Shut Down Yarl’s Wooden 10 – Yarl’s Wooden, close to Bedford
Shut Down Yarl’s Wooden: On Saturday third December nearly 2000 protesters got here to the remoted web site on a former RAF base round 5 miles north of Bedford to participate within the tenth protest there organised by Motion for Justice calling for the closure of Yarl’s Wooden and all immigration detention centres.
I’d taken three trains to get to Bedford Station the place MfJ had organized a coach for the journey on to the economic property on which the detention centre is hidden away. After we arrived the nation again street was lined with coaches which had introduced others from London and cities across the nation.
However after a brief rally there whereas we waited for others to reach there was nonetheless over a mile alongside a public footpath to achieve the sector the place the protest befell. This slopes up steeply a number of ft from the 20 foot excessive metallic jail fence, enabling protesters on the prime of the slope th see the 2 higher flooring of the detention centre – and for ladies on the home windows on this to see them. Thankfully it had been comparatively dry within the weeks earlier than the occasion and for as soon as the bottom was not muddy and slippery.
Many different teams had come to affix MfJ within the protest, together with giant numbers of scholars. MfJ had come primarily with migrants, lots of whom had frolicked on this and different immigration prisons, the place this nation locks up asylum seekers whereas slowly and inefficiently the House Workplace offers with their circumstances.
Yarl’s Wooden was primarily used for ladies, although there have been a number of households additionally locked up there. Many had fled violence, typically sexual violence of their residence international locations and have been then locked away right here after arrival.
And so they don’t have any technique to know after they may be launched and are at all times underneath risk of being forcibly deported at brief discover. One lady had then been held for over two years and was solely launched a day underneath three years. Most serve lengthy indeterminate sentences on this and different immigration jails. They really feel they’re locked away, forgotten – and protests like this remind them that there are these outdoors who know and care about them.
The isolation means it’s troublesome for them to pursue their circumstances and to get the usually ridiculous quantities of proof the House Workplace calls for. However as they can not depart the prisons they’re allowed to have cell phones and these enabled a number of of the ladies inside to speak with the protesters – and for his or her voices to be heard over the general public handle system introduced by the campaigners.
All the ladies “talking from inside thanked the protesters for coming and exhibiting that they had not been forgotten. They instructed of assaults and abuse by Serco safety guards who in the present day had locked many in different wings to cease them seeing the protest and threatened those that greeted the protesters and revealed there have been circumstances of TB within the jail.”
Most of the protesters “who spoke on the protest had beforehand been held inside this and different immigration prisons, and inspired these inside to maintain preventing for justice.”
“In addition to standing on the hill in order that these on the higher flooring allowed close to the home windows may see them and the banners and placards they held, others kicked and banged on the fence to make a noise that may very well be heard all around the jail – and certainly from the primary raid half a mile away as I walked again to board my coach.“
Immigration detention continues for use on an industrial scale within the UK, with 19,335 folks getting into detention within the yr ending September 2024. Numbers decreased throughout Covid however have gone as much as earlier ranges since. The UK is the one European nation with no time restrict on how lengthy refugees might be held, and numbers held will probably be elevated by the Unlawful Immigration Act handed by the Tories in 2023 and the amendments made by Labour quickly after they got here to energy in 2024.
The entire system of UK immigration is immoral and costly, the results of successive governments shifting additional to the correct and appeasing the racist parts within the UK press. It has a corrosive impact on the psychological well being of these detained, partly as a result of they’re denied satisfactory well being care.
Extra in regards to the protest on December third 2016 at Shut Down Yarl’s Wooden 10.
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Tags: 20 ft fence, asylum seekers, banging the fence, banners, deportation, detention centres, households, flares, forcible deportation, House Workplace, immigration detention, immigration jail, insufficient well being care, indefinie detention, isolation, kicking the fence, psychological torture, MfJ, Motion for Justice, peter Marshall, placards, protest, rape, Serco, sexual abuse, sexual violence, Shut Down Yarls Wooden, smoke flares, survivors, TB, Yarl’s Wooden
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