Is self-harm in detention centres a 'bargaining tool'?

Oxford vigil following death at Campsfield detention centre

Source: Corporate Watch

Two people have died from suspected heart attacks and a third killed himself in UK immigration prisons in the last month. Meanwhile, a leaked memo by Serco, which runs one the prisons, reveals that the outsourcing and security giant had dismissed similar incidents in Australia, where it runs all immigration detention facilities, accusing detainees of “creating a self-harm culture” and using it as a “bargaining tool.”

Early in the morning of 2nd July, a 47-year-old Pakistani national locked up in Colnbrook immigration prison, near Heathrow airport, collapsed in his cell with “very bad chest pain.” According to his cellmate, Muhammad Shukat had been groaning in agony for hours but his repeated pleas for help were not taken seriously by the detention centre staff, who did not call the ambulance until it was too late (see here). A postmortem found the “provisional cause” of the death to be coronary heart disease. The Home Office would not give any more details.

Less than a month later, on 31st July, another man, aged 35, was found dead in his cell, also in Colnbrook. Again, the Home Office would not reveal any details, not even his name and nationality, though unconfirmed reports by detainees said he was American.

A postmortem found the cause of death to be “a ruptured aorta” and the death was treated as “unexplained.” Aortic ruptures can be caused by a number of things, including trauma, where the aorta (the largest artery in the body, which branches directly from the heart and supplies blood to the rest of the body) is ruptured as a result of severe distress.

Two days later, on 2nd August, a 35-year-old man locked up in Campsfield House immigration prison, in Oxfordshire, was found dead in the toilets. Conflicting reports suggest he either hanged himself or cut himself with a razor blade. According to fellow detainees, the unnamed Moldovian migrant was hours away from being deported and had been moved to the short-term holding facility within the centre, causing him to become “very anxious.”  

Investigations, investigations

As usual, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) declined to comment on the specific circumstances of each case. It simply said: "the police and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman always investigated deaths in immigration detention centres and it would be inappropriate to comment until these were complete.”

Similarly, Serco said: “While these enquiries are under way, it would not be appropriate for Serco to comment on specific cases.” However, campaigners say experience shows that these investigations are “unlikely to go anywhere” and that the whole detention system, which “drives people to such desperate measures,” should be reviewed.

A spokesperson from the Campaign to Close Campsfield, which held a vigil in Oxford following the death in Campsfield, said:

Read more »

In UK, protest against deaths in detention centres

Source: Indymedia London

Anti-detention campaigners 5 August held a small, but noisy, protest at Colnbrook immigration prison, near Heathrow airport, where two migrant prisoners apparently killed themselves in less than a month. With a megaphone, whistles, a vuvuzela and pots and pans, they made themselves heard to the migrants locked up in Colnbrook, as well as in the adjacent Harmondsworth. Detainees shouted back 'freedom, freedom' and other angry, desperate slogans.

On 31st July, a 25-year-old man in Colnbrook reportedly killed himself. No details or hard facts are known yet. The Home Office is claiming that he died of 'natural causes' but fellow detainees told campaigners he committed suicide after becoming “very distressed.”

Less than a month before, on 2nd July, another Colnbrook detainee, Muhammed Shuket from Pakistan, died on the way to hospital after he apparently tried to hang himself. Again, the Home Office refused to reveal any details and promised “an inquest in due course.”

Earlier this week, on 2nd August, a 35-year-old man locked up in Campsfield immigration prison in Oxfordshire was also found dead. According to other detainees, the Moldovian national was about to be deported and hanged himself in the toilet.

The three deaths bring the number of people who have died in UK immigration prisons over the last few years to 16. These crimes should stop and the only way to do that is to close down all immigration prisons and stop forcibly deporting people who have come here to seek refuge and safety.

Related articles

• Three deaths in immigration detention (irr.org.uk)
• Detention centre deaths spark police investigations (guardian.co.uk)
• In UK, "excessively long" detention at one 'removal centre' (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Eddy Cosmas freed from detention after one last (?) humiliation

Eddy on his release from Harmondsworth

By Paul Canning

Following a hearing today before an British immigration judge, Tanzanian gay asylum seeker Edson 'Eddy' Cosmas was released from Harmondsworth Removal Centre at 5pm and was also removed from the 'detained fast track' process.

Eddy has won a new hearing for his case after 5 September.

The judge's decision has not been written but a witness at the court hearing said that it was on the basis that previous immigration judiciary decisions could be regarded as possibly 'unsafe' and that more time was needed for both a psychiatrist's report as well as for an expert witness of the situation of LGBT in Tanzania to be found.

The witness said that a Home Office lawyer had immediately agreed that there could be 'an error in law' in how Eddy's case had been handled. In removing Eddy from 'detained fast track', the judge said that it would not be "fair" for him to remain in it.

The witness, a long term supporter of Eddy, said that without the support of herself and others "Eddy would have given up". She also noted that Eddy remained intensely concerned for other gay asylum seekers whom he had met in the detention centre.

In a statement released tonight, Donna Stern, BAMN [By Any Means Necessary, aka the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary] National Coordinator, claimed that:

"In part Eddy won this because he was organizing so much inside the detention facility that the authorities wanted him out of there!"

He has been the subject of a major campaign, initially by the group Movement for Justice, part of BAMN, of which he is a member, and later joined by the international LGBT campaigning group allout.org who secured over 7000 petitions to the British Home Secretary Theresa May.

We have followed the case closely and analysed the UK Border Agency's decisions as well as those of immigration judges in a series of posts, see:

• How one gay Tanzanian's asylum rejection shows the UK system's unfairness 
• Gay Tanzanian activist meets British asylum system: Is losing 
• No problems for LGBT in Tanzania according to UK immigration judge

Eddy reports that before today's hearing he was put through a (hopefully) final humiliation in detention

On Saturday (2 July) morning a guard came to his room and told him he was going to be transferred, but he wasn't told where to.

Last night guards came and told Eddy he had a legal meeting. This was not true, but not knowing Eddy went with them. Then in a corridor he was told he had to be transferred. He protested that he had a hearing the next day. They brought in about 10 guards (Eddy says managers were there too), to force him into a van which drove over to Colnbrook removal centre, which is literally next door, both being adjacent to Heathrow Airport. There he was kept without access to a phone, in a waiting area which had no bed, until 5am this morning.

He says he got no sleep, had no access to call anyone, nor to any of his papers or possessions. At 5am he was taken back over to Harmondsworth and then to today's hearing before a judge, who was informed of what had happened and that this would effect Eddy's ability to testify on his own behalf.

In UK, "excessively long" detention at one 'removal centre'

Image by StephenMitchell via Flickr

Source: The Guardian

By Alan Travis

Ministers have been warned by an official immigration watchdog of the "excessively long" periods, including cases of more than three years, that detainees are being held at Europe's largest removal centre.

A "snapshot" taken last December showed that 35 detainees at Harmondsworth removal centre, near Heathrow airport, had been waiting more than 12 months to be deported, including seven who had been waiting more than two years.

Harmondsworth's officially appointed independent monitoring board (IMB) said one man had been held in detention for three years and seven months at a cost of £110 a night. The bill is already more than £144,000.

"This is not only emotionally costly to detainees but expensive for the taxpayer," says the IMB's annual report to the immigration minister, Damian Green. It adds that the latest national figures show that as of 3 March, 170 detainees around the country have been held more than two years waiting for their removal.

The watchdog raises the problem of "hidden children" being held in immigration detention centres despite the coalition's pledge to end the practice. The IMB's annual report reveals that six children who were held last year at Harmondsworth were removed by social services when it had been established they were children.

The watchdog said they were part of the problem of young people being detained by the UK Border Agency as adults despite claiming to be under 18.

"Arrangements should be made for the rapid assessment of those claiming to be under 18," the IMB reported.

Harmondsworth, which is run by a US private security company, GEO, became the largest immigration detention centre in Europe last year when four prison-style wings were opened, trebling the total capacity to 615 people.

Read more »

Is Harmondsworth Britain's equivalent of Guantanamo bay?

Source: Tribune

By Peter Tatchell

Harmondsworth immigration and asylum detention centre in west London is Britain 's equivalent of Guantanamo Bay . Well, not exactly but almost. Guantanamo detainees can spend three or more years in detention without trial, whereas most inmates at Harmondsworth are detained without trial only six to 12 months. Abuse by custody officers and deprivation of basic rights is, however, common in both facilities.

In theory, there are mechanisms for the redress of abuses at Harmondsworth. In practice, the centre is often above the law. Moreover, government cuts in legal aid mean that many detainees have no legal representation to challenge victimisation. Given the centre's inhumane conditions and inmate's lack of redress, last weeks' riot at Harmondsworth was entirely predictable.

Most detainees are refugees who have fled violent persecution in their home countries. Although they have committed no crime, our Labour government locks them up like common criminals. Many are not even so-called “failed” asylum seekers. They are awaiting consideration of their asylum applications. Yet these innocents are subjected to a high security prison-style regime and to alleged criminal abuse by officers.

I know of asylum claimants who have been detained for 18 months – the equivalent of a three year jail sentence. For what? Many are victims of tyrannical regimes. They seek refuge in Britain and are incarcerated without charge, with fewer legal rights than people arrested for murder and rape.

MPs rightly defeated the government's bid to detain terror suspects for 90 days. When will these defenders of freedom vote to overturn the even longer detention inflicted on innocent asylum seekers?

The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, issued a damning report last week, describing conditions in Harmondsworth as the worst she has ever seen in an immigration and asylum detention centre. She revealed that 60% of inmates felt unsafe and 44% said they had been victimised by officers. There have been four suicides since 2000. Many officers are, she said, "aggressive", "intimidating", "rude" and "unhelpful."

Based on my personal contacts inside Harmondsworth, I can confirm what Anne Owers has documented – and more. I have received persistent reports of serious human rights abuses. There are, of course, some outstandingly good officers who go out of their way to help detainees. They deserve honours. But many other officers should be prosecuted and jailed.

The allegations of abuse I have heard involve physical violence, sexual assault, racism, homophobic harassment and corruption, including alleged collusion with drug de ali ng and extortion within the detention centre. There are no proper checks and balances to stop these violations. Detainees are virtually powerless.

Criminal gangs reportedly operate inside Harmondsworth, with impunity. These are mostly convicted criminals awaiting deportation. They are free to prey on vulnerable, law-abiding asylum applicants who have committed no crime. A small, slight teenage refugee alleges that these gangs openly abused and threatened him, while officers stood around watching and laughing.

It is claimed that some of these gangs are regularly allowed access to staff offices to use the phones and computers. Office access is normally unavailable to other inmates. One can only speculate as to who authorises their use of these facilities and why.

Denial of proper medical care is routine. A torture and rape victim I helped was held at Harmondsworth for six months, without receiving any treatment or counselling. Detainees suffering severe illness and trauma are often fobbed off with aspirin.

Gay inmates, or those merely suspected (sometimes erroneously) of being gay, face a barrage of insults, threats and, occasionally, actual queer-bashing violence. Officers rarely intervene to discipline the perpetrators or protect the victims.

Known or suspected gay men are reportedly sometimes subjected to finger anal examinations, with no explanation and no apparent medical or security justification. One detainee described this examination as deeply traumatic, as it replicated the rape he suffered in Uganda . He says officers laughed and insulted him as they aggressively fingered inside his anus. When he later asked different officers if he could make a complaint, he was advised this could damage his appeal against the refusal of asylum.

This detainee alleges that Harmondsworth officers abused him as a “nigger” and a “batty boy”; denied him medical treatment for the effects of rape and torture in Uganda; forced him through the asylum system without legal representation; confiscated his asylum papers and asthma inhaler; despite his breathing difficulties forced him to share a room with a chain smoker; and attempted to deport him without serving him with a removal order.

Recently, a HIV-positive refugee was put in a room with a person suffering from TB – a potential death sentence for an immune-compromised person with HIV.

There are also allegations of the use of humiliating strip searches and punitive solitary confinement; sometimes for petty, unjustified reasons. Segregation and isolation were used in Harmondsworth as a punishment 129 times in the first six months of 2006 (in the same period, the right to free association was withdrawn from inmates 440 times). It is said that on some occasions solitary has been meted out for no other reason than a detainee's loud protest against abuses. Some officers would, it seems, prefer to silence critics rather than deal with their complaints.

What is needed is a comprehensive independent investigation of Harmondsworth and other asylum detention centres. But it won't happen. Look at the way the government has failed to remedy prison abuses. If there was an investigation, it would probably be a whitewash. From my experience of the bias of the Prison and Probation Ombudsman, these oversight bodies are not objective. They are part of the establishment. Their first loyalty is to the institution they are supposed to monitor, not to the abused victims.

If the allegations about Harmondsworth are true, they are so serious that criminal charges should follow against the officers concerned and against the management company, Kalyx Ltd. This private firm is allowed to profit from the misery and suffering of refugees. Has our Labour government lost its heart, as well as its head?

The allegations against Harmondsworth concern imprisonable criminal offences. Successive Home Office ministers have been alerted to these allegations, but have ignored them.

If the allegations can be proven, these ministers should be not only be sacked; they should also face criminal charges of negligence. The Home Office asylum minister, Liam Byrne, has ultimate responsibility for what happens in detention centres. Currently, he appears to be failing in his duty of care by allowing human rights abuses to continue unchecked.

Even before Anne Owers's report, the government had been informed about abuses at Harmondsworth by asylum support groups and campaigners like myself. Nothing was done by the Home Office, as far as I am aware.

Harmondsworth and the other asylum detention centres are a disgrace to a supposedly democratic, civilised nation. They are unfit for purpose, and should be closed down.