Motion For Justice at Yarls Wooden – On Saturday seventh November 2015 Motion for Justice organised a big protest with different teams to indicate solidarity with the ladies locked up inside Yarl’s Wooden immigration detention centre and to demand that every one such detention prisons be shut down.
MFJ Meet To March to Yarl’s Wooden – Twinwoods Enterprise Park
Yarl’s Wooden was constructed on a former wartime airfield in distant countryside 5 or 6 miles from the centre of Bedford, maybe chosen partially for its remoteness, which makes it troublesome for guests or protesters to get there.
However Motion for Justice – MfJ – and others had organised coaches from across the nation, together with eight from London in addition to one from Bedford Station to carry individuals with others arriving by automotive, taxi or bicycle. The highway resulting in the jail is non-public, however individuals had been capable of meet on a public highway round a mile away exterior the principle entrance to the enterprise park there.
Whereas we had been ready for everybody to reach there was vigorous rally with quite a lot of dancing, singing and chanting, maintaining everybody’s spirits excessive, and maintaining us heat as a cold wind with occasional spots of rain swept throughout the open website on high of a excessive plateau.
Amongst these on the protest had been many immigrants who had themselves been detained at this or different detention centres across the nation whereas ready for a call to be taken on their asylum claims. Generally this takes a number of years and people who are taken to prisons similar to these are held indefinitely, by no means understanding if or when they are going to be launched or taken underneath guard to be forcibly deported.
Many inside have fled their nations after violent assaults together with sexual assault and rape and deserve humane therapy not imprisonment. Few if any pose any actual risk and may very well be housed exterior, usually with pals or kin on this nation. In the event that they had been allowed to work many would make a optimistic contribution. They’d even be rather more capable of contact their solicitors and gather data to help their asylum circumstances than from contained in the detention centres the place entry is restricted.
As an alternative the Dwelling Workplace locks them away and generally appears to have forgotten them and misplaced the important thing. One lady was detained for a few days lower than three years earlier than being launched – after which she returned with the MfJ and spoke at protests which give these nonetheless inside some hope and remind them that they haven’t totally been forgotten.
Extra at MFJ Meet Exterior Yarl’s Wooden.
MfJ ‘Set Her Free’ protest at Yarl’s Wooden
In addition to MfJ, Sisters Uncut, Lesbians & Gays help the Migrants, All Africans Girls’s Teams, Glasgow Unity and others had come to affix within the protest. Ultimately with round a thousand individuals gathered it was time to march, although just a few coaches had not but arrived.
We set off on the lengthy stroll to the detention centre, with banners and placards, a brief distance alongside the highway after which down the general public footpath which runs via a few fields and throughout one other observe, and right into a subject on the north facet of the jail, a few mile from the place the campaigners had gathered.
Right here there was a reasonably steep rise just a few toes up a hill from the 20 foot excessive fence across the detention centre and from the highest of this we might see the higher flooring home windows, a few of which had ladies at them, although solely via the dense thick wire grid of the higher half of the fence.
The home windows wouldn’t have bars, however solely open just a few inches, however this was sufficient for the ladies inside to place their arms via and maintain towels and clothes to greet the protesters. Some managed to carry out messages: one learn ‘We got here to hunt Refuge. To not be locked up’ and one other ‘We’re from torture. We Want Freedom’.
The decrease 10 toes of the fence is made from stout steel panels, and beating or kicking on these makes a really loud noise. Later some protesters introduced up rope ladders so they may maintain placards and banners on the extra open high of the fence in order that they may very well be seen by the ladies inside.
The prisoners are allowed to have telephones which they should contact their solicitors and advisers over their circumstances and a few had been in a position to make use of these to speak with the protesters and to have their voices relayed over the PA system the protesters had introduced.
There was a heavy rain bathe in the course of the protest, and the bottom which was already muddy and with massive puddles grew to become very treacherous and getting up from the concrete and slender flat space on the backside of the fence grew to become troublesome. However quickly the solar was again out once more.
Most of those that spoke on the occasion had been former detainees, a few of whom had pals who had been nonetheless contained in the immigration jail.
The protest was nonetheless persevering with once I needed to depart and the low winter solar was starting to make images harder. It appeared a protracted and moderately lonely journed as I made my means again to the highway, boots heavy with mud. However I used to be free to go, whereas ladies who had come to this nation in search of asylum from hazard and violence in their very own nations had been nonetheless locked up by a hostile and unfeeling authorities.
Extra at MfJ ‘Set Her Free’ protest at Yarl’s Wooden.
Tags: 20 foot fence, All Africans Girls’s Teams, asylum seekers, banners, Bedford, Bedfordshire, detainees, detention jail, finish detention, Glasgow Unity, Dwelling Workplace, hostile atmosphere, hostile authorities, immigration detention, immigration detention centre, indefinite detention, Lesbians & Gays Assist The Migrants, march, MfJ, Motion for Justice, mud, no human is illegitimate, peter Marshall, placards, protest, rain, Set Her Free, Shut Down Yarls Wooden, Shut them Down, Sisters Uncut, speeches, Twinwoods, Yarl’s Wooden
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