BY SARAH STEPHEN
Trade union leaders in Britain have called on the Labour government to abolish asylum detention centres and to scrap the voucher system of benefits for refugees in Britain, according to a September 11 ABC report.
Trades Union Congress president Bill Morris says the voucher system is demeaning and stigmatises refugees. His comments came after the British government suffered a shock legal defeat that could pave the way for the release of hundreds of asylum seekers from the Oakington immigration detention centre.
A UK High Court judge ruled on September 7 that four Iraqi Kurds have been unlawfully held at the centre in breach of their human rights. The finding by Justice Collins was that four former detainees of Oakington detention centre near Cambridge had been held illegally because there was no evidence they would abscond and they were not awaiting imminent deportation as they had just applied for asylum on entry.
The Home Office now faces compensation claims running into millions of pounds from some of the 11,000 asylum-seekers who have been detained at the centre. The judgment is a devastating blow to the government's refugee policy, as Oakington was the centrepiece of its "fairer, faster, firmer" asylum strategy. Opened in March last year, it was designed to process 13,000 asylum applications a year.
Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council, told the September 8 Independent newspaper the government should reconsider the position of other asylum-seekers who are held in detention centres and prisons. "The fundamental principle at stake here is whether it is right to detain people who have committed no crime", Hardwick said.
News of the High Court decision soon spread to Haslar detention centre/prison, where all detainees refused to return to their dormitories after dinner on September 9. They demanded a meeting with the governor and the chief of immigration. The asylum seekers demanded immediate release and an end to detention without a limit. The detainees spent most of the night in the corridors.
At 2am the following morning they were told that a meeting with the governor and the chief immigration officer would take place at 9am. When that meeting didn't eventuate, detainees decided to go on hunger strike. Riot squads were brought in during the afternoon.
Detainees at Campsfield detention centre near Oxford also went on hunger strike. The following is an excerpt from their statement, issued on September 9, the second day of a hunger strike by most of the 93 detainees: "Our hunger strike is just a cry for help from within the inhumane and undemocratic detention system.
"We hope that the following recommendations would be pursued:
"1. Limit detention to three months: after which those with close family link would be granted bail or temporary admission for a reasonable recognisance.
"2. The UK must interpret basic human rights under international law rules governing treaties as the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] is itself an international treaty.
"3. We would hope the UK can have a more liberal approach on open border and processing centres rather than detention centre. We have also decided to embark on this protest in relation to the recent decision by Judge Collins on September 7.
"4. The other issue involves the mental strain of the indefinite period of detention. Change the [name] detention centre to a "mental asylum". As in the case of a Polish Yanuz Dmitri attempting suicide by swallowing razor blades on September 6 and Arden Gini (Kosovar) jumping off the roof top on September 8. These are all the symptoms of mental stress."
The Campaign to Close Campsfield issued a media statement on September 9 in which it noted that the "historic [High Court] decision follows years of hunger strikes, protests, and petitions by detainees and campaigning by their supporters demanding an end to immigration detention in the UK"
It went on to call on the courts to resist political pressure to overturn Justice Collin's ruling in the Court of Appeals hearing on October 5. "We ... call on lawyers in the UK, in the name of humanity and human rights, to take up the challenge this ruling represents, and apply it to all their asylum cases until — at the very least — not just Oakington, but all immigration detention centres are opened up, and the keys thrown away."