Well, today it was done with just four, when activists visited the national head offices of GEO, the company which manages Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire.

Despite the poor publicity (was not announced on any sites) the company clearly heard that a noise demo was planned outside their Reading offices.

Today the company had hired private security, who’d come in vehicles marked ‘Dog Unit’ on them (we’re shaking in our boots), and they were already loitering when the activists arrived. The protestors, who are not affiliated to any one organisation but are united in their belief in the unconditional right to freedom of movement, made a pleasant racket with drums in front of the office’s ground floor windows and handed out leaflets to security, passers by and coppers.

The protestors soon grew suspicious after peering through the office blinds only to see darkened rooms, and were informed by the hired thugs that GEO’s workers had been told not to come in for the day. Only the boss was in. Result!

Perhaps the company was spooked following an invasion of their offices earlier this year.
Well, we certainly made it clear that the campaign against GEO is only in its early stages, and they can now look forward to a large noise demo planned for February!


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A bit of background:

This campaign aims to drive The GEO Group Inc. out the immigration sector. Campsfield is currently their only immigration venture in this country, and the company’s primary interests lie in the US corrections market. The firm entered into the five year contract to run the 215-bed institution in 2007 - the same year that Kurdish asylum seeker Ramazan Kumluca killed himself whilst incarcerated there. He was just 18.
In the past five years, more than 30 people have been driven to suicide in UK detention centres.
The campaign also urges each individual employee to take personal responsibility for their role in supporting this injustice, and to consider an alternative career - one which does not capitalise on the misery of asylum seekers and directly facilitate their deportation.