The worst thing is the indefinite detention, which Home Office lies about. People are in here for 8-9 months. I have been here for almost 6 months. This is my third time in detention. Even prisoners know when they will be released. Here, if you don’t do anything, that’s a problem. If you do something, that becomes a problem as well. Time is taken away from our lives. I want to study and want to do my nursing. But I can’t do that. Months are taken away from us, we can’t get that back. It’s not fair.

We want to know, and we are going on the hunger strike. Something needs to be done about the detention system. I am paying a lot of money, just to be refused again and again. It is mentally draining. It needs to take shorter time to make decisions. [My] future is in their hands. I am trying to stay strong. I don’t want to end up on detention medicines. They affect you mentally as well.

Another problem is [how we need to] continue to find some help from outside. Home Office keeps lying, and they [detention centres] are sneaky. The main office will call us to come for something else, like healthcare. Next, the person is locked up for removal without their phone. Some people, when they are locked, don’t even know that the detention centre has your flight ticket. That is why we need to have each other’s numbers, and numbers of each other’s solicitors. We have to rely on other people’s help to communicate to the outside something is being done in here.

I want them to provide us a way to stay in the country. I came here when [I was] 18 years old. I learned how to be independent here. No more friends in —–. If I go back to —–, there is nobody there. If I have people there, I would be okay with going back. I would go back. But right now, I have my partner here. Friends here. Money here. Most people contributed to the country, and people are not on benefits. People worked and contributed. I don’t want the government money in any shape or form.

But applications are being refused by the case workers. What does a person have to do for her case to be considered? I want Home Office to reduce the requirement for the amount of time spent in the country. It’s like… they are not giving the opportunity. We should be given a chance to stay. In [my] situation, you need to do something to solve this problem. Look at the Windrush. What about the Commonwealth countries, then? People who spent 12-13 years in the UK, but do not ‘qualify’ to be the Windrush generation.

It’s like, I do understand that this happened many years ago. I do not want to have British citizenship, but a legal status to work. An option to regularise afterwards. Anything you apply for, however, is always “no, no, no” and “rejected, rejected, rejected”.

What about us? Everything is about the Windrush, and I understand that. But what about the detention system in general? We need to be focused on that as well. There are many people in the detention centres who need to regularise their status, who has been waiting for many years.

It really needs to be considered, because once we are released, it’s just a matter of time when we back here again. It is like a cycle. They take away our futures and lives and waste the tax payer’s money on this detention centres. We have loved ones to go back to. We don’t need to be locked up like criminals—even they know when they are being released. This place is mentally draining me. It is only a matter of time before I end up on depression medication. But I am trying to be strong.

Today marks the 28th day since we began our strike here in Yarl’s Wood, in any other developed country most of us would have been released by now.

We began by doing a peaceful sit in protest outside the Home Office department where we handed Home Office officials our list of demands. They in turn took note of our names on the pretence they would address our demands and reply to each individual. I am sad to say that what they did instead was to target each individual, with many of our original group now deported or released back into the community.

This action only highlights the reasons we were driven to take such drastic and desperate measures, as the Home Office, rather than being concerned with our welfare as they and the Immigration Minister have repeatedly stated, instead capitalised on our weakened state.

It proves that the system we are fighting against is truly unjust, unethical and wrong on every level, we do not feel as though we have achieved much as the Home Office continue to break existing laws and their own guidelines by detaining vulnerable people, and people that cannot be removed and instead are detained indefinitely and forced to fight their cases while incarcerated, putting them at a great disadvantage.

We do have hope that people are starting to wake up to what is really happening in this country that likes to present itself to the rest of the world as a leader in human rights and civil liberties, which we have none within its borders.

Why should the fortune of birth dictate what rights a person should have within our borders? And even though the hunger strike is now over, we are still hungry for our freedom and justice. We will continue to protest and fight for our human rights, and will not participate in our own detention.

We are comforted when MP’s like Diane Abbott and Stuart McDonald not only visit Yarl’s Wood, but address our concerns and campaign on our behalf, and also David Lammy, because it gives me hope that like all the people who support us, they understand that allowing any group of people to be denied basic human rights and due process serves to make easier targets of all in society whether British born or otherwise for the same treatment.

We must all fight together to stop this spiral into division, intolerance and the disintegration of liberty, for liberty is easily lost but very hard earned as history proves over and over.

We are sorry that Alistair Burt MP who’s constituency we are incarcerated in has not kept his promise to us, and has not made any contact after his visit in which he promised to give the Immigration Minister our list of demands and raise our concerns over indefinite detention and the detention of vulnerable people, but sadly I am not surprised.

Moving forward, as well as our original demands, we want victims of rape, torture, trafficking, forced labour, asylum seekers and those who have been detained for six months or more to be released immediately. We do not feel this is unreasonable but a necessity.

Thank you all for your continued support as it gives us great strength in these most difficult circumstances to keep fighting the injustices we face daily.