Wave of hunger strikes (1)
01 January 1991
Wave of hunger strikes
artdoc June=1994
A wave of hunger strikes has swept through prisons and detention
centres across Britain as asylum seekers protest against their
detention, their inhuman treatment and deportations which have
resulted in death.
Since the end of February, when ten north Africans were
released from Pentonville after ten days of an indefinite hunger
strike, the number of asylum seekers on hunger strike grew to
over 200 in mid-March. Over 100 were held in Campsfield, the new
immigration detention centre at Kidlington, outside Oxford, which
opened in November and holds 200 detainees. There were hunger
strikers too at other dedicated immigration detention centres at
Haslar, near Portsmouth, and Harmondsworth, near Heathrow, as
well as in prisons such as Pentonville. They included people from
Asia, Africa and South America, who had transcended linguistic
and political differences to take common action against their
racist treatment.
The hunger strike has become a classic weapon of asylum-seekers
protesting their detention - usually it is the only weapon they
have. Most weeks in the year, any year, there will be a few
isolated asylum seekers on hunger strike, or simply refusing
food. The line between protest and despair is a fine one.
The recent strikes took place against the background of a
threefold increase in the rate of detentions in the past six
months, from 200 to over 700. Many detainees are held for months;
one 19-year old has been detained at Feltham Young Offenders'
Institution for over a year, and was recently refused bail
despite support from prison officers, sureties who included a
prison visitor, his mother's hospitalisation, and recognition by
an immigration Tribunal that he and his family have suffered
persecution in the country from which they came.
Parallel to the increase in the detention and refusal of
asylum, the grant of exceptional leave to remain has been
dramatically reduced since the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act
came into force in August 1993, from 86% to 28% of those claiming
asylum. As a result of these changes, far more asylum seekers are
being expelled from Britain.
There is no monitoring of what happens to rejected asylum-
seekers who are returned home. But recent reports from Zaire,
Turkey and Algeria, from organisations such as UNHCR and Amnesty
International, show that asylum-seekers from these countries at
any rate cannot safely be returned there - yet the Home Office
continues to return them. Four Algerian hunger-strikers were
returned to Algeria in February - only to be returned to Britain
when Algeria refused to accept them as they lacked identity
papers.
The conditions of detention are grim, too. Judge Stephen Tumin,
Chief Inspector of Prisons, confessed to `grave reservations
about the appropriateness' of holding `distressed, despondent and
in some cases desperate' asylum seekers in Pentonville prison.
Up to 65 immigration prisoners are held in Pentonville at any one
time. In a report released on 22 March he condemned Pentonville's
health care centre as rundown, cramped, dirty and unfit for
patients.
In the face of the recent wave of protests, the Home Office has
resorted to its usual strategy of dispersal, and of punishing
detainees in detention centres by moving them to prison. However,
this time the strategy seems to have had the opposite effect to
that intended, by fanning the flames of protest and spreading the
strike to hitherto unaffected prisons. Thus it was reported
towards the end of March that several of the prisoners at Winson
Green had joined the asylum seekers sent from Campsfield in their
hunger strike. Other solidarity actions included an open letter
from 86 senior dons at Oxford University to the Prime Minister
protesting that the detention of asylum-seekers is contrary to
the spirit of the UN convention, and pickets at Campsfield,
Pentonville and outside the Home Off