G4S Defends its role in Racism and Oppression

 John Grayson, who will be speaking at the TCAR public meeting 'Against Racism' this Saturday (see events page for details), co-authored this article addressing the security company G4S and their complicity with racism and oppression.

Originally published at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/john-grayson-and-adri-nieuwhof/security-giant-g4s-rejects-%E2%80%98world%E2%80%99s-worst-company%E2%80%99-nominat

Security giant G4S rejects ‘World’s Worst Company’ nomination

John Grayson and Adri Nieuwhof - 23 January 2013

The world’s leading security company, G4S, says it doesn’t deserve to be nominated for Public Eye’s World’s Worst Company Award. Two activists examine G4S’s defence.

The World’s Worst Company will be declared this Thursday by Public Eye, an initiative of the of the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland. The charity War on Want nominated G4S for the uncoveted award. Lately on OurKingdom (10 January) we offered ten reasons why G4S deserves to win. That same day the company sent a 150 word letter to the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre opposing the nomination. Here we interrogate G4S’s rebuttal.
We are activists who have scrutinised and resisted G4S’s activities in asylum seeker housing in the UK, and the company’s role in Israel's occupation of Palestine. As we write, G4S lies third in the public voting for the World’s Worst Company, behind Shell and Goldman Sachs, and ahead of Repower (energy), Lonmin (formerly Lonrho — South African mining), Coal India and Alstom the French energy and transport conglomerate.

G4S say they don’t deserve the nomination because: “The basis on which G4S has been nominated is inaccurate and very misleading.”

We say: G4S appears to be responding only to one brief paragraph published by Public Eye. In fact War On Want, Boykot G4S, Boycot Isreal Network, Corporate Watch UK, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK), submitted lengthy petitions to nominate G4S. The Institute for Business Ethics (IWE) at the University of St. Gallen examined the nominations in relation to human rights, labour rights and environmental issues against the backdrop of international accords and standard. Such international standards are represented by UN Resolutions, Declarations, Conventions, OECD Guidelines, the Fourth Geneva Convention and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Following the assessment by the University of St Gallen, an international jury selected the most irresponsible corporations. The jury consisted of four independent business ethics experts and four members who represented the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace.
In a few key strokes, G4S dismisses the work of the University of St Gallen and the international jury.

G4S says: “Much of the information published as criteria for the nomination is completely false, for example it is not true that G4S staff are ‘often badly trained and paid’ or that ‘many have a criminal record’.”

We say: The workers of G4S themselves, and their unions, have over the past few years systematically exposed the fact that G4S workers are “often badly trained and paid”.

Back in 2008, UK charity Medical Justice’s Outsourcing Abuse documented 300 cases of alleged abuse in the carrying out of deportations and other “immigration and asylum services” on behalf of the UK government. G4S held the highest rate of abuse. The abuse involved excessive force, resulting in injuries to the face and injuries as a result of restraints.

In October 2010, Angolan man Jimmy Mubenga who died under ‘restraint’ by G4S guards contracted to the UK Border Agency.

In the aftermath of Mubenga’s death, G4S whistleblowers gave evidence to the UK Parliament in February 2011 alleging that poorly trained G4S staff on deportation flights “played Russian roulette” with peoples lives.

Later that year the BBC revealed that 773 complaints had been lodged in 2010 against G4S staff by detainees, including 48 claims of assault, and the UK Chief Inspector of Prisons reported G4S guards using extremely offensive racist language on deportation flights.

In 2007 War on Want and trade union researchers exposed G4S violations of international labour codes in South Africa, Malawi and Mozambique. White G4S managers in South Africa were accused of forcing black employees to use separate toilets “while white guards are given keys to the company toilet. And black G4S guards at Johannesburg airport complain that white supervisors call them 'kaffirs' and 'monkeys'”.

Corporate Watch reported in February 2012 that workers in Nepal, South Korea, and Malawi were starting or threatening strikes and hunger strikes protesting about wages and conditions offered or paid by G4S. In May 2012 the UNI Global union accused G4S in India of paying “poverty wages” and “intimidating workers who speak out for their rights”.

In 2011, G4S Armor Group private security guard Danny Fitzsimons in Iraq was imprisoned for twenty years for the murder of two of his fellow guards and the wounding of a third in Iraq. Following an investigation by BBC Scotland, a G4S spokesman admitted to the BBC that its screening of Danny Fitzsimons "was not completed in line with the company's procedures".

G4S says: G4S staff do not “man checkpoints” or “manage prison security” in Israel.

We say: The company is undoubtedly complicit in Israel's restrictions of freedom of movement of Palestinians.

In July 2012, Israel's defense ministry confirmed that G4S is one of the companies that provides inspection services and scanning equipment to all the Israeli checkpoints along the separation wall in the West Bank.

G4S Israel signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems for Israel's major prisons in 2007. Independent lawyers commissioned by the UK government in 2012 published a report, Children in Military Custody, which described Israel's transfer of thousands of Palestinian prisoners including children, from the occupied territory to military prisons inside Israel as a violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Palestinian child prisoners are regularly subjected to torture and ill-treatment in several G4S equipped “security” prisons. By providing equipment to these prisons, G4S is complicit in Israel's violations of international law.

G4S says: “Where the company does operate in complex environments such as Iraq or Afghanistan, it often does so in support of humanitarian programmes or on behalf of western governments helping to resolve conflict or to provide a long term stable regime for the people of the country”

We say: G4S subsidiary Armor Group operates in the world of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC’s). For example, Armor Group was subcontracted by the US Air Force in Afghanistan. According to a 2010 report of the United States Armed Services Committee, G4S “relied on Afghan warlords, some of whom were Taliban supporters, to provide manpower for the company’s guard force at the airbase.” G4S has since tried to argue that it was simply following the practice of the US armed forces in Afghanistan. G4S is not just a ‘private security company’: it is also in part a private army, privatising war.

G4S says: “The nomination seriously misrepresents the hard work of thousands of dedicated G4S employees who make a positive contribution to the societies in which they live and work.”

Our response: The nomination criticises G4S and its corporate management, not its workers. With a few shots in the dark, G4S dismisses serious public concerns about the company's record of violations of human rights, labour rights and international law. The quality of its response speaks volumes.

STOP THE DEPORTATION OF HASSANAT OMENEKE ALIYU AND HER THREE DAUGHTERS!

STOP THE DEPORTATION OF HASSANAT OMENEKE ALIYU AND HER THREE DAUGHTERS!


Hassanat fled Nigeria in 2006 with her one year old daughter, who was threatened with Female Genital Cutting (FGC). She was trafficked to Britain and has been living here for 6 and a half years, and is currently living in Newcastle. She now has three young daughters who have grown up here and become part of the community. Despite coming here seeking safety, the British government now wants to deport Hassanat and her daughters back to Nigeria where they have no family and friends and will still be under threat of FGC and the ongoing problems and conflict in Nigeria.

Hassanat was a victim of human trafficking, she was trafficked to Britain from Nigeria. Yet despite the current government’s promises on tackling human trafficking Hassanat and her children are the ones who are being criminalised as the Home Office has declared that they are to be deported back to Nigeria on 1^st February 2013.

The British government committed to opt into the EU’s directive on human trafficking in July 2011. The directive is focused on 'prevention and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims...The adoption follows a Commission Directive proposal...with binding legislation to prevent trafficking, to effectively prosecute criminals, and to better protect the victims, in line with the highest European standards.'

Mark Harper MP, minister of state for immigration and chair of the Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group (IDMG) on human trafficking states that ‘The fight against those that seek any opportunity to exploit others is one that must be tackled locally, nationally and internationally.’

In the IDMG’s report published in October 2012 they state that:

'Fuelled primarily by those who seek to make a profit from the misery of others, human trafficking is the vilest of crimes and equates to modern day slavery. Men, women and children from across the world are exploited and forced into performing services or other work against their will. In some instances the exploitation can be experienced over a prolonged period of time. Those who are exploited may face years of sexual abuse, forced labour, or domestic servitude and, in many instances never fully recover from their traumatic experience.'

Why are Hassanat and her daughters (7 and a half years old, 5 years old and 3 years old), victims of trafficking, being punished and forced to endure even more traumatic experiences? The government has some very fine words to say about protecting victims. We demand that they put these words into practice and give Hassanat and her daughters indefinite leave to remain in Britain. 

Hassanat explained her situation:

‘I have been here for over 6 years. For me I think it’s unfair to deport me and my children. I haven’t committed a crime or anything, I don’t know why the government hates me. I have 3 children and in Nigeria they do FGC and so I’m so worried about my children. But they don’t believe anything I say. In Nigeria they believe the man should take the children, so I would lose them even if I went to court. There is nowhere I can go to, nowhere to hide. I have lost my Mum, I have lost my Dad.’

Take action

Contact British Airways and ask them not to carry Hassanat Omeneke Aliyu (Home Office ref: A1432864/5) and her children against their will. Read a guide to airline campaigning here.

The flight details are flight BA75 (to Lagos, Nigeria) at 10.30am on 1st February 2013.

You can write to, fax or email:

British Airways
Customer
Relations (S506)
PO Box 5619
Sudbury
Suffolk
CO10 2PG

Telephone: 0844 493 0787

Fax: 01787 883 195

Web form: https://www.britishairways.com/travel/custrelform/public/en_gb

No deportations! Hassanat and her children must stay!

Algeria, Mali and Racism - Robert Fisk

An excellent article by Robert Fisk of the Independent analysing the racism inherent in the reporting and actions of Britain and France in relation to Mali and the Algerian hostage situation.

originally published at: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/algeria-mali-and-why-this-week-has-looked-like-an-obscene-remake-of-earlier-western-interventions-8457828.html

 

Written by Robert Fisk

Friday 18 January 2013

Algeria, Mali, and why this week has looked like an obscene remake of earlier Western interventions

We are outraged not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps

Odd, isn’t it, how our “collateral damage” is different from their “collateral damage”. Speaking yesterday to an old Algerian friend in the aviation business, I asked him what he thought of his country’s raid on the In Amenas gas plant.“Brilliant operation, Robert,” he shouted down the phone. “We destroyed the terrorists!” But the innocent hostages? What about their deaths, I asked? “Poor guys,” he replied. “We had thousands of women and children killed in our war [in the 1990s] – terrible tragedy – but we are fighting terrorism.”
And there you have it. Our dead men didn’t matter in the slightest to him. And he had a point, didn’t he? For we are outraged today, not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed by the Algerian army – along with some of their captors – were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps. Had all the “Western” hostages – I am including the Japanese in this ridiculous, all-purpose definition – been rescued and had the innocent dead all been Algerian, there would have been no talk yesterday of a “botched raid”.

If all those slaughtered in the Algerian helicopter bombing had been Algerian, we would have mentioned the “tragic consequences” of the raid, but our headlines would have dwelt on the courage and efficiency of Algeria’s military rescuers, alongside interviews with grateful Western families.

Obscene

Racism isn’t the word for it. When George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara kicked off their war crimes with a full-scale invasion of Iraq, we didn’t care a damn about the Iraqis.Ten thousand dead in a year? Twenty thousand? Or as George Bush said, “Thirty thousand, more or less.” More or less what? But no problems with our precious dead. We know, for example, that since the Bush-Blair Iraqi adventure began, exactly 4,486 American military personnel died in the war.

So you know whom we care about. And whom we don’t care about. Watch carefully in the coming weeks, therefore, for the growing “Roll of Honour” of French troops in Mali, interviews in the French press with their relatives, statistics of the wounded. And don’t waste your time searching for details of dead Nigerian soldiers – or, indeed, dead Malian soldiers – because there will be no details of their sacrifice.

From the Middle East, the whole thing looks like an obscene television remake of our preposterous interventions in other parts of the world. French troops will be in Mali for only “several weeks”, Hollande and his cronies tell us. Isn’t that what we said when British troops first appeared on the streets of Northern Ireland, and then spent decades fighting there? Isn’t that what the Israelis said when they marched into Lebanon in 1982 and stayed for another 18 years? Isn’t this what we thought when we invaded Afghanistan? That our chaps might not even hear a shot fired in anger?

It was incredible to watch that old rogue Bernard Kouchner this week, mischievously demanding that British troops on the ground in Mali assist in France’s fight against Islamist “terror”. His eyes were alight with both cynicism and patriotism – a peculiarly French characteristic – as he played his 1914 entente cordiale “we’ll-be-in-Timbuktu-by-Christmas” routine.But why are “we”, the West, in Mali? How many readers – hands up, oh virtuous and honest folk, could actually name the capital of Mali two weeks ago?

I called up another friend, a French ex-legionnaire, yesterday. Why was France in Mali, I asked? “Well, they say that the Islamists would have reached Bamako and there would have been a Taliban-in-Kabul situation, a state that had fallen into extremist hands. But I myself don’t understand. Mali is an artificial state whose northern inhabitants, especially the Tuaregs, have always refused to be ruled by a black government in the south. It’s tribal, with a veil of ‘Islamism’ over the top of it – and now how do we get ourselves out of this mess?”

Disdain

Maybe we should ask Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the presumed “mastermind” – note the comic-cuts language we have to use for these vagabonds – of the Algerian raid. This is the “legendary” – again, note the adjective – “Mr Marlboro”, whose interest in contraband and semtex explosive belts seems to outweigh his duties to Islam. North African journalists know a lot about Belmokhtar and his cross-border trade in cigarettes, weapons, 4x4s, drugs, diamonds and illegal migrants, and they are also appalled that Algeria – Belmokhtar’s own birthplace – should now be involved in the Western crusade in Mali.

France’s overflights have been bitterly criticised in the Algerian press – a fact largely ignored in London where “wars on terror” take precedence over local Algerian opinion – as a symbol of Algerian humiliation at the hands of the country’s former colonisers.

But why should we care about the Algerians when they treat our dead with the disdain we have always shown for the Muslim dead of Iraq, Afghanistan or, for that matter, Palestine? Syria, please note, is temporarily in a different category, since our desire to destroy Bashar al-Assad allows us to turn all his victims into honorary Westerners. Odd, that. For among the rebels facing the ruthless Assad are folk very similar to Mr Belmokhtar and his merry Islamists, the very men who rouse the anger of Crusader Kouchner.

Do I sniff a bit of old-fashioned colonial insanity here? Carry on up the Niger? French troops battle rebels. “Terrorists” in retreat. Daily headlines from 1954 until 1962. In a country called Algeria. And I promise you, the French didn’t win that war.

Said Kasim Mohamed – urgent action needed!

Hands off Somalia (HOS) are a London-based campaign against the British imperialist intervention in Somalia. They will be sending a speaker to address this issue at the 'Against Racism' public meeting and the linked issues of the oppression suffered by Somali refugees in Britain. Check out the events page for more details.

First published on http://handsoffsomalia.co.uk/

Said Kasim Mohamed – urgent action needed!

Thanks to NCADC for this publicity
http://ncadc.org.uk/campaigns/saidkasim/

 

Said Kasim Mohammed, a Somali national, came to the UK after suffering systematic persecution due to his ethnicity. He escaped from Somalia to Europe after an attempt to force him into slavery. Denied protection, he has been made repeatedly destitute in the UK. Despite his ill health he is now in detention and has removal directions for 29 January to Tanzania. Said is not from Tanzania and has no connections there. Although he does not feel Somalia is safe for him as he could be once again forced into hard labour, his experience of destitution and detention in the UK has made him desperate and he is simply asking that he is not deported to Tanzania.

Minority clan persecution in Somalia

Part of the Bajuni tribe, a minority group in Somalia, Said has suffered abuse and a denial of his basic rights. After the homes in his street were completely burnt by members of the majority clans, he narrowly escaped capture and the prospect of forced slavery. Throughout the Bajuni Island and the coastal areas many members of the Bajuni tribe have been forced to leave their homes. Young Bajuni men have been forced into slavery, the men often beaten, the women raped and their property looted.

The Home Office Operational Guidance Notes on Somalia states that minority groups ‘often lacking armed militias, continued to be disproportionately subject to killings, torture, rape, kidnapping for ransom, and looting of land and property with impunity by faction militias…..Bajuni clan residents are liable to suffer persecution at the hands of the majority clans’.

Minority Rights Group’s report, No Redress: Somalia’s Forgotten Minorities, documents how ‘Somali minorities collectively- and minority members individually- suffer denial and abuse of the whole range of basic human rights set out in international and regional conventions……the struggle for minority rights in Somalia takes place in a context where the abuse of human rights in general has persisted for decades, from widespread torture [to] political oppression’.

Detention and destitution in the UK

After claiming asylum in the UK, Said was detained and attempts were made to remove him to Luxembourg under the Dublin convention. After spending two months in detention Said was released after the Home Office stated that it would not be possible to send him there. His case was heard in the UK but his claim was refused. Soon after this he was evicted from his accommodation. He had no food, no roof over his head, no access to healthcare, and no money for travel – Said was made destitute.

Said Kasim in now being held in detention, his health is deteriorating. Unable to breath properly in the cells, Said’s doctor has written to the Home Office stating that he ‘desperately needs fresh air and should be released’. The Home Office has refused.

During one of seven attempts to remove Said Kasim, Said was assaulted by Home Office contracted escorts.

Despite having no passport or travel documents the Home Office was still attempting to deport me, this is illegal. The immigration guards came for me at around 7.30pm on the 30th September; they handcuffed me and put me in leg chains. They put me in the van where five officers manhandled me, pressing down on my chest. My hands and arms have swollen up because the handcuffs were so tight and I was being pulled by them. They put me on an airplane as part of a commercial flight….. I started shouting. The five immigration police tried to hide the handcuffs so the passengers could not see I was a prisoner. The passengers complained, took photos and recordings, and said that it was unsafe to fly me and looked like they were trying to kill me. The passengers went to talk to the pilot who remained hidden throughout this. ~Said

The Home Office have now informed Said that they are going to remove him to Tanzania, a country with which he has no connection. Detainees in Morton Hall say that UKBA officials have been issuing travel documents to Somalia, allegedly from the Tanzanian High Commission, in order to deport Somalis to Tanzania. The determination of nationality within the asylum system is deeply flawed. Despite repeated criticism, unreliable language testing is accepted by UKBA and the courts as ‘proof’ of someone’s nationality. Equating language with nationality is highly problematic, particularly when the methods of identifying a ‘mother tongue’ are so questionable. You can read more about the legal context to this debate here.

Said Kasim has successfully challenged seven forced removal attempts. Despite his failing health he still remains in detention. He has now been given a new ticket for removal on the 29th January again to Tanzania and needs your support.

Take action

Contact Qatar Airlines and ask them not to carry Said Kasim Mohammed against his will. Read our guide to airline campaigning here.

The flight details are QR76 (to Dar Es Salaam via Doha) at 15:05 on 29 January 2013.
You can write to, fax or email using your own words, or the example letter here.
Qatar Airways
3rd Floor, Victoria Buildings, Albert Square
1-7 Princess Street, Manchester, M2 4DF
telephone: 0844 846 8380 or 020 7341 6031
fax: 0161 838 5398
email: tell-us@qatarairways.com and loncustomerrelations@uk.qatarairways.com
If you want to send a public message about their airline being used to remove someone against his will to a country he’s not even from, you can use:

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Morton Hall - Trauma caused by the UK System

 Guest column by Tom Vickers published in the Lincolnshire Echo addressing the much mis-reported situation in Lincolnshire's Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre. The author will be speaking at TCAR's 'Against Racism' Public Meeting on Saturday 26th January, St. John's Church Hall, Grainger Street, Newcastle (NE1 5JG). From 12pm.

The trauma of refugees is compounded by UK system

Written by Tom Vickers

Thursday, January 17, 2013

The 'disturbances' inside Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) over Christmas and New Year were reported in the Echo and made the national news.

But what was missing was the perspectives of detainees themselves.

I have spoken to them, and they have made allegations of the water supply to cells being cut off as a collective punishment for a detainee accidentally leaving a tap running in a basin that overflowed, food served cold, detainees' Christmas presents and money withheld by the authorities and instances of racism and violence from some prison staff towards detainees.

Detainees report that many of them at Morton Hall are without legal representation, and those that do have a solicitor are charged 10p per page to receive faxes, out of a daily allowance of £1, making it extremely difficult to prepare a legal challenge.

Some have made official complaints about their treatment, but many say they are too scared to do so. Detainees say conditions were getting particularly bad in the period before Christmas, which led to the protests on December 24 and 25.
This background of frustration also created an atmosphere of tension that contributed to a fight among detainees on December 30.
 These are men cooped up indefinitely together, some for years on end, and include migrants who have agreed to return to their home countries, but are being detained indefinitely.
Currently two men in Morton Hall are on hunger strike in protest at how long they have been held awaiting a flight, one an Italian citizen of Somali descent and the other a Pakistani national. Many detainees are refugees.

I have found in my research how the UK asylum system frequently compounds the trauma of refugees' backgrounds.

At 4am on January 9, Morton Hall detainee Amuda Yusuf Sheidu slit his wrists, but survived.
Amuda is a refugee from Darfur, Sudan, who has submitted extensive medical evidence in support of his asylum claim, but has been detained for nine months, and now faces deportation to Nigeria, where he knows nobody.

At home, Amuda's eldest daughter, who has British citizenship, has been absent from school because she is so distraught at the absence of her father.
 Amuda is only the latest in a long list of immigration detainees who have attempted to end their life rather than continue in the limbo of the UK asylum system or face deportation.

The last Labour government expanded immigration detention to a capacity of more than 3,000, numbers in detention reached a record high in September 2012 and the current government is aiming for further expansion.

This serves to divide and rule. Where people seeking asylum have been allowed to live in local communities, British people have often organised in solidarity with them, making it more difficult for the government to carry out deportations.
But out of sight and out of mind, inside immigration prisons like Morton Hall the government is free to treat people how it sees fit.

A further reason this is convenient for the British government is that it prevents British people speaking to refugees who have direct experience of some of the worst consequences of British foreign policy, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, support for repressive regimes in Uganda and Nigeria, and proxy wars in Libya and Syria.

At a time when the government is also attacking living standards in Britain, alliances between British workers, refugees and other migrants could benefit all of us. This can start with us standing in solidarity with their struggles against detention and deportation.

Tom Vickers blogs at http://refugeescapitalismstate.word press.com

Capita's texts declare people illegal immigrants

 Frances Webber will be speaking at TCAR's public meeting 'Against Racism' on Saturday 26th January. Check out http://www.irr.org.uk/publications/issues/borderlinejustice/ for the new book Borderline Justice: The Fight for Refugee and Migrant Rights.

Capita wrongly telling people to leave the UK

January 4, 2013

Written by Frances Webber

Outsourcing of enforcement role causes confusion and distress as many are wrongly targeted.
In the second and third weeks of December 2012, as businesses wound down for Christmas and MPs went home, thousands of migrants, including students, workers and investors, received text messages or emails telling them they had no lawful leave to be in the country and should make arrangements to leave immediately ‘and provide proof that you have done so’. The texts and emails, headed ‘Message from the UK Border Agency’, were signed ‘Capita Business Services’. Some people were also contacted by phone, in some cases several times. Where solicitors were on record as acting for individuals, they were bypassed. In a number of cases the information Capita based their messages on was out of date or plain wrong; many recipients had valid leave to be in the country, while many others were awaiting a response from UK Border Agency (UKBA) to an application to stay or an MP’s representations. Some recipients thought the messages were spam or a sick joke; others were terrified.[1]

The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) complained to the UKBA before the Christmas break that the messages were highly unprofessional as well as distressing and often inaccurate, and in some cases breached data protection requirements. But at the beginning of January many more migrants reported receiving similar messages.

Capita won a contract with UKBA in September 2012 to find and remove up to 174,000 migrants illegally in the UK, after the independent inspector of UKBA, John Vine, found an apparent backlog of around 150,000 people who had overstayed visas but not been removed (dubbed the ‘migration refusal pool’).[2]  The backlog includes thousands of refused asylum seekers who cannot return to their countries because of war, natural disaster or other strong reasons, as well as many more who seek to remain on compassionate or family grounds.

The contract is worth up to £40 million over four years, with payment based on results (the numbers who leave after being contacted). But as Vine, the Home Affairs Committee and immigration lawyers are aware, UKBA record-keeping is notoriously inaccurate, and when the contract was announced, migrant and advisory organisations warned of the danger that people with the right to remain, or with outstanding applications to stay, would be forced or intimidated into leaving the country by a ‘bounty hunting’ approach.[3] Their concerns have been borne out, as accuracy, legality and the impact on vulnerable people of peremptory demands to leave appear to have been subordinated to the profit motive.

 

[1] Information provided by ILPA. [2] ‘Capita gets contract to find 174,000 illegal immigrants’, BBC News, 18 September 2012. [3] See ASIRT, ‘Outsourcing removals and payment by results: a 21^st century bounty hunt’, 18 September 2012.

The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

Morton Hall Prisoners fight back

 Article by Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! First published at http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/fight-racism/2829-morton-hall-jan-2013

Morton Hall prisoners protest against racist immigration detention - Dec 2012

On 24 and 25 December 2012, around 40 immigration detainees at Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in Lincolnshire protested against their conditions and treatment. Their complaints and protest went unreported in the press until, on 2 January 2013, the Prison Officers Association (POA) claimed that on 30 December, when tensions were still high in the prison, a number of guards had been injured while trying to break up a fight between two groups of detainees, and that the POA feared for its members safety and lives.
Morton Hall IRC
FRFI spoke to a detainee, who has been in Morton Hall for 28 months; he did not wish to be publicly identified for fear of reprisals, and who is referred to below as CF. He told us: ‘the BBC is always giving a platform to all the lies generated by the racist POA, but would never report anything we report to them. I have personally rung them every time assaults took place’.

Detainees in Morton Hall say that the food is often bad and over Christmas was served cold, and money sent in does not reach them. Running up to the Christmas period staff turned off the detainees’ water supply as a punishment for two men having a fight over a game of pool. This meant prisoners were not able to flush the toilets in their rooms or take showers.

Complaining about such treatment frequently leads to reprisals from the prison staff. CF told us that: ‘the regime in Morton Hall is too racist and people are being beaten up by guards every day for simple things such as asking where they are being transferred to. Sometimes the beatings can be six or more guards on one person and always happen in the cells where there is no CCTV.’ He said that on 28 December a 15-year-old Afghan boy held on suicide watch was bullied by guards in the corridor as he refused to go back to his cell, fearing that if he did he would be beaten by guards there out of the view of the prison CCTV.

Unlike most IRCs, which are managed by private companies, Morton Hall is state-run and the guards belong to the POA. Detainees who have been in different IRCs report that the staff in Morton Hall are even more aggressive towards them than those in Brook House, Colnbrook and Harmondsworth IRCs.

POA spokesman Glyn Travis emotively told the press: ‘We feel one of our people is going to get killed as staffing levels have been reduced...We will get a member of staff murdered on duty.’ However, CF told FRFI that only one guard was injured, and that this occurred when a detainee defended himself against guards who were assaulting him whilst he had his hands cuffed behind his back. His version of events is backed up by Rod Booth of the prison’s Independent Monitoring Board, who refuted the POA claims, telling the BBC on 4 January that he had viewed the CCTV of the incident and that Glyn Travis’ claims were exaggerated and inaccurate.

CF told us the violence reported between the two groups fighting on 30 December was fuelled by the ongoing conditions faced by the immigrants in prison. Tensions in all IRCs are high and, whilst no immigration detention staff members have ever been killed, or even seriously assaulted by detainees, assaults on detainees are rife and there have been a significant number of deaths. The most recent of these was that of Prince Ofosu in Harmondsworth IRC on 10 October 2012,

Despite the detention itself being state run, the medical facilities at Morton Hall are outscourced to private firm G4S - the company which killed Jimmy Mubenga on BA flight 77 in 2010. G4S remain largely untrusted and although UKBA has ceased its deportation contract with them, replacing them with the firm Reliance, G4S continues to operate inside the immigration prison system.

Very often, prisoners at IRCs like Morton Hall have committed no crime other than being an immigrant, holding the wrong paperwork, or not being able to prove their identity. It is not the screws of the POA or the ‘custody officers’ of private companies who live in constant fear of potentially deadly assault, but the detainees who must be defended from the very real threat of violent attack by prison guards.