UK: Detention centre disturbance (1)
01 January 1991
UK: Detention centre disturbance
artdoc August=1994
The troubled new immigration and asylum detention centre outside
Oxford, Campsfield, was shaken again in June when detainees
staged rooftop protests and damaged cells and fittings, after a
series of incidents of allegedly contemptuous and brutal
behaviour towards detainees. Eight detainees escaped during the
disturbances, in which several asylum-seekers were hurt when 150
riot police fought to regain control. Campsfield, which opened
to house 200 asylum-seekers and immigration detainees in November
1993, has been the site of almost non-stop protest. Over
Christmas it housed 100 Jamaican visitors detained en masse on
suspicion of wanting to overstay; in March a hunger strike
started there and spread to encompass over 200 asylum-seekers in
prisons all over the country. It was the restrictions imposed
after the hunger strikes that led to the latest disturbances,
according to the Campaign to Close Campsfield. At least two
detainees who had been released following a hunger strike were
re-arrested and deported following their public criticism of the
policy of detaining asylum-seekers.
CARF no 21, July/August 1994
Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994