CALL FOR A DEMONSTRATION AND A NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION IN UK AGAINST THE
NEW GATWICK DETENTION CENTRE!!!

Called by NO BORDERS.

SATURDAY 21st of APRIL 2007. There’s going to be a demonstration in
CRAWLEY against the new detention centre. Come to the demonstration or
organise solidarity demos/actions in your own cities and towns.
Demonstration starts at noon in Jubilee Field, Three Bridges. Nearest
train station Three Bridges.

For more information on the campaign against the Gatwick detention
centre check www.indymedia.org.uk regularly or email this address:
stopdetentionat  gatwick@riseup.net


Contact your local noborder group for details of transport to the
demo:

Brighton  brightonnoborders@riseup.net, 07880 523231
Bradford  j.a.fox@bradford.ac.uk
London  noborderslondon@riseup.net, 07983 274 568
Leeds  leedsnoborders@lists.riseup.net, 07748010691


Over 2,600 people, mostly asylum seekers, are locked up in detention
camps and prisons in Britain, without trial and without time limit and
with no automatic right to bail.

The government is building new detention centres with a target
capacity of 4000.

One of these is about to be built inside the Gatwick airport area.
They are starting building works in the coming months and planning to
finish it by 2008.

Detention centres are a crucial part of the European Union’s migration
policy:
• They are a vital link in the process of controlling and managing
migration movements- according to media propaganda this is essential
due to the ‘masses’ of migrants ‘swamping’ the country.
• They are used as a way to filter migrants according to the needs of
the European labour market.
• They are a tool of social control: promoting fear by presenting
migrants as people who need to be locked up.
P.T.O


Detention centres are institutions which resemble a closed prison
regarding its conditions, and where migrants can be locked up due to
their nationality and status. Detention can be enforced for many
reasons, but in general it is not based on any crime but e.g. in order
to unravel one's identity or entering route, or as a way of controlling
someone who is due to be deported. Because the detention will mostly be
applied on these asylum seekers, it is also in contradiction with the
clause 31 of the Geneva refugee agreement, the clause that forbids the
punishment of refugees solely on the basis of illegal entering to the
country.

Current immigration detention facilities such as Campsfield in
Oxfordshire, Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire and Harmondsworth in London
where fires and riots have broken out, are notorious for their inhumane
regimes. Detainees encounter routine racism and an indefinite period of
detention whilst living in prison like conditions. Unlike prisoners
they do not know when they will ‘get out’ and also face the fear of
being forcibly returned to former countries where they might face
torture and death.

In September Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) and Asylum Aid
published a report They Took Me Away on detention of women, focusing on
violent treatment during deportations, length of detention, and failure
to meet specific needs of women. Children continued to be detained at
Dungavel and Oakington and at Yarl's Wood a 250-plus "family unit" was
due to open around the end of the year.

Seven out of 10 principal immigration detention centres in the UK are
run by private companies for profit under contract to the Home Office
(Interior Ministry).

THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION TO STOP THE NEW GATWICK DETENTION CENTRE
BEING BUILT.

WE DEMAND AN END TO THE PRACTICE THAT IMPRISONS PEOPLE DUE TO THEIR
IMMIGRATION STATUS

We demand that the building of the new detention centre in Gatwick is
cancelled.

NO TO ALL DETENTION CENTRES NO TO ALL PRISONS.