Content warning: suicide, death. Image by @Carcazan This piece comes from Hannah Swirsky, Campaigns Officer at René Cassin. It was originally published on Jewish News. Immigration detention has again reached national news after a recent Guardian investigation into those detained in the UK found that “more than half of the sample were either suicidal, seriously ill or victims of torture”. According to the [...]
Last week, #Unlocked18 visited Campsfield House IRC near Oxford. Since it opened in 1993, tens of thousands of people have been detained here indefinitely. The centre has also been the focus of many protests and a sustained campaign for its closure, as the graphic and blogs below demonstrate. This will be the final time Unlocking Detention visits Campsfield: a few weeks [...]
Content warning: torture, trafficking. Image by @Carcazan In the second of a two-part series from Detention Action, volunteer Mary-Ann talks about what she’s learnt from supporting people detained in Harmondsworth and Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs). Volunteering for Detention Action has very much opened my eyes to the UK’s hostile immigration environment and its immigration detention centres. I came to Detention Action [...]
Image by @Carcazan In the first of a two-part series from Detention Action, volunteer Anthony talks about his time visiting people detained in Harmondsworth and Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs), near Heathrow airport. I remember feeling particularly nervous about making my first call. I had no idea what to expect from the person on the other end of the line. I was [...]
Maddy Crowther is Co-Executive Director of Waging Peace and Article 1, which support Sudanese asylum-seekers and refugees to build meaningful lives in the UK. They run a Sudanese Visitors’ Group supporting their clients held in detention. Maddy has co-written this blog with Mohammed (not his real name), who has been detained on several occasions. Maddy is on Twitter at @CrowtherMaddy, and tweets [...]
Image by @Carcazan This week, Unlocking Detention has been ‘visiting’ Campsfield House detention centre in Oxfordshire. The Duncan Lewis Public Law, Civil Litigation and Immigration teams put us in touch with Siarhei, who is currently detained in Campsfield. In addition to the normal barriers to communication faced by everyone in detention, Siarhei speaks no English, so Anastasija Vasiljeva in the Civil Litigation team [...]
From the 12th - 18th November, #Unlocked18 visited Yarl's Wood IRC in Bedford. It was a packed week, with new content every day alongside new graphics and illustrations. Also this week, Sanctuary in Parliament took place, JRS and the Detention Forum presented Dame Caroline Spelman MP with a Detention Forum Champion Award, the #TheseWallsMustFall campaign launched in Bristol, and we released another segment of [...]
Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre opened 25 years ago this month. In this second part of a two-part blog, a campaigner from Campaign to Close Campsfield looks back at the local history of resistance. On 25 November 1993, the first people were brought from Harmondsworth (near Heathrow airport) to Camspfield detention centre. Twelve demonstrators met the two minibuses at Campsfield main gates [...]
Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre opened 25 years ago this month. In this first part of a two-part blog, a campaigner from Campaign to Close Campsfield looks back at its history and tries to make sense of the government’s announcement that Campsfield is to close. On Friday 9 November, the government announced that Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre is to close in [...]
This contribution is a collaboration between women detained in Yarl’s Wood detention centre and the Yarl’s Wood Befrienders. These words and images were produced at one of the weekly 'drop in' sessions held by Yarl's Wood Befrienders. Drop in is a space where women detained at Yarl's Wood can come and hang out with befrienders. We have tea, coffee and biscuits [...]