Skip to content or view screen version

London Against Detention- Public meeting

noborders lad | 27.03.2006 22:11 | Anti-racism | Migration | Social Struggles

London Against Detention
Campaign to Close the Heathrow Detention Centres

PUBLIC MEETING

Thurs 30th March 6.30pm (for 7pm)



with:
- an ex-detainee speaker from the All African Womans’ Group
- speaker from Global Womans' Strike
- Bill McKeith (Campaign to Close Campsfield Detention Centre)
chaired by Megan Redmond (London Against Detention)

Venue:
Hounslow Community Centre
9 Montague Road, Hounslow
(directions from Hounslow Central Tube Station: Turn left out of the
station, turn left at the traffic lights into Queens Road. Montague
Road is
first right).

refreshments available


London Against Detention aims to build a sustainable and vigorous
campaign
for the closure of the detention centres in the London and Heathrow
area by
holding regular meetings, demonstrations, producing publications,
holding
fundraising events and street stalls. We hope to make contact and build
links with other humanitarian organisations, including unions,
churches,
student organisations, immigrant and asylum support groups, refugee
centres
and others.

We invite you to this public meeting to learn more about the campaign
and
the experience of detention that lies behind it. You can also find out
more
information about the national demonstration taking place at
Harmondsworth on 8th April.

DEMONSTRATION
Saturday 8th April, 11 am
at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre
Directions: take the U3 bus from Heathrow to Harmondsworth.

Please contact us for more information at:
 londonagainstdetention@riseup.net

“You will only know how the UK Immigration works when they detain you
and
you feel all the hatred they have for you. By just a mere look you will
feel
as if you are sinking into the ground.” - former African detainee at a
UK
detention centre.

noborders lad

Additions

Coaches to No Borders Demo - April 8th

27.03.2006 23:28

Coaches to No Borders Demo - April 8th

clandestino | 23.03.2006 13:27 | Migration | Birmingham | London
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
COACHES are being organised and other transport from around the country.
Please contact London No Borders at:  noborderslondon@riseup.net or call
07944 135 617
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

No Borders Demo - Saturday April 8th @ Harmondsworth

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
COACHES are being organised and other transport from around the country.
Please contact London No Borders at:  noborderslondon@riseup.net or call
07944 135 617
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

London No Borders, London against Detention and The Square Occupied Social Centre are calling for a demonstration at Harmonsdworth Detention Centre near Heathrow.

Even as the barriers to the free movement of capital come down, the border regimes are expanding and intensifying. In response to this growing repression, grassroots networks of asylum seekers, migrants, and their supporters are developing across the UK and Europe. There are anti-deportation struggles and campaigns to shut down detention and reporting centres. Undocumented workers are organising. Detainees have staged mass hunger strikes and physically resisted their deportations. In the UK we are attempting to develop a radical network of people opposed to borders (internal and external).

One of the most brutal and dehumanising aspects of immigration systems and border regimes is the imprisonment of thousands of people in detention centres throughout the EU and around the world. In the UK the capacity and use of arbitrary detention has expanded massively over the past few years, with whole families imprisoned in places like Yarl’s Wood.

The experience of being detained (without trial and with no automatic bail review), often after experiences of torture and trauma in the countries they are fleeing from, pushes many over the edge, and is viewed as a further experience of torture at the hands of a country they thought would be a refuge. The policy of detention has led to 12 suicides among detainees in the UK, including this January, the death of Bereket Yohannes, a 26-year-old Eritrean man facing deportation who was found hanged in Harmondsworth detention centre, near Heathrow.

Many detainees at Harmondsworth, neighbouring Colnbrook, and other detention cenres claim to have been abused – assaults during removal attempts, lack of medical care, denial of medication, access to independent doctors, and obstruction in trying to handle their legal matters – e.g. interference with post and blocked access to phone. Allegations of a Uganda woman being reduced to a state of mental collapse during seven months in Yarl’s Wood detention centre has triggered an enquiry by the HM Prisons Inspectors team into healthcare provision of detainees there following the catalogue of suicides and alleged mistreatment in detention centres.

Conditions in detention are not changing, and the government has made it clear that they intend, in coming years, to detain increasing numbers of people. In several countries, campaigns, actions and demonstrations have succeeded in shutting down individual detention centres and provoking public and political discussion on the use of detention. It is therefore vital to have a sustained campaign against detention centres, the private profit making companies that run them and the Home Office from whom their contracts are issued; to support those inside, to draw attention to their existence, and to call for every detention centre to be shut down.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
COACHES are being organised and other transport from around the country. Please contact London No Borders at:  noborderslondon@riseup.net or call 07944 135 617

clandestino

* Download this article in pdf format
* Email this article to someone;
* Submit an addition or make a quick comment on this article

Additions
Coach from Birmingham

23.03.2006 14:34
A 50-seat coach leaving from Birmingham has just been booked by Birmingham NoBorders.

If you would like to travel down to Harmondsworth with us, please email Birmingham NoBorders:  noborders-brum@riseup.net

Birmingham NoBorders
mail e-mail:  noborders-brum@riseup.net

ext