A group of women unfairly detained in Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre are on hunger strike to protest the terrible conditions they're kept under. The UK's solution? Deport them quicker.
Imagine the place you’ve always called home becomes unliveable. You’re forced to see your city, your country, your family torn apart by war. Imagine you cannot stay in your home because of your race, or your religion, or your gender. So you must leave, and that’s dangerous too.
You cross the ocean in a dingy or stowaway in a truck. You’re separated from the ones you love. You spend every penny that you have. You’re haunted by the people you left behind.
But you make it; you arrive in a country which you believe to be a safe haven. You arrive in London, the United Kingdom, a place of opportunity, a place of justice, a place of acceptance. But after all that struggle, you must struggle more. Imagine you end up stuck in Yarl’s Wood.
Because you could end up there. Yarl’s Wood is the frankly immoral detention centre which time and time again breaches UK government immigration policy. Anyone subject to immigration control – from asylum seekers to visa over-stayers to foreign offenders - can be detained at Yarl’s Wood. Although it’s dubbed an “immigration removal centre”, in 2016, 79% of the people held in Yarl’s Wood were released, not removed, suggesting that the majority of people are not confirmed to be deported, but are instead being unfairly detained for long periods of time.
The controversy around Yarl’s Wood is well documented, with Channel 4 News investigations in 2015 uncovering numerous incidents of self harm (with 74 separate incidents of self harm requiring medical treatment in 2013 alone), lack of medical care (for example, there are reports of a woman having a miscarriage, which at the time raised no medical concerns by staff) and verbal and physical abuse from guards with recordings of statements such as, “They’re all animals. Caged animals. Take a stick with you and beat them up. Right?”
Imagine you’re one of those animals – sorry, I mean women. Imagine you have no idea why you’re still being kept in these conditions and when – or if – you’ll be released. Imagine you’re brave and strong enough to participate in a peaceful hunger strike, which a group of 120 women did begin on February 21st 2018.
Imagine the Home Office then threatens to fast-track the deportation of hunger strikers. Imagine how you might feel, maybe how one of the strikers, Theresa, an asylum seeker from Uganda describes it, “There’s no care or compassion about it […] it was to remind us that we better shut up.”
Imagine how you’d feel if you were the woman facing deportation tonight, on the 17.25 Kenya Airways flight from London Heathrow to Nairobi. Deportation for legally protesting an institution which should be illegal; Yarl’s Wood. Imagine all this, in the United Kingdom, our fair and just country. Our safe haven.
Unfortunately none of this requires an imagination. It’s all real and all flagrantly in violation of the Human Rights Act of 1998, including Freedom of Expression. It’s time we stop trying to silence these vulnerable women, and start listening to them. It’s time we close down Yarl’s Wood for good.
Luckily, the deportation scheduled for 16/03/2018 has been deferred, but the fight continues. If you believe the deportation and continued detainment of women at Yarl’s Wood to be wrong, please get in touch with the following MPs - tweet them, email them, call them - asking them to #StopDeportingStrikers.
Diane Abbott - @HackneyAbbott
David Lammy - @DavidLammy
Caroline Nokes - @carolinenokes - Immigration Minister
Afzal Khan - @Afzal4Gorton - Shadow Immigration Minister
Amber Rudd - @AmberRuddHR