Month: May 2016

Two Wednesdays ago they said, ‘Someone is here to take you’.

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Two Wednesdays ago they said, ‘Someone is here to take you’. I asked ‘Who? No one is supposed to be taking me.’ There were two people to take me to a flight. I didn’t know anything about this and I refused to go. The next day my caseworker put through for a temporary release.

One minute they send officers to put me on a plane, the next minute my caseworker is applying for temporary release. None knows whats going on here.

It is really really a lot to bare, being in detention. My partner and my kids are wasting away. My boy, he is two years old, if i don’t speak to him he can’t sleep. He wakes up screaming in the night. I speak to hm all the time, he wakes up in the morning and he wants to speak to me straight away. My daughter is bigger – she has decided she doesn’t want to see me in here again. She said if I don’t get released soon she is going to run away. My boy comes, and he is happy when he is here but when they go he is crying. Both he and my partner broke down last time they were leaving here. They just lock you up in here the pretend like  you don’t exist.

The original application that they detained me for, I sent them last week and they said there wasn’t payment for it. But i know there was money for it if they tried. My solicitor said this is just what they do. They don’t care, the only objective is get you out the country. I’ve seen what they do to people to get them out of here. Three, four officers bust into your room early in the morning and force you out on to a plane.

I haven’t been in my home country for 19 years. I haven’t any family there. My family is here. Why they want to send me back there? I’ve been in this country 19 years, I don’t have a criminal record in this country. I stopped working cos if i worked they said it would be a criminal offence so i’ve been staying indoors and looking after my kids. Everything they say i’ve been doing to play by the rules.

The home office don’t realise what they are doing to people. It is really unfair. Really really unfair.

They call it ‘Notorious Yarls Wood’, and it is notorious.

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They don’t give you a ticket, they give you a window of time. They say, ‘You will go within these three days, or five days.’ They changed this about a month ago. Why is this? Because we would call our solicitors straight away and stop the flight. As I am talking there is a woman next door who is supposed to be taken to the airport today, deported to Pakistan. There were supposed to be 15 women deported yesterday, to Nigeria. There was a flight stop about two months ago, people refused to go. We grouped up for three days in one room, refused to eat and everything, and the charter flight didn’t happen. So now they takes one by one into isolation so we can’t be in solidarity and stop the flight together. The bus comes, the bus is called ‘THE JOURNEY BEGINS HERE’. That is the name of bus that takes the women. This bus took the women to Stansted Airport for a charter flight to go to Nigeria and Ghana. We really fear for our safety here. Our experiences here leave us with depression, sleep disruption and mental health. We are like zombies.

It really reminds us of the history you read about slaves. When they used to take people and put them in the ships, to take them and go and sell them. Now, they are doing this here. Yarls Wood is a slave ship. They take you from here and put you on a charter flight. The G4S, the owners of this place, they get a lot of money when they deport people out of the country. There was a woman here who wanted to go, her daughter bought her a ticket to leave but they didn’t like this because they don’t get all the money from it. They took their time to let her go, but when they want to deport you they move quickly, because they get money from it.

When you look in Yarls Wood there is no white person in here, we are all Indian, Chinese and African. It is racism. They don’t want any people of colour in this country. There are white Zimbabweans who are claiming asylum but they can do it outside. We are treated as animals. One officer said to us they get £300 a week for each of us.

The people in the Mediterranean, we are like this. This is our ship, we are drowning. We don’t have life jackets, we need lifejackets. Our life jackets are you people out there. Please help us.

I have been in England 20 years, I paid my taxes, paid my NI. My back is hurt from lifting older people, working with disabled children. I worked with all my heart. There is one woman here who is 87 years old. An Indian woman. Would you do this to your Grandmother? She cant even walk. If there was a Yarls Wood in Africa it would be all over the news. But it is happening in England and so nobody knows about it. The laws in England remain the most barbaric in the EU.

Out there they don’t know about people in here. We left our family outside. Our children are outside, our husbands are outside. The young girls here just got married and they left their husbands outside. They are breaking up families.

It is like we are in prison, these women have never done anything wrong. We left torture, we ran from rape. Then you think you are running away England where you can be safe.

We really need help in here. this places needs to be shut down. They are depriving us of our liberty. We came to England to be safe. Hearing that if you come to England you will be safe. You are running away from murders and torture, some people have had all their families murdered.

We are not terrorists. We are not harming anyone. There are people who have been killing people who are given bail. We haven’t hurt anyone. They lie, they say you are a threat to society. I am not a killer. Where are we to turn to for help? The whole world needs to know. Tell the BBC. They call it ‘Notorious Yarls Wood’, and it is notorious.

Please help us, they are just taking us and throwing us in the planes.

I am loosing sense with reality

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I am writing this letter to ask for your help and to inform you of what is happening to me every day and night, night time is the worst. I have demons in my head and unfortunately the Home Office triggered them and now I am suffering daily.

I am loosing sense with reality, I don’t know what is real or not real any more. My detention room gets very cold and I find myself on a wet floor; sometime it is a nightmare and sometimes I woke up on the floor, and sometimes it is very real like a scene from a movie. I am seeing people hanging from the ceilings, mobs setting people on fire, people hacked to death with pangas. Sometimes I smell the burning of a person under a pile of tyres. I hear gunshots and it feels like I am running away from the police. I am seeing a lot of blood and teargas smoke with young people running and screaming. I am hearing voices shouting ‘Don’t just stand there run! You are going to be next!’

Sometimes my head feels very hot and feels like someone can just cut-open the scalp and pour ice, just to cool it off. My ears are buzzing all the time, feeling sick, dizzy and loss of appetite. I sweat and tremble when asleep. And sometimes I find it hard to breath, like I am choking and my heart beats very fast. I am seeing people dangling from the ceiling, I am seeing the chair in my room as a torture chair, I am scared of sitting on it at night. My door is locked from 9pm until 8am and hearing the guards walk at night, the rattling of keys, the opening of the doors at night, door and windows banging frightens me. I wake-up from nightmares only to be frightened by the rattling of keys, doors and windows banging. I suffer from flashbacks and when I come back to reality I am frightened by my cell and officers passing and keys rattling.

I am powerless because I can’t do anything to stop these things tormenting me at night and sometimes during the day. I am trying to avoid certain areas and situations but detention is not helping because it brings back the same pictures and smell I experienced in South Africa during the days of apartheid. I was detained for political reasons and forced to watch people dangling from the ceiling, people being kicked and beat up. In late 2014, when I went to check progress of my case against death threats, I watched helplessly as the police in my country kick, stump, and beat a suspect senselessly on the floor.

The Home Office want to pursue removal when I am suffering from these mental and psychological problems which they have triggered by keeping me in detention for so long and subjected me to night-transportation which is very similar to South Africa’s style of transporting political activist (two or three white officers transporting one black detainee). They have reawakened years of apartheid torture and they must offer me treatment not detention.

It has taken years to heal from the apartheid torture past, my British children and ex-wife helped a lot. I t will take a long time to heal from the reawakened torture past and that cannot happen whilst I continue in detention because UK detention bears similarities with South Africa apartheid detention regime. Years of healing have been undone by detention traumas.

We all will continue this protest for 3 days

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Hello sir,

in my centre I get information about all this things that the Detention centres should by shutdown, my and my other friends how are in this centre started protest yesterday and all day we didn’t eat anything, and the big news is one of boy he attempt suicide yesterday in afternoon, that boy was in our room, the officers says that he was in so worried about his case that’s wye he do like this but we know that even he didn’t eat anything for 4 days and not even one officer come and ask him and not help him why he doing like this, no one come in our room to check him because they have all information about everybody about food.

We all will continue this protest  for 3 days, but we also hopeless either the government will do something for us because inside the Centre we cant trust to any of the staff member, there behaviour is like they are kings and we are slaves. If we ask for something for help with anything they cant behave like to helpful. they act like they didn’t received no wages and all they do there jobs like charity. And all they are doing and also giving food and medicines from there own pocket.

There are so many detainees here for more than 10 months and some of 7 months and some of 6 months even most of them are without any risen they didn’t apply for any case not for Asylum not for bail nothing anything else but after a long time they spend here the Home Office release them, and mostly detainees they apply for Asylum including me the Home Office didn’t do anything for them and they are struggling with the non human behaviour of staff.

Day by day everybody becoming like mentally ill.

And if someone want to apply for case the home Office ask for money, this is a common sense that a person have no right to work and how he can pay a big fee for his legal right for his case, and inside the centre if someone want to work then Home Office pay them £1 per hour, how can it right a person work like this and pay a lot fee for his case, its means that person need to work for life time to pay his fee, same as if a detainee want his medical report from inside the Health and Care they tell to pay £10 for that, and they refuse to check someone because they says we have only 2 Doctors here, how can only 2 Doctors can check 600 peoples in one centre.

Same person not allowed work outside but allowed work inside. why somebody spend his precious time of his life for nothing.

We have a big hope about you, and you can help us .
thank you so much.

Kind Regard.

Today is the strike day is against detention.

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Today is the strike day is against detention. Today is a strike day all over Europe and in the UK against detention. We need justice. People are here for 12 months, 15months. I’ve been here 12 months. There is a person who is married and her husband is in detention. That is not fair.

More than freedom we want justice.

Right now there are a hundred plus people in the Court yard number 4. Nobody had lunch and nobody will go to dinner. We have been shouting.

In the meantime, a man has cut his wrist in the court yard. He lay down on the floor and became unconscious. We pressed the buzzers to get help and no one was answering them. It wasted a lot of time. We got some officers they came saw and went to away to bring more officers. They made everyone go inside. We can see through the window that he is still there on the floor.

I’m calling from Harmondsworth and I am talking to you on behalf of most of the detainees here.

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I’m calling from Harmondsworth and I am talking to you on behalf of most of the detainees here. They are sitting by me and all are together. There are about 60 people around here.

Most people are suffering from medical and mental problems like depression and anxiety. I feel myself feelings of suffocation and depressions and bad dreams. A lot of us are on sleeping pill prescribed by the doctor here.

About 90% of people are on medication for anxiety. A lot people have experience torture before coming here and they have told the doctors and the home office is not accepting the reports of the certified doctor here.

I am a witness to two detainees who need urgent medical attention. And the nurse said they were creating a drama.

The way that the home office is treating us is very unlawful and unfair. Regarding bail and temporary admission – Most of us have applied for bail 4 or 5 times. But every time they are refusing with the same objections.

Most detainees have family out there who are really worried about them. They have partners and kids and a few of their wives are pregnant. They are very worried about them. Most detainees that have family outside are being told by the home office and the authorities that they shouldn’t worry about their kids. But of course they still worry about them. How can someone else take care of them. Nothing is like a father.

The home office is giving people tickets on a weekly basis. Most of them have pending cases in the court but the home office is trying to push them back to other countries while the case is still pending. Most of the cases are asylum and judicial review cases. When there are cases in the court you should send people like that.

A lot of people are here for more than 5 months. Their cases are really on the slow tracks and the home office aren’t communicating with them.

The food is not good. The environment is shit and it is very scary. People are selling drugs on every wing. I’ve never seen drugs like this in my life and people are pushing us to have them.

This is not a way to treat normal people. A lot of us came here with a valid visa and they should release us so we can face our cases out there. I am calling you, and I am on hunger strike. Just imagine, just walk in my shoes once. You have a normal life and then they detain you. Take you away from your family and your kids. It’s not normal. If you’re going to detain you like an animal – how can you expect them to live a normal life. It’s going to be ruining their lives for ever. I’ve spoken to people who have been released and they are still suffering from hypertension, depression and anxiety because this memory is going to be their worst part of their life.