Serco

Serco is the company that owns Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre where up to 405 women, children and men seeking asylum are detained at any time.  Legal Action for Women found that 70% of those detained reported being survivors of rape.   Women and their families are held in appalling conditions, and describe being subject to racist and sexist physical and verbal abuse.  They also state that the food served is inadequate, and that necessary items are sold at extortionate prices. Women have also complained that staff members have interfered with their attempts to contact their lawyers.

Women in Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre, whom we are working with on a daily basis, have asked us to circulate their letter (See file attachment below for the letter) highlighting the appalling conditions and grave injustice they face in detention. Their demand for an independent investigation to “listen to our grievances and give us justice”, is being raised at the same time as front page newspaper articles expose the widespread destitution of asylum seekers, racist attacks and violence from immigration guards against people during removal and attempts to deport Zimbabwean women weakened by over 40 days of hunger strikes.

In this letter, addressed to the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations and the media, women protest at:

UPDATE, 9 May 2007: Mothers join hunger strike
Black Women's Rape Action Project

Today 91 families, mainly single mothers with their children, some of whom have been detained for over three months, have joined the protest.

Mothers report that after 5pm their kids go hungry as there is no food available until 8am the next morning. Children can’t manage under such harsh conditions. Most can’t eat the meals provided because of the appalling quality and mothers worry that this is affecting their children’s health. Most children were born in Britain but their birth certificates have been confiscated by the immigration authorities. Women are also very concerned about the neglect of their children’s health. One woman whose son has a persistent cough has been told to give him water – she is desperately worried he may an infection, but no one will investigate his symptoms.

31 May 2007: On 29 May, following a wave of public outrage against the Home Office, social services and SERCO (the company running Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre), Ms Janipher Maseko, an 18 year old mother who was detained and separated from her two young children, was told that she and her children are to be released. Hundreds of letters, calls and other pressure forced the Home Office to concede that they could not justify her continued incarceration. Directions to remove her to Uganda have also been cancelled.

In the course of pressing for Ms Maseko to be reunited with her children and released, it came out that other mothers and babies had also been cruelly separated. In a letter to Lord Avebury about a Vietnamese mother and her six-month-old baby, Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne said: