Here's a more heart-warming picture for you

I would certainly agree with MR if it wasn't for the danger to the people detained inside! I have been present to one of such fires...though lukily for me I was outisde. To be detained inside a buring building is very dangerous and it is a like miracle if nobody dies or gets seriously hurt. It seems to me a desperate move when inmates set fire to the mattrasses. There must be better ways to get rid of these fucking prisons for immigrants. Maybe bulldoze them from the outside?

Yes it's a desperate act by very desperate people and a by-product of this is 50 people in hospital for smoke inhalation. Until we ride the bulldozer through this vile places, I guess they have to do what they can. I'm certainly not just glorifiying the act for the sake of extremity. However, mass escapes and camps burnt out is still something to feel good about as long as we continue to act in solidarity with those locked down.

For several months, prisoners, groups, families and elected representatives had been alerting the authorities to the scandalous situation in the detention camps. An accumulation of abuses of all types, tear gas, beatings, use of TASER arms. The anger, revolt and desperation led to the extreme protests : auto-mutilations, overdoses of tranquilizers, hunger striles.

The destruction of the camp in Vincennes symbol of the industrialisation of arrest, detenion and expulsion creates a precedent which is important to take into account.

The prisoners were gassed, then trapped by fire were moved to a gym. Some were urgently hospitalised for problems including breathing. The others were held in the yard surrounded by police who kept them during hours with hands on their heads, in the cold, fear, anxiety and state of shock..

They were not moved (and dispersed) till late in the night to various detention centres in Nimes, Lilles, Palaiseau, Rouen.

 http://9emecollectif.net/
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wee comment :

This isn't an Airey Neave MI9 escape from the impregnable castle of Colditz boardgame. They aren't whistling colonel bogey and there is no bad boy Steve Mc Queen trying to screeching through that barbed wire on a motorbike to be brought back to the coal house and given his baseball and glove to play with himself another ten days alone. The humans in these centres are not subject to conventions of prisoners of war nor even afforded political prisoner status. Their home states and societies do not hold European prisoners as ransom or guarantee of good treatment according to the oldest rules of conflict engagement. Nobody threw themselves through a window in Colditz castle in desperation. Nobody in our prisoner movies and culture cut their ears, scarred their faces, sewed up their lips, moved to insanity pushed by inhumane and constant torture of psychological and physical type to near mystical disregard for personal safety.

Those humans who escaped have not been the first nor will the last.
Those humans who burnt their mattresses and brought all the camp and its inmates together with guards close to burning - will not be the last.

re : bulldozer : The weakest point of this building was the corner of the pre-fab block. It needed a haulage truck or even better a vehicle with the traction of a fire brigade engine.

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"you shall have a tin opener at all times".

After the resistance from the detainees last week, outside supporters are going this Saturday to the Detention Centre:

Campsfield House IRC
Langford Lane
Kidlington
Oxfordshire
OX5 1RE

Not sure of time: Mail
 info@closecampsfield.org.uk
for details.

MAP of how to get there:
 http://tinyurl.com/68auas
 http://preview.tinyurl.com/68auas