Women in Yarl's Wood Removal Centre began a protest on Thursday night, following a threat by SERCO (the company which in April this year won a £87 million contract to run Yarl's Wood) to
introduce new measures. These include:

· Locking women up their rooms from 7pm - 7am

· Confiscating mobile phones which women
rely on for contact with the outside world

· Cutting Sky News TV where women get
information about the countries they fled

Women took to the corridors shouting "We won't be locked up." "Hands off our mobiles." and made banners out of bed sheets saying "We want freedom." "We demand Human Rights." "We want justice." Others have gone on hunger strike - including all the women on DOVE wing.

Across the four different units almost 200 women took part in separate protests in their courtyards. Victoria Jones, SERCO director, dismissed the threats of changes in the regime as rumours but refused to speak to women.

SERCO is a security firm with fingers in many pies including defence, PFI hospitals, electronic
tagging . . . It boasts that winning the Yarl's Wood contract is a "testament to the high quality of service we already provide at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre" - yet a series of hunger strikes and other protests by detainees against appalling health care, assaults and intimidation by guards, expose the lie in this.

Ruth Williams who has been detained for nearly six months said:

"We are women like other women, who have suffered and been forced out of our countries by killing and other violence. We have committed no crime but are locked up without rights and terrorized by threats to send us back to the horrors we fled. We want our human rights."

Cristel Amiss from the Black Women's Rape Action Project (BWRAP) said

"Vulnerable women, many of them traumatised survivors of rape and other torture are being
abused in the most appalling way and have courageously decided to protest knowing from
experience that they may face retribution. We can't sit by. We call on all those in prominent
positions, especially those concerned to defend women's rights, to take action in support of
women imprisoned in Yarl's Wood."

Ms Williams and other women are available for
interview - please call BWRAP on 079 8065 9831