Overview and update on hunger strikes in asylum detention

Throughout April detainees in detention centres throughout the UK have been on hungerstrike in protest at their continued imprisonment. Linda (currently detained at Colnbrook) says “We wanted the hunger at Colnbrook to go ahead until we are dead because to deport us to our countries is like killing us. So we decided to die”. Other detainees protested by packing their bags and demanding to be released at reception. At Haslar Removal Centre, two dozen detainees refused to go back inside until riot officers were brought in to disperse the protest and remove the men back to their dormitories. Detainees have been on hungerstrike before but hungerstrikes have been centred on individual needs. This time the struggle is collective, against the use of detention as immigration control.

The protests began when detainees were not allowed to go outside during a demonstration at Colnbrook and Harmondsworth detention centres. John Turkson, also in detention at Colnbrook said “Even though we were not allowed to go out for fresh air, we could at least hear your voices, we could feel your presence around”. As detainees were kept away from the windows, unrest inside the detention centre grew. 120 detainees began refusing food, quickly followed in solidarity by detainees at Haslar near Portsmouth and finally Long Lartin in Worchester. Initially the Home Office denied the scale of unrest saying that incidents were isolated and well contained but as unrest spread from centre to centre, the administration became increasingly more paranoid. Emma Ginn from the National coaltion of anti-deportation campaigns says, “For the first time, all visitors were asked if they were press. Almost all visits were refused. Two of the protesters were in isolation, including the Pastor who had spoken via mobile phone to the demonstration. A visitor, concerned about the use of isolation as punishment, managed to enter the detention centre but halfway through the visit was made to leave on suspicion of being press. The situation inside Colnbrook is depressing. One guy says he just wants to die there. He won't let us try to get him admitted into hospital.”

As interest grew in the mainstream media, the response of the guards was swift and brutal. The protester who had spoken to the Guardian was stripped naked and beaten unconscious. He woke up in the van being moved to another detention centre. He now has removal directions from the Home Office.

Despite the official denial that the protests at Colnbrook and Haslar were connected, detainees communicated by phone. Following a further mass refusal of food the next day, the Home Office finally started talking to the inmates. Behind the scenes, protesting detainees were shifted to other removal centres to try and contain the uprising. On Friday 21st April, a delegation of detainees, met again with a home office official who promised to consider all their cases, particularly those of people who have been detained for a long time. The Home Office continued to see the problem as that of individuals rather than the collective issue of the use of detention. On the promise of the Home Office to meet again to consider the wider issue of the use of detention, people ended their hunger strike. By Sunday 23rd April the official statement is that the hunger strike is over.

This uprising of detainees was sparked by the demonstration outside Colnbrook detention centre as part of international protest against the use of detention. Solidarity actions have taken place in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and other cities. We need to continue to expose what is really happening in the immigration system. While the Guardian focused on Colnbrook, detainees at Long Lartin in Worchester believe they are the forgotten protest. A detainee said, “We have been locked up for as long as five years. We know that we face torture in our country of origin, but some of us have come to the decision that a quick death is preferable to the slow death we are enduring here. We have watched some of our members go mad under the strain; we have watched our families suffer and some of us believe that the only thing that we can do is to go forward into the fire, even though we believe we will be burnt.

We believe that the Home Office prefers to keep us here as a particular form of hostage, for political purposes, and to continue to inflict cruelty upon us, until, they hope, all of us will feel compelled to go. We have tried to tell the media but the phone box closed down so we could no longer phone the presenter of the programme. We know the population at large in this country, knows nothing of what has happened to us. Help us break the silence. We are all on hunger strike and have been so now for a week”. The Long Lartin hunger strikers never made it to the front page. By then, the media had also decided its over.

Within detention centres there have been individual acts of resistance such as the detainee who wired the mains up to the door handle of his cell to stop the guards coming to beat him again. In the past, there have been individual hunger strikes. This uprising is for the first time a collective struggle. Organising a demonstration and showing further solidarity through visiting people in detention, phone calls, emails, now is important. The government has made it clear that they intend to continue to detain increasing numbers of people. The latest news is that the Home Office did not meet the protesters as promised and that the hunger strikes are restarting. We need to sustain the 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.