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Home
| Friday 29th March
2002 | Issue 348
WAKE UP! IT'S YER LATER THAN USUALSchNEWS
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YARL-BOO SUCKS!When I asked what the officers were doing with all this situation,
they said there is no officers, cos they all run away. I just couldn’t
believe it... I saw that all doors and the gates (we had them along
the whole corridors) were locked. No officers, no police, no fire
brigade or anybody else. Only scared people everywhere...The some
male detainees (mostly black) were trying to get people outside
the building. Cos if it hadn’t been for them we would all be
burned in that fire.” It’s been over a month since the Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre in Bedfordshire burned down, but the true story of what happened on that day is still no clearer. The government’s response -a promise to toughen up their policies with more detention centres, increased security, faster removal times for failed asylum seekers, and reduced access to the judicial system. Yarl’s Wood only opened last November -built at an estimated cost of £100 million and run by Group 4 under licence from the Home Office. To make asylum seekers feel welcome they’ve installed security equivalent to a category B prison, surrounded by 16ft high fences topped by razor wire with moving cameras and microwave detection units to prevent escape. According to the government the centre is supposed to house ‘failed’ asylum seekers facing immediate deportation, yet their own statistics reveal that only 46 of the 385 detainees at Yarl’s Wood on the night of the fire were waiting to be deported. Ever since the first people were locked up there has been constant protests about conditions. In January nearly all the detainees, went on hunger strike for 24 hours, while on the afternoon of 14th February, the day the fire started, trouble flared after a woman was handcuffed so she could be taken to hospital. At some point later a fire started. It’s not clear where, although many detainees believe it started in the reception area to which they have no access. Shocking stories from those who were inside on the day are only now emerging. “The incident started when detainees saw a woman aged about 55 being restrained and they were concerned for her safety. Women were told to stay in their rooms by staff. Families were waiting in their rooms for Group 4 to tell them what to do. Three hours later, when they became aware of the fire, and the building started to fill with smoke and heat, they were still inside waiting. Exits and doors were locked. There was no evacuation by Group 4. Detainees got one another out of the burning building. Once outside, they saw others trapped in their rooms calling for help, unable to breathe. One man opened his door and found flames outside. Detainees shouted to Group 4 or the police asking them to help those who were trapped. With exits being closed, the only way out of the burning building would have been to try to smash their way through high security toughened windows which are designed to open only a few inches. Some detainees tried to put the fire out themselves, but when they saw they couldn’t, they shouted to firemen to come in. Others said police or Group 4 tried to push them back in to the building, or blocked their exit when they tried to get out. Detainees, including a 2 month old baby, were kept outside most of the night in freezing weather. Bedfordshire County Council had transport, social facilities including a school available to provide respite care but they were not used. People were herded around the site by police/Group 4, who shouted at them and tried to make them gather near to the burning building on tennis courts. When people protested, they pushed them on to the unused part of the building.” Deportation DepartmentWhilst Group 4 were busy locking the detainees inside it appears that fire fighters were being locked out from the burning building. Had they got they could well have prevented much of the estimated £38 million of damage. Home Secretary David Blunkett was quick to blame the fire and the lack of access for the fire fighters, on the detainees, complaining “Having removed asylum seekers from prison, we now find that our reward is the burning down of a substantial part of the facility, this is deplorable”. The Fire Brigade Union (FBU) however are refusing to tow the official line and have attacked the Home Office and Group 4 for refusing to install a sprinkler system. Andy Gilchrist from the FBU said “It is clear that [they] have put their private profit before the lives of asylum seekers thereby treating them as second class citizens. Group 4 flatly refused to put a sprinkler system into these premises to cut their costs.” Fire fighters who were at Yarl’s Wood have also contradicted claims that it was asylum seeker who stopped them getting in to put out the fire. A spokesman said “None of the fire fighters has a bad word to say against the asylum seekers, we are only demoralised because we were prevented from doing our job.” In the light of what they saw at Yarl’s Wood, the FBU are now calling for the immediate release of all asylum seekers from detention centres until they can be made safe. Group 4 is the largest security firm in the world, and are also involved in Campsfield detention centre. In 1997 after mass protests at Campsfield, 10 detainees were charged with rioting, but the subsequent trial collapsed after it became evident that the Group 4 security guards were lying and had themselves caused criminal damage. No action was ever brought against the company. For those who were locked up in Yarl’s Wood on that night of the fire 70 have now been transferred to prisons, some of them are in solitary confinement, although none of them have been charged with any offence. 19 are still missing, the official line is that they’ve escaped, although it can’t be ruled out that they may have died in the blaze, a detailed forensic investigation of the site only began late February and is expected to take 2 months. In what is looking like a massive cover up, access by friends and relatives to many of those that knew what went on during that day has been denied, and key witnesses to events have been deported. Shakir Hussain a solicitor representing some of the asylum seekers, has already had one client removed without any warning “It seems to me that any potential witnesses were put in segregation and shipped out as soon as possible.”. There is real fear among campaigners that these moves could stop investigators getting to the truth. * Stop the lies. Demonstrate at Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre this Saturday 12 noon till 2.pm Saturday. For directions tel: 07786517379 www.stoparbitrarydetentionsatyarlswood.co.uk * Open Borders The Case Against Immigration Controls by Teresa Hayter (Pluto Press) * www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk
SIZE MATTERS“We are creators of new technologies… driven
- this time by great financial rewards and global competition -
despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating what it may be like
to try to live in a world that is the realistic outcome of what
we are creating and imagining.” - Bill Joy, chief scientist
and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. It’s being called the next industrial revolution
– and with one research institute announcing that hundreds
of three-legged robots the size of a thumb, complete with onboard
computers, powerful microscopes, and biosensors will be ready to
manufacture nano-scale materials by the middle of this year, it’s
a science coming our way soon. Welcome to nanotechnology. Once the stuff of science
fiction, nanotechnology now seems the scientists’ equivalent
of porn. But what is a nano? A nanometre is a billionth of
a metre. If you put fifty million nanos side by side they’d
be the width of a human hair. Where biotechnology manipulates genes
to alter their natural molecular composition, nanotechnology aims
to build pretty much anything atom by atom or alter existing structures. Not surprisingly, the bio-tech and pharmaceutical
corporations, not to mention NASA and the trigger-happy US military,
are busily developing and funding nanotechnologies. (The U.S. Defense
Department announced it would be spending $180 million on it this
year alone.) The scope and impact of nanotech was brought home
last month by researchers in Spain working with Kraft Foods. They
are developing nano-capsules containing the colour, fragrance, and
taste of tens of thousands of different drinks. The consumer would
buy a generic liquid containing multiple-choice capsules (ranging
from fruit juices to colas to wines and spirits). By exposing these
capsules to different ultrasound or radio frequencies, the desired
concoction would be released. Households would likely need nothing
more sophisticated than a microwave-type device. This technology is delivering a series of almost magical
inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. Mihail
Roco, the National Science Foundation’s senior advisor for
nanotechnology warns that, “a nano elite could command unlimited
wealth and power” while Paul Thompson, a professor of ethics
at Purdue University says “There are some disturbing similarities
between biotechnology and nanotechnology. This is a technology that,
once it’s out there, can’t be called back.” As Pat
Mooney of ETC group in Canada points out “Nanotechnology must
become a serious issue for the Rio+10 summit If governments don’t
address it there, we could find ourselves dealing with social and
environmental issues that will make biotech look insignificant.” Maybe that’s why one of the most influential figures in computing
Bill Joy wrote in Wired magazine that self-replicating nanobots
are more dangerous than nuclear weapons and urged scientists to
abandon nanotech for the good of mankind.
SchNEWS in brief
Neil Bartlett has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for a series of bomb hoaxes against organisations involved in animal abuse. Write to him: Neil Bartlett FW7083, HMP Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1EA Jonas Enander has just been given two years and 6 months for his part in the anti EU protests in Sweden last year. Letters to Jonas Enander, KVA, Aby-Funbo 755 97 Uppsala, Sweden. To contact the Gothernburg prisoner solidarity group e-mail: solidaritetsgruppen@hotmail.com
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