Skip to content or view screen version

gunantanamo london

schmook | 05.07.2009 03:17

Harmondsworth Removals Center in West London, has been taken over by GEO, the same company that runs Guantanamo Bay.


Way back in 2006, Harmondswroth Removals Centre near Heathrow Airport, West London, was dubbed "Britain's Answer to Guantanamo Bay" by Peter Tatchell on Harry's Place.

The allusion to Guantanamo Bay was way over the top. Harmonsworth has been run like a 3 star tourist hostel in Cuba, complete with censored Internet access and bugged phones in every room, rather than a torture center or anything close.

However on 29 June Harmonsworth Removals Center became a lot more like Guantanamo Bay. Management of the facility was taken over by the private prison and concentration camp corporation GEO; the evil people who run Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

How this atrocity has been allowed to happen on British soil is a mystery, but neither the staff or the detainees at Harmonsworth are impressed by the style of the American torture company so far:

• GEO's arrival was heralded by the removal of hot/cold water machines in the detainees dining room and the staff office. "By Order". No tea for breakfast! Don't they know this is London? Plus no cold water on what was a very hot day. The six vending machines disappeared like protesters in Iran, along with their free cold water spouts.

• Then some items in the prisoner's shop doubled their price overnight. This is a form of torture by capitalism obviously used by GEO to get round the Geneva Convention.

• Then they claimed their first victim. An Indian law student was brutally beaten during an illegal deportation attempt. They came for him at night and told him he had a flight. He still had an ongoing case, but they refused to listen. So he, as was his right, struggled. He was beaten so badly that the pilot of the plane refused to take him. He came back and spent the night in hospital.

GEO's record is not good. It is not bad. "Bad" is much too light a word.

Dickens County Correctional Center in Texas run by GEO was described last year as "the worst facility I have even seen" in a report by the Idaho Department of Correction's Health Director. And that is not a light honour. Not just bad. "Worst". And worst in a country where you really have to work hard to be worst.

Prediction: protests by detainees, possibly supported by the staff, against GEO management at Harmonsworth can be expected in the near future. One thing that may well spark it all off is the use of dogs against Muslim prisoners in Harmonsworth. This GEO did last Tuesday, and again on Wednesday.

If the Devil had enough cash, GEO would turn the whole planet into a private prison.

schmook
- Homepage: http://www.schmoontherun.blogspot.com

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

armageddon? this be hell

05.07.2009 08:17

thanks for thwe info, but would turn the planet into a prison? The roman empire never died mate, it's atleast two thousand years in the making this prison

ne autonomy


Harmonsworth has always been a torture centre

05.07.2009 13:30

Hundreds of detainees can't be wrong. GEO will make it worst, no doubt, but Harmondsworth was already rife with racist guards, attacks on the dignity of detainees, and also to their lives, without considering the mental torture to be held in a prison - not 3 fucking stars hostel - waiting to be taken by force to a country where you can be tortured, raped and killed.True that applies to ALL of UK ' Immigration Removal Centres' but Harmondswrth holds the record for suicides, suicide attempts, hunger strikes, riots, closed down twice due to fires and rioting from detainees. That the guards will eventually join forces with detainees against GEO is total bollocks.

Chiara (no borders)