Detained Voices

This site is purely first hand testimonials from people held in detention centers. It is set in the UK, but serves for comparison and has a lot of interesting information (names not given) – There are often hunger strikes in these detention centers – Colnbrook: Detainees are not treated as human – they are not spoken to, they are not told what is happening, and their only mission is to send these people away. One detainee has lived in the UK for 8 years, has lectured, “trained hundreds of engineers,” and has volunteered in the community through Salvation Army. They lost their job because the Home Office discouraged Newcastle college from hiring them; “the Home Office caused this problem in the first place… by strnagl[ing him].” They have a clean record and claims that there should be more legal aid so that people have a chance. So that parents aren’t taken away from children, etc. – Harmondsworth: A detainee has been in England for 18 years and applied for asylum because it’s not safe for them to back to Ghana. He has no record. His brother, sister, and wife all live in England. He applied to be an over-stayer but the Home Office refused him years later. They told him to report at the immigration center every 2 weeks but he missed one week because his sister passed away. He notified them of this and they gave him a ticket back to Ghana that night. The ticket was cancelled and they put him in a detention center. – Tinsley House: A detainee talks about how his family is suffering because of the detention center, saying “my partner and my kids are wasting away.” Their son cannot sleep unless he talks to him and his daughter wants to run away. They haven’t been in their home country for 19 years. They only stopped working because they were told it was a criminal offense. Even playing by their roles does no good. – Yarls Wood: A woman escaped from Nigeria because, there, it is not safe for her to openly be a lesbian. She was scared of her husband, whom she was forced to marry. She lived in in the U.K. for 6 years and her appeal was refused. She’s supposed to be deported next week. Her ex-husband knows this and is waiting there to kill her. Her ex-husband and the Nigerian police are waiting for her. She was the one who paid for her 4 children to go to school but since she’s been in detention, she cannot send money and 2 of them cannot go. Her husband doesn’t help and doesn’t look after the children. She’s extremely selfless, saying “they should spare my life because of my children. I am begging”