|
Message of Support for the
Protest Monday 2 June 2003 Campaign
to Stop Arbitrary Detentions at Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre Against
Yarl's Wood Removal Centre Re-opening
We
are sorry we can’t be with you at the protest today against Group4
recruiting staff for Yarl’s Wood.
Yarl’s
Wood must not be reopened, and all other detention centres must be
closed. They are prisons
for people from many countries escaping economic and political
violence, who are not accused
of any crime yet detained without time limit. Many
detainees are Black and other people of colour and many are ill or
disabled by the torture they suffered, including rape and other sexual
violence. Mothers detained
with their children suffer most, as they struggle to care for their
children locked in cold, dirty, decaying buildings, with poor
food and little or no health care, with little or no play or educational
facilities, isolated from the rest of the community. In these
conditions, staff are encouraged to be brutal or ignore the needs of
even the most vulnerable people. Those of us who are people of colour
particularly protest at Group4 and the Home Office targeting other Black
people as recruits to this brutality. Group 4 has a terrible history of
racism, brutality and lies. In 1998, a trial following a protest at
Campsfield Detention Centre near Oxford collapsed because of Group 4
staff and management’s lies. We
must lead the way in refusing racism which forces us into low-paid,
unskilled jobs, pitting those of us who just arrived against those of us
settled here, and carving us up against each other in many other ways. At
the Community Picket & Open Mic against war in Parliament Square, we
have been speaking out against detention, and about the enormous
contribution refugee and immigrant people make, including bringing
skills, information and the truth about what is happening in the rest of
the world. We also
publicise the growing movement of asylum seekers and other people
without papers in the UK, Europe and the US.
This is spearheaded most publicly by those in detention taking
direct action, such as the recent hunger strikers at Haslar prison, and
recently by Abas Imini from Iran. But
we also count women’s struggle for herself and her family for the
right to be here and against daily racism and brutality.
This fight is often waged more privately and with less support,
but no less courageously. We
oppose wars and arms dealing which fuels conflict forcing millions to
flee their homes, and challenge the viciousness of government
legislation and the voluntary sector which colludes and implements it,
as well as government and media witch-hunts which whip up hostility
against asylum seekers, immigrants and other people of colour. We demand freedom of movement for all, resources and
protection from violence, and an end to all detentions. Power
to the sisters and brothers for freedom of movement – and may all
walls fall soon. Black
Women for Wages for Housework Payday
Women Against Rape No School Apartheid Global Women's Strike |