Another Asylum Seeker Killed by the State
Yet again a ‘failed’ asylum seeker has suffered brutalisation by the state, but this time the agency contracted out to ‘remove’ him killed him:
Police are investigating the death of [Jimmy] Mubenga, a 46-year-old Angolan who lost consciousness when three G4S guards attempted to restrain him on British Airways Flight 77 flight on Tuesday night. He was later taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made.
On Thursday two passengers told the Guardian that guards placed Mubenga in handcuffs and heavily restrained him while the aircraft was still on the runway. One said Mubenga complained of breathing problems before passing out.
[Witness] Michael said he heard Mubenga complain he was unable to breathe.
“I’m pretty sure it will turn out to be asphyxiation,” he said. “The last thing we heard the man say was he couldn’t breathe. We had three security guards and each one of them looked like they weighed 100kg plus, bearing down and holding him down – from what I could see below the seats.”
Michael described as “completely false” the official accounts of Mubenga’s death, released by the Home Office and G4S on Wednesday.
The Home Office said a deportee had been “taken ill” while on the flight. G4S used similar wording, saying Mubenga “became unwell”, forcing the flight to return to Heathrow. “Sadly, the detainee passed away upon arrival at the hospital,” the statement said.
This is far from abnormal for the UK Border Agency, and their account is contradicted by another witness:
Kevin Wallis, a passenger on the aircraft, said he had been sitting across the aisle from Mubenga and watched as three security guards restrained him with what he believed to be excessive force.
Wallis said he heard Mubenga complain: “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” for at least 10 minutes before he lost consciousness, and later observed that handcuffs had been used in the restraint.
Our asylum system is entirely bereft of compassion and common sense. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/15/deportation-jimmy-mubenga-borders:
Anyone employed as an immigration adviser, as I am, is aware of the use and abuse of state-sanctioned force against immigrants that lies just beneath the Home Office UK Border Agency‘s “firm but fair” rhetoric. I’ll never forget representing a 24-year-old Ugandan woman who was HIV-positive and weighed only six stone, who bravely spoke out to the BBC about her treatment by officers inside Colnbrook immigration removal centre: “Two were holding my arms, two were holding my legs and then they hit my head on the floor,” she said. “I was feeling pain and then they twisted my arms and pressed my head on the bed. “I couldn’t breathe and then I was shouting ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ but they were just twisting it harder.” For his part, Tom Riall, chief executive of the home affairs division of Serco, which runs Colnbrook, said staff there do their jobs “with care and decency and considerable respect for all of those in our charge”. “We only use physical restraint as a last resort,” he added.
She also explains why:
But the raison d’etre for this inhumanity is public enough: it is UK government policy to remove more people. An intensification of border control inevitably sacrifices a human approach: from visa national lists to the criteria of the UK’s points-based immigration system, the focus is on particular nationalities or categories of people to exclude from the UK. Target-driven deportation and removal statistics dictate who leaves and when, rather than the needs and desires of the individual human being at stake. Under this political agenda, the UK has become part of a “fortress Europe” that is spending ever more money and force on controlling human movements and on securing its borders.
This is the problem, and it’s resulted in a cowardly and racist immigration policy to placate the country’s Daily HateMail readers, rather than one which reasonably addresses the serious issues surrounding international migration. It led to Jacqui Smith’s Home Office’s disinterest in reprieves for LGBT asylum seekers from being sent back to countries such as Uganda and Iran, it leads to the destitution of ‘failed’ asylum seekers while they’re in the UK and doesn’t acknowledge the genuine social and economic needs of the UK economy. New Labour has gone but it’s left behind a legacy of mistrust of asylum seekers, whom it frequently conflated with economic migrants – just take a look at this comment about his criminal record:
Hmm, I see that the author makes no reference to :
In 2006, Mubenga was convicted of actual bodily harm after a brawl in a nightclub and given a two-year sentence.
From the linked Guardian article. So he had a history of violence and had broken the law in this country. What were the guards supposed to do, bring him tea & biscuits?
His death is to be regretted, but not the deportation or the policy behind deportation. Especially for conviced criminals who have abused this country’s hospitality.
Should that give the state the right to cause his death and then lie about it? What sort of society are we becoming?
More Abuse at Yarl’s Wood?
“We have been on hunger strike since Friday protesting about the length of time we have spent in detention here,” said Aisha, who has been in Yarl’s Wood for three months. “We have been locked in the hallway all day – five ladies have fainted because they have not eaten since Friday. No one has come to give them any medical attention.
“I had an asthma attack, but no one would come to give me my inhaler. I’m very weak. But we will stay on hunger strike for as long as it takes.”
Campaigners condemned the response of the authorities at the centre, accusing them of using a “kettling” technique to trap the women.
“The women are currently trapped in an airless hallway,” said Cristel Amiss, of Black Women’s Rape Action Project. “Women should be allowed back into their rooms immediately; there should be an immediate investigation.”
The Home Office confirmed the disturbance, saying that 40 women were involved, and insisted the measures were temporary until the women could be reintegrated into the centre.
“The wellbeing of detainees is of paramount concern, which is why healthcare staff are at the scene to monitor developments,” said David Wood, strategic director at the UK Border Agency. “The detainees will be integrated back into the centre at the earliest opportunity.”
(source)
The women’s demands are listed on this Facebook page. There will be a demonstration against Serco, who manage the immigration detention centre, on 12th February.
