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Yarl’s Wood: hunger strike

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Yarl's Wood, hunger strike, appalling conditions, stop charter flights, Home Office, end deportations, Stanstead 15, ‘The Home Office has been refusing evidence and documents and want to send us back without even looking at our cases.’

Over 40 women in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre near Bedford have been on hunger strike this week protesting against a charter flight due to take traumatised women back to Nigeria.

This is the second such hunger strike this year.

This week women from many different countries including, Bolivia, China, Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Romania, South Africa, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Zambia, have come together to take this action.

A case currently in court of people known as the Stansted 15, who blocked a charter flight from taking off in 28 March 2017, has brought to light the terrible brutality of these pre-booked flights.

People are scooped up, sometimes regardless of the status of their legal case, and forced onto planes to fill seats.

One of the women in the All African Women’s Group, a self-help group of women asylum seekers and refugees, was on the flight that was stopped by the Stansted 15 last March.

She said: “I’ve lived in Britain for almost 30 years and have indefinite leave to remain – yet I was taken from my home to Yarl’s Wood and put on a flight within six days despite my lawyer’s protests to the Home Office – I was so thankful to the young people for stopping this flight, they saved mine and other people’s lives.”

Women in Yarl’s Wood are also protesting the appalling conditions inside.

A dossier by Black Women’s Rape Action Project (BWRAP) and Women Against Rape documented a decade of rape and sexual abuse by guards, much of which was covered up by Serco, the multi-national company which was granted a £70 million contract to run the centre.

Forty year-old Christine Case died there in 2014 due to lack of medical care.

And the Chief Inspector of Prisons condemned Yarl’s Wood as ‘a place of national concern’.

Women inside Yarl’s Wood are demanding:

An end to charter flights,

The closure of detention centres,

The reinstatement of legal aid for immigration cases,

An end to mothers being separated from their children by detention, and

For rape and sexual abuse to be recognised as torture and therefore grounds for asylum.

Fidelia, from Bolivia, spoke to BWRAP, which is co-ordinating support for the hunger strikers, saying that she is severely distressed at being detained.

“I came to the UK for safety as my life was threatened by drug gangs after I spoke out.

“I’ve been in the UK for over 11 years.

“I’m a cancer survivor and I need to see a specialist but all I’ve been given is paracetamol! I’ve been held here for seven months for no reason.”

Another woman said: “We haven’t had the chance to have a proper legal process.

“The Home Office has been refusing evidence and documents and want to send us back without even looking at our cases.

“Being here is mentally disturbing – everyone is damaged, physically and emotionally.”

A demonstration in support of the women held in Yarl’s Wood, and calling for an end to dentention takes place on 1 December. For details click here.

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