ASSAULTS are commonplace in Immigration Removal Centres, which should not be responsible for the health care of their detainees.
That is what is being said by campaigners, medical experts and ex-detainees demanding the closure of Yarl’s Wood and other centres, where thousands of immigrant workers, refugees and even children have been held.
After a damning report on Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire was published by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, campaigners held a press conference outside the Home Office in London on Wednesday.
There they demanded an end to the policy of detention and said that refugees were being treated ‘worse than criminals’.
One of those at the press conference was Sophie Odogo, who was too traumatised by her experience at Yarl’s Wood to speak to the press.
She said in a statement: ‘Some times I blank out, I can’t hear what anyone is saying.
‘Other times I feel I can’t escape. They told me Manuel killed himself – perhaps his death was his ultimate freedom.’
Harriet Wistrich, from Birnberg Peirce and Partners Solicitors, said: ‘The inquiry highlights the existence of guidelines and policies which safeguard against ordinarily detaining victims of torture and those with serious mental illness, and that these policies are often breached.’
Sophie Odogo’s former room-mate at Yarl’s Wood, Enid Ruhango said: ‘I was in there for 10 months last year.
‘Conditions there are really disgusting.
‘The situation in which you live is not human at all.
‘It’s very distressing and it can lead someone to take their life, because they think it’s preferable to rest in peace.’
She added: ‘We went on hunger strike to protest at the abuse we were suffering.
‘We decided we’d rather die in this country than be sent back home.
‘We were taken to hospital, where they started to re-feed us.
‘More than 30 of us were involved and two of us were hospitalised.
‘I came to Britain for safety and I was put in the prison for nothing.
‘The torture in my country was quicker and here it’s day by day and we’ve done nothing wrong.’
She added: ‘At Yarl’s Wood they treated you as if you are not a human being.
‘They didn’t take any notice that we are victims of torture and now this report from the inspector of prisons proves what we are saying.
‘I feel fear of each and every one who works for the Home Office because they have been treating me badly.
‘I feel Yarl’s Wood must be closed or I fear more people there will take their lives.
‘Only last week there was an inquest for someone who died there.
‘The staff don’t take notice of your needs.
‘They accuse you and dehumanise you. Criminals are treated better.’
Enid also said: ‘I’m destitute. I’m not entitled to NHS treatment or any support. It’s dehumanising.
‘My friend can’t even talk. She is always frightened.
‘It is not fair for someone who has been traumatised.’
Sarah Cutler, from BID (Bail for Immigration Detainees), said: ‘We make bail applications for people in detention.
‘There are about 30,000 people a year passing through Immigration Removal Centres.
‘The conditions are very bad as Enid’s said, and people’s basic human rights are not respected.
‘If you look at the report that Anne Owers has done, it is very damning about health care standards in Yarl’s Wood.
‘People are disbelieved when their medical issues are raised.
‘People are being denied medical treatment and people are being assaulted.
‘There have been a lot of complaints of assaults in Yarl’s Wood and across the detention estate.
‘This includes people who are claiming asylum from torture and families with children.
‘We’re calling for an end to the government’s practice of detaining people to “fast-track’’ their asylum claims.
‘These people are being treated like criminals.
‘From BID’s point of view, there needs to be an independent, automatic review of everyone’s detention.
‘We want the government to implement Anne Owers’ recommendations that the NHS should be responsible for health care in detention, not private companies.
‘This process is inhuman and degrading and driven by political targets about being seen to be tough and efficient on asylum and it’s shameful that we’re doing that to people in Britain.
‘This is a massive issue. It is a racist policy and it’s unjust.
‘There is no access to lawyers for detainees.
‘In theory detainees can be contacted by telephone, but in practice it’s very hard to get through to them.
‘This puts them in an even more vulnerable position.’
Dr Frank Arnold, an independent doctor working with the Medical Justice Network, said: ‘The Home Office were forced to ask the prisons inspectorate to conduct an inquiry about health care in Yarl’s Wood, centring on the so-called care experienced by two detainees who were refugees from torture in Uganda.
‘The report makes three important points.
‘First, the Home Office are not competent to commission or supervise health care, this should be done by the Department of Health.
‘Second, that the Home Office’s rules (state) that people who have been tortured, or are medically or psychologically ill, should only be detained under exceptional circumstances.
‘But the whole system operates to ensure that this rule is routinely violated.
‘And third, that in normal medical practice doctors have available and follow guidelines on things like diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis and re-feeding of hunger strikers.
‘These either do not exist or are not being followed at Yarl’s Wood, and this is acutely dangerous.’
He added: ‘In my experience I’ve seen at least 40 refugees in detention centres in the last year.
‘I can only say the horrible picture that this report paints is a gross understatement of the institutional medical abuse which is all too common in detention centres.
‘After the suicide of a detainee at Harmondsworth there was a large protest across the detention centres.
‘A man who later became my patient called “The Guardian’’ newspaper about this and was then asked by guards whether he was the man who’d done that.
‘He was subjected to “control and restraint’’ which rendered him unconscious.
‘But instead of being taken to casualty, which would be normal, he was put in a van and transported from Haslar detention centre to Colnbrook detention centre and recovered consciousness along the way.
‘Every trainee police officer is taught that a prisoner who becomes unconscious should be assessed by a doctor, preferably in a casualty.
‘When I saw him as a patient two weeks later, he still had severe injuries to both wrists and his left leg and could not walk.
‘He is one of very many detainees who have been shown to have some sort of injuries as a result of actions by guards and escorts, or during failed attempts to remove them (from Britain).
‘These injuries have been repeatedly documented by Medical Justice, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture and other independent doctors.
‘They have been reported over and over again to the police as assault, but we are not aware of any prosecution which has ever been brought as a result.’
Dr Felicity Zulueta, consultant psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, said: ‘If the Home Office followed its own rules, Rule 35 – which says that people who are physically severely ill and people who are mentally ill and people who have been tortured, that they shouldn’t be detained – then that would already reduce the damage that’s been done to people who have been held in these institutions.
‘They shouldn’t be in there.’
She alleged: ‘The Home Office ignores their requests. That means that staff get a message from their boss, while the evidence before their eyes contradicts what their master in the Home Office is saying.
‘Therefore, they will begin to treat these people as fake and will begin to abuse them.
‘The result is what has happened to people like Sophie.
‘She was tortured in Uganda. When she came to Britain, she was put in Yarl’s Wood, yet the reports on her were never investigated and followed up by the Home Office.’
Gill Butler, Sophie Odogo’s Yarl’s Wood Befriender and Litigation Friend, said: ‘I think it’s disgusting the Home Office doesn’t follow their own regulation (regarding Rule 35).
‘I met Sophie, before she was as deeply traumatised as she is now, when she first came to the country.
‘I’ve had to watch her deteriorate at an alarming rate whilst she was in Yarl’s Wood.
‘It took us six weeks to get her into hospital, even though we had a bed for her at the Maudsley Hospital, by which time she had deteriorated into being unable to speak, unable to walk or care for herself in any way.
‘She didn’t know who she was and where she was and the medical centre at Yarl’s Wood was still maintaining there were no medical concerns – even the day before she was rushed into hospital as an emergency on oxygen,’ Gill alleged.
‘What caring person would do that?’ she asked.
