THOUGHTS FROM THE FENCES – YARL’S WOOD & THE IMPORTANCE OF IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Student and tagged #GE2017, abuse, asylum seekers, austerity, borders, Brexit, Britain, British values, crime, cuts, deportation, depression, detention, detention centres, dignity, education, empowerment, government, harassment, hate crime, healthcare, Home Office, homophobia, Hostile Environment Policy, human rights, hunger strike, immigration, immigration law, immigration raids, international students, intimidation, kidnapping, law, legal aid, LGBT+, migrants, migration, money, Movement for Justice, norwich, POC, prison, privatisation, protest, queer, racism, rape, scapegoating, self harm, Serco, solicitors, solidarity, Stansted airport, student activism, students, suicide, survivors, theresa may, tolerance, trauma, tuition fees, UEA, violence, welfare, women, women's rights, work, Yarl's Wood.

by Lotty Clare

Content warning: mentions violence against women, abuse, rape, self-harm, suicide, racism, harassment, homophobia.

Last Saturday, a group of UEA students and Norwich residents travelled to a protest at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire. This protest was the fifth Movement for Justice by Any Means Necessary (MFJ) has organised to shut down detention centres. As I approached the building, hidden inside an industrial estate, surrounded by fields, in the middle of nowhere, it was just as intimidating and depressing as 6 months ago when I went to Yarl’s Wood for the first time. It looks like a prison, except that it is ‘worse than prison, because you have no rights’, as former detainee Aisha Shua put it. Some women are in Yarl’s Wood because their visa expired, others because their asylum claim was unsuccessful. They have committed no crime. And yet they can be detained there indefinitely.

YARL’S WOOD

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Perspectives and tagged borders, Britain, creative writing, deportation, detention, detention centres, Europe, gov.uk, government, hatred, Home Office, human rights, immigration, love, migrants, migration, Movement for Justice, read women, survivors, theresa may, violence, women, women's rights, Yarl's Wood.

by Alison Graham

Content warning: mentions violence against women, rape.

Britain has the greatest area of land dedicated to the indefinite detention of human beings in Europe. This is legal.

See:

A former inmate looks at the place in which her back was physically, literally, broken and says don’t give up. Women thread flowers through this border within a border within a border. The border is admitted only by the letters IRC. Green paint flecks cling to the toes of your boots. On a hill do not question whether the people with the kite-fluttering hands can see you.

Instead:

Is it rare to recall dreams. Where can I find this on gov.uk. If the guards are rapists what does that make the walls. How do you resist the lines you were born the right side of. How do you resist. Can love and hatred happen at the same time, and transform you equally. Are there two kinds of hatred. How about three. How about in the same place, at the same time. And built into the container itself – the beige, the smallness of the windows, the low shade of the roof, the two fields away from the road where no one is living. How are you. Do you need water. Can you read the sign from that window. Is this your first time. When will we deport Theresa. Is there a postcode for here. Have they repainted the fence. Is it really violent to kick it so that it thunders. Who is bringing the smoke flares next time, and in what colour. Do you need water. How do you resist. Is it violence when your window looks over an unreachable place, when that unreachable place is so blooming. Is it when everything is glass and unbreakable. What is the consensus on winding yourself at a border with a child’s party toy to say in a way I make noise therefore you are. Are there two kinds of hatred. How about four. How about one for each piece of sand on a beach in southeast Europe. Do you need water. Is this your first time. Is it violent. When this is all over, will people laugh at the theory of lying flowers on a has-been border, as if it were a wrist.

Featured Image credit: Jan McLachan

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PEOPLE BEFORE BORDERS: UEA MIGRANT SOLIDARITY – THE STUDENT RADICAL #7

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Student and tagged #shutitdown, anti racism, anti-sexism, Calais, campaigning, feminism, jungle, migration, movement for justice by any means necessary, no borders, people and planet, protest, student radical, students, UEA, UEA SU, Yarl's Wood.

A decade and a half into the 21st century, many believe that the metamorphosis of student into consumer is complete. The student activist and the radical student movement are consigned to history. Despite the hiccup of the anti-fees protests in 2010, the modern student is more concerned with getting their money’s worth in education than they are about changing the world.

So some would have you think. Over the two years since the last instalment of this series, the student movement has grown further in depth, diversity and scope. This series of articles seeks to explore the student campaigns that are redefining our time: what they have achieved, what they mean for the student movement, and their impact on the Higher Education sector as a whole.

This piece is from the committee of UEA Migrant Solidarity Campaign

‘later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.’

Warsan Shire, What They did Yesterday Afternoon

Where would you go if living in your home nation became intolerable? If a treatment you needed was only available or affordable in another country; if the state suddenly declared your religion or sexuality unlawful; if universities became so underfunded that constant lecturers’ strikes made you turn elsewhere for education; if civil order crumbled during a violent regime change – what would you do? Imagine how unlivable life would have to become to force you to leave your home, your job, your friends, your family.

SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES – SISTERS UNCUT, YARL’S WOOD AND DIRECT ACTION

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged anti austerity, austerity, campaign, campaigning, cuts, direct action, disabled people against cuts, domestic abuse, domestic violence, grassroots, immigration, international, intersectional feminism, intersectionality, london radical housing network, migration, Movement for Justice, non-violent direct action, nvda, student rent strikes, Yarl's Wood.

TW: Violence against women, domestic abuse, rape

By Abbie Mulcairn

The debate over the effectiveness of ‘traditional’ forms of campaigning like phone banking, door knocking, compared with ‘direct’ actions like demonstrations, protests and occupations, is long-running, but ultimately counter-productive. As part of this debate, direct action is often attacked for ignoring or speaking over the voices of ‘ordinary people’, or for having little impact in the ‘real world’.

DETENTION CENTRES AND THE STUDENT MOVEMENT

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives, Student and tagged #DontDeportLuqman, #SaveLord, #setherfree, #shutdownyarlswood, activists, barbed wire, border regime, Campsfield, campus, children, deportation, detainee, detention centre, direct action, discrimination, divest, divestment, freedom, Harmondsworth, Home Office, immigrants, immigration detention, Justice for Cleaners, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, LGBT+, mobilisation, Movement for Justice, NUS, prison, racism, sexism, Sheffied SU, Sisters Uncut, SOAS, student activism, student movement, student unions, students, sussex, uk passports, universities, women, Yarl's Wood, Yarlswood.

by Sahaya James

Harmondsworth detention centre, near Heathrow, is set in an anonymous business park. You can only tell it’s a detention centre because of the barbed wire.

Campsfield detention centre, near Oxford, is accessible by a nondescript turning on a nondescript a-road. The whole site is ringed by a line of trees.

Yarl’s Wood, however, is even more hidden than the rest. It sits hundreds of meters back from the road, behind a double layer of fencing, miles and miles out into the Bedfordshire countryside.

It is, essentially, a prison. Like every detention centre, it doesn’t contain people accused and convicted of crimes — it contains people without UK passports. Specifically, Yarlswood contains women and children.Continue Reading

Yarl’s Wood

THOUGHTS FROM THE FENCES – YARL’S WOOD & THE IMPORTANCE OF IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

YARL’S WOOD

PEOPLE BEFORE BORDERS: UEA MIGRANT SOLIDARITY – THE STUDENT RADICAL #7

SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES – SISTERS UNCUT, YARL’S WOOD AND DIRECT ACTION

DETENTION CENTRES AND THE STUDENT MOVEMENT

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