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Legal
Action for Women Crossroads
Women’s Centre
PO Box 287
London NW6 5QU 26 July 2005 Dear
Friends We write to you for urgent help with our asylum work.
You have kindly supported us before and we hope that you can help
us again as we find ourselves in a very difficult situation and the lives
of many people are at stake. It's just over a month since Legal Action for Women launched “For
Asylum Seekers and their Supporters – A Self-help Guide Against
Detention and Deportation”. Since then over 30 women have contacted us from Yarl’s Wood Removal
Centre, and we are starting to get requests for help from Oakington
Accommodation Centre. A
number of women had or have imminent removal dates.
The guide has only just started to be circulated, but already the
requests for help are beyond our forces, and we write to you now to see
how you might be able to assist. When
women contact us from detention we immediately send them a copy of the
guide, by guaranteed next day delivery (at ₤4 a time) because of the
urgency of the situation. As
you know, we work on a self-help basis and the guide is proving to be an
essential tool. We then call or ask them to fax brief details about their
case and what outside help they have, and suggest where best this help can
be directed; we advise them how to get the lawyer to do what is needed;
and give them the contact details of their MP so they can contact them
directly. Many women are rape
survivors who have not spoken about the rape they suffered or if they have
this was not put forward by the lawyer and/or was ignored or downplayed by
the Home Office or the court when they considered the claim. A number
of women from the All African Women’s Group (AAWG), including women who
have been in detention themselves, have committed to regular sessions at
our Centre to do this work which has been invaluable.
Most of this initial contact with women inside is being done by
them under the supervision of LAW, Women Against Rape or Black Women’s
Rape Action Project, depending on the situation of the woman in detention.
But we cannot keep up with the volume of work. In
addition to the sheer number of calls we face other problems. 1. We
are very concerned that August is upon us and as many people go away,
asylum seekers are left unprotected at the mercy of the authorities.
2. Many
of the women are repeatedly having to change lawyers to try and find
someone who will help them. They
are often told they must pay a £1000 to get someone to act for them. Some lawyers lie about coming to visit and what they are
going to do. One lawyer told
the woman in detention that he was visiting on Friday but told us that he
had no plans to visit until Sunday when she was due to be deported on
Monday. Some firms claim to
specialise in detention cases. In
our experience their work is very poor or non-existent but the lawyers get
away with it as the women get deported and therefore cannot lodge a
complaint. One woman said that it is common for it to take two weeks for
a new lawyer to see you and four weeks to tell you what they will do.
That means women are in detention for months on end purely because
they don’t have proper representation. 3. We
often only get some action because we represent an organisation and
because the person who calls has an English accent.
We have noticed that women in detention or anyone who calls on
their behalf with a non-English accent face blatant racism.
An AAWG woman called Oakington with the name, room and bed number
of some of the women there and was told that wasn’t sufficient
information to be able to speak to them.
Another volunteer with an English accent made the same request with
the same information and was put through immediately.
This discrimination against people with foreign accents is common
not only in relation to detention centres but when dealing with lawyers
and other professionals. 4. We
try to refer women to other organisations but are finding that even the
better ones don’t pursue cases with the determination that is needed.
One woman (a victim of child marriage and years of severe domestic
violence who eventually killed her husband in self-defence) was deported
because even though there was a legal case to be made the organisation
couldn’t find a lawyer to make it.
Under those circumstances we would have made representations to the
Home Office highlighting the injustice of deporting a woman who had
compelling reasons to stay, purely because legal representation was not
available. We would also have publicised the situation which may have
helped delay the removal until a lawyer could be found.
5. The
Refugee Legal Centre (RLC) and the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) are
well-funded to provided services to those in detention.
The RLC alone receives over £13 million and last year had a
surplus of £1million. They
will only take cases where women don’t have a lawyer and where they have
their legal case papers. These
are unrealistic restrictions. As
mentioned above the biggest problem is not lack of lawyers but lawyers
that do little or nothing. What
is needed from an organisation claiming to represent women in detention is
either a willingness to take over cases where the lawyer is doing nothing
or call the lawyer to account. Most
women don’t have their papers because they were snatched from their
homes without a chance to collect their belongings.
In addition, women contacting RLC complain that their freephone
number is not free, it costs 4p a minute if called from inside detention.
6. The
conditions in detention are horrendous.
Women report: daily racism, for example, being called black
monkeys, inadequate and innutritious food, inadequate health care
including for mothers and their children, punitive daily harassment, lack
of effective complaint’s procedure and targeting of women who do
complain, violent assaults during deportations including sexual
humiliation. A number have tried to commit suicide including one woman who
is due to be deported tomorrow with her young son, who suffers from fits. 7. On
a number of occasions women are taken to the airport to be deported even
though removal instructions have been cancelled.
One woman was taken to Gatwick and was about to be forced onto the
airplane, until in desperation, she went to the toilet, took all her
clothes off and soiled them. The RLC,
IAS and others who work with those in detention must be aware not only of
the inadequacy of their own service but also of the other daily abuses
that women, children and men in detention are suffering.
To not speak up allows the government to maintain the façade that
the asylum system is “fair”. Our
guide has encouraged women to be in touch with and help each other, and
take collective action against the daily injustices they face.
Women who speak and write English better are helping those who
don’t. Last week women got
together and barricaded themselves into a room to prevent one woman’s
deportation. Now at least
10 Ugandan women including mothers have gone on hunger strike (you should
have received the press release about this in the last couple of days) to
protest their removal to Uganda where they will face persecution and
possible death. We are
asking for your urgent help. ·
Can you or anyone you know in your
network volunteer any time to help us?
What this involves is speaking to women to find out the essentials
of their case, making calls to lawyer, MPs, the Home Office on their
behalf, writing up the details and sending this around to the press and
others, keeping the woman inside informed and being in touch with any
family or other supporters she has on the outside.
·
Any donations would be very much
appreciated. ·
If are in touch with anyone in
government could you arrange a delegation or for representations to be
made to MPs and/or ministers to ensure that the truth of what is happening
to vulnerable women asylum seekers is conveyed directly to them.
·
If you have contacts in the media
could you please approach them and ask if they would be ready to publicise
the Ugandan women’s hunger strike, the lack of adequate legal
representation, attempts to deport women illegally and the complaints
women have about the regime inside Yarl’s Wood and Oakington.
We can arrange interviews with women in detention. Thanking
you in advance, we look forward to hearing from you with any help or
suggestions you can offer. Yours
sincerely, Niki
Adams
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