Noise Demo @ Harmondsworth IRC, Tuesday 6th November 2012 @ 1.30pm
Remember The Dead - Justice For The Living - End Immigration Detention Now!
Meet at the main entrance to Harmondsworth and Colnbrook IRCs
Colnbrook Bypass
Harmondsworth
West Drayton
UB7 0FX
Prince Ofosu died in Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre last Tuesday 30th October 2012. The private security firm running the prison, GEO Group Limited, and the Home Office refused to disclose any information about what happened, or the person's name or nationality.
Detainees inside and an anonymous GEO officer confirm his name as Prince Ofosu, a Ghanaian detainee, 31 years old. They say he was forcibly restrained by GEO officers, taken to the 'block' (isolation cells), sustained injuries from being hit by an officer and stripped naked and left for 24 hours with the heating turned off until his death. [*See full statement below***]
We Will Not Let This Death Be Silenced - bring banners, whistles, instruments and whatever you can find to make a lot of noise outside the detention centre, and to show solidarity to those still incarcerated inside Harmondsworth & Colnbrook IRCs!
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman is visiting the detention centre on Tuesday 6th November. Reports say the death has been referred to the Hillingdon coroner but an inquest is not expected to open until the middle of next week.
This is the seventh death of a detainee in Harmondsworth IRC and brings to 17 the total number of deaths in the UK Detention estate.
This is the tip of the iceberg in the untold reality of people suffering at the hands of a racist immigration system that persecutes people because they have the 'wrong' kind of identity and status.
Everyday people without papers are seized. They are detained and deported. They are racially profiled, picked out because they are 'foreign' and deemed 'undesirable' from society. Every day people face 'identity controls'. They are criminalised and told they are 'illegal'.
This fear of 'others' promoted by governments makes xenophobia and racism normalised and institutionalised.
Immediate closure of all Immigration Removal Centres, the modern day concentration camps of our society.
Remember the dead - Justice for the Living - End Immigration Detention Now!
[email protected]
www.noborders.org.uk
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