THE death of a 40-year-old woman at Yarl’s Wood on Sunday has once again thrown the spotlight on the privately-run immigration removal centre.
According to unconfirmed reports from fellow detainees, the woman shouted out complaining of severe chest pains shortly before suffering a fatal heart attack, only to be offered paracetamol by staff at the Serco private security firm centre in Bedfordshire.
In recent years, there have been twelve deaths in these privately run detention centres, with Yarl’s Wood being notorious for accusations of ill treatment and sexual offences, including rape, being carried out against the mainly female inmates by staff.
So bad is the situation that a spokeswoman for the charity Medical Justice, which is concerned with the health of immigrant detainees, told the press that: ‘We are shocked but not surprised to hear of this tragic death. Any death in immigration detention is avoidable as immigration detention is optional. Our volunteer independent doctors have seen an alarming number of incidents of medical mistreatment. The only thing we are surprised about is that there have not been more deaths.’
Yarl’s Wood and its operator Serco have been right at the forefront of accusations of inhuman treatment ever since it opened in 2001 with a whole catalogue of suicides, deaths and abuse carried out against detainees along with findings of medical treatment being denied.
In 2009, the Children’s Commissioner for England reported that children held there had been denied urgent medical treatment, while in October last year two male Serco employees were sacked for having sex with a female detainee and a third dismissed for not reporting the fact.
The Labour Party leadership were quick to call for an investigation into the latest death, but the Labour shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was equally quick to insist that, despite everything, she was fully behind the principle of locking up immigrants, she just wants it done more ‘humanely’. She said: ‘Whilst immigration rules must always be enforced, detainees must also be treated humanely and it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that both take place.’
This concern about the humane treatment of immigrant detainees attempts to disguise the fact that the Labour leaders are in total agreement with the Tory-led government and its racist immigration policies.
In January this year, they lined up to save Cameron from certain defeat in a Commons vote on the immigration bill currently going through the House of Lords. Under the terms of this bill, which even the UN Refugee Agency has condemned for creating a ‘climate of ethnic profiling’, anyone deemed to be a ‘foreign criminal’ can be deported even before the outcome of any appeal is known, as long as they do not face ‘serious irreversible harm’ at home. For ‘serious irreversible harm’ read ‘death’.
The bill cuts the number of grounds for appeal against deportation from 17 to four, compels landlords to check whether tenants are in the UK illegally, with those failing to do so facing large fines, forces banks to check immigrants’ legal status before offering accounts, and makes some temporary migrants – such as students – pay a £200-a-year levy towards the cost of NHS services.
Not just a ‘climate for ethnic profiling’ but a recipe for a police state where everyone is a potential ‘illegal immigrant’ until proved otherwise – and even if proved otherwise it may be too late to prevent unlimited detention and deportation.
This is the real crime that is driving atrocities like those at Yarl’s Wood and all the other privately-run detention centres. The real criminals are not refugees and immigrant workers and their families, fleeing wars and poverty that are the products of capitalist crisis and imperialist wars.
They didn’t cause the banking collapse or start wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a socialist society they would be immediately released and their places filled by the capitalists who are the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
