor told me that the only way that I could get any thing else in here besides the food was if I was an alcoholic. I am 6ft 5in tall and weighing 10st at the moment when my weight should be between 14-15st.
…Put up pictures on my wall of Kim and myself and was told to take them down and was given no reason as to why they are not allowed.
Friday: Went on a visit with Kim, and the both of us had both our shoes off and had our feet on top of each other’s feet, and we were told that it is against the rules to take off your shoes
Sunday: Went to go into the TV room for a smoke and to watch TV at 11pm and was told that the TV has been taken away and that the room will be locked which means that I had no access to either the hot or cold water, because that is where the water filter is situated and there is no other water filter anywhere else…was told that it would be closed all night.
…Approached by two officers and was taken down to the end of the landing and was spoken to behind a door to be told that I was meant to have been rude to one of the officers regarding why the room was locked and yet again I was spoken to as if I was a teenager…as if I had no right to ask why the room was locked. As often, I am threatened with the block, not only me but other detainees as well. I feel that I am living in a prison not a detention centre…this is making me more stressed and sicker as the days go by.
FRFI 195 February / March 2007
