Twenty people demonstrated outside Campsfield this evening (Friday 6 August) their support for detainees protesting at their detention and ill treatment. Detainees spoke to those outside via a speaker phone. A detainee reported that 70 people continued on hunger strike. [UK Border Agency claimed yesterday that only 5 people continued to refuse food.] There were chants and shouts from both sides of the fence: ‘Freedom’, ‘Stop detention, Stop deportation, Close down Campsfield’, ‘We are not criminals’, ‘Migrants are not criminals’, Free the detainees’.

FUTURE EVENTS:
Cycle ride to Campsfield, Monday 9 August. Meet at Martyrs memorial, St Giles, Oxford at 6pm to:
Vigil/demonstration at Campsfield at 7pm Monday 9 August.
Facebook event:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143804952311028

Saturday 7 August: 11am street stall in Cornmarket, Oxford, to get people to sign letters to their MP asking them to act in support of demands of detainees.

More news

Report from visitors to a detainee on Wednesday afternoon 4 August 2010 BC [the detainee] affirmed that some 180 detainees in Campsfield are standing together in the hunger strike.
He also affirmed that organisers had made clear to everyone that any kind of violent behaviour such as breaking windows, damaging property or attempting to break out would not be tolerated. Their action was directed at the manifold injustice of the Asylum and Immigration system and to get a proper response from its authorities in the Ministry and Government.

In the light of the demise of Refugee and Migrant Justice, his own personal situation illustrates the stark consequences. His lawyer was one of theirs. He is now unable to access any of BC’s papers. Recently, applying for bail with his sureties (wife and a friend) fully accepted by the immigration judge, she told him that she would have released him on bail and wished to
do so, but that this was impossible without the provision of his papers. The 12.30 programme today confirmed that all the lawyers' papers are locked up in the premises of the RMJ, with the lock changed, so that access is impossible.

We also learnt that there has been a huge email response supporting the action of the Campsfield detainees.

Media coverage
Protesting detainees Stevenson Grooms and Adel Kader have spoken live to local and national radio and TV. So far they have not suffered reprisals from GEO who run the centre or UK BA.

Detainee moved out of Campsfield as suspected protest ‘ringleader’ CD was due to be visited by two members of the Campaign to Close Campsfield yesterday afternoon. On arrival his visitors were told he had been moved to Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow airport the previous evening, only hours after the visit was booked.

Today CD said, by phone from his new residence, that the Centre Manager at Campsfield gave him a document (not accessible to him at the time of his phone call) giving ‘reasons’ for his being placed in segregation (solitary) and moved to another centre yesterday evening. The document referred to him as a ‘ringleader’ of the ongoing protest. Another document given to CD after his move as he was being placed in segregation in the new centre reads as follows:

‘Reason for Removal from Association
‘The above detainee arrived from Campsfield House as it was witnessed that he had been involved in a peaceful protest during an ongoing hunger strike at the centre by a number of detainees.
‘Due to this information you are currently not suitable for normal accommodation at present. Therefore it has been authorised that you will be placed on Rule 40 (Secure Accommodation) until further information has been gathered. During this time you will be monitored and managed for your suitability to be placed into normal accommodation.
‘Authoristation for an initial 24 hours.’

CD says he is/was definitely not a ‘ringleader’ of the protest in any sense, though he is/was [like over 100 others at the time] participating in it.

Please contact your MP
 http://www.writetothem.com/

and the Home Secretary, Theresa May
Private Office to The Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Telephone: 020 7035 0198
Fax: 020 7035 0900
 Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

calling for the detainees’ demands to be listened to, for the detainees to be released, and for an end to immigration detention, or at the very least a radical independent review of the unjust and inhumane policy of detention and a halt to the expansion of detention centres.

Close Down Campsfield email news list has been launched. To join just send a blank message to:
 closecampsfield-subscribe@yahoogroups.com