UK: Hunger strike by asylum-seekers (feature)
01 January 1997
A hunger strike joined by over 70 detained asylum-seekers in Rochester prison, Kent, brought a number of people to the edge of death and provoked a national debate on the treatment of asylum-seekers. The hunger strike, which began on 6 January, was provoked by a statement by a Home Office minister that there were no immigration prisoners, and united Algerians, Bangladeshis, Nigerians, Romanians, Russians and Zaireans. After three weeks, seventeen people were still on hunger strike, and five were refusing fluids as well as food.
The protest against being treated like criminals sparked a national debate at the end of January. Prisons minister Ann Widdecombe defended the incarceration in a Commons emergency statement, referring to the relatively small proportion of asylum-seekers detained and to detainees' rights to apply for bail. Refugee workers riposted that although fewer than 800 asylum-seekers are detained at any one time, this amounts to between 6,000 and 10,000 annually. The right to apply for bail is in practice worthless except for those with relatively wealthy contacts in the UK, since immigration adjudicators do not normally release immigrants on bail in the face of Home Office objections, unless they produce sureties worth ?2,000. There is no presumption in favour of bail and no legal aid to apply for it. The result is that only 15 per cent of detainees ever apply.
In a letter to the Bishop of Oxford, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Timothy Kirkhope rejected the suggestion that there should be a statutory time limit on immigration detention - at present unlimited. His reasoning is that "setting such a limit would give some applicants an incentive to try and delay their removal until the time limit had been reached and, once they had been released, I believe it would be optimistic to think that most would simply report back for removal later". The case of Karamjit Singh Chahal, recently released after the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights (see Statewatch, vol 6 no 6), shows that the Home Office has no qualms about holding immigration detainees for many years.
The letter reveals that the immigration service has adopted prison service guidelines on hunger strikes. These guidelines say that the hunger striker will receive "advice" after three days on the effect on health of continuing to refuse food, and thereafter will be offered daily advice and treatment. Hunger strikers will not be force-fed or forcibly rehydrated, but if they require treatment not available at immigration detention centres, they will be transferred to a prison with a hospital, or an NHS hospital.
The letter goes on reassuringly that immigration detainees are held separately from criminal prisoners, and "may make and receive telephone calls and .. friends and relatives may visit "daily". But lawyers representing hunger strikers at Rochester found it virtually impossible to contact them: some claimed they were told they could only have one legal visit a week and were allowed only one phone call every day. Hunger strikers were also moved secretly, with their legal representatives sometimes unable to find out where they had been taken. The wife of a former detainee said that immigration detainees are often treated worse than convicted criminals, and for example they were sometimes strip-searched after visits.
By the beginning of February the hunger strikers were dispersed around the prison system, and nearly all were known to be back on fluids, having come close to a critical condition to draw attention to their situation. The Medway Detainees Support Group organised regular pickets and vigils outside the prison, and detainees inside were cheered by the shouts and chants of support. Despite the tough public stance of the Home Office, a number of hunger strikers were quietly released on temporary admission.
The plans of the Home Office to house detainees in a prison ship off the Dorset coast suffered