DISABLED MAN FROM KENYA SUING HOME OFFICE SUPPORTS HARMONDSWORTH DETAINEES ON TRIAL
14 January, 9.30am, Southwark Crown Court, 1 English Grounds, London SE1

Peter Gichura, a wheelchair user from Kenya, detained twice in Harmondsworth detention centre, and still under threat of deportation, will take part in the demonstration outside Southwark Crown Court in support of the Harmondsworth 4.

Four men have been targeted for prosecution following protests in Harmondsworth on 28 November 2006, the day after publication of a damning report by Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers into conditions and treatment of detainees at Harmondsworth.  The investigation found 44% of detainees had reported being victimised by staff, and 60% said they felt unsafe there.

Protests were triggered by guards preventing detainees watching a news broadcast about the report.  Prison riot squads were drafted in to batter the protesters into submission. About 50 detainees were left in a courtyard all night. Some were forced to go without food and water for over 40 hours. Others were locked in dangerously overcrowded rooms while parts of the detention centre were on fire.

The horrendous conditions in Harmondsworth are replicated in removal centres across the country, where women and men courageously organise against daily brutality, including sexist/racist attacks, and other violence from guards and escorts, both inside centres and during removal attempts.  Pregnant women, mothers and children and victims of rape and other torture, with disabilities and suffering serious ill-health, are often detained for months or face fast-track deportations under increasingly harsh legislation.

Peter Gichura, detained in February and August 2006, is bringing a precedent-setting disability discrimination case, and said:

“I’ve experienced the violence and racism inside Harmondsworth first-hand and that is why I’m supporting the Harmondsworth 4.

“In Harmondsworth they put me in a room where I was not able to use the bathroom and toilet properly; I suffered painful, threatening and humiliating body searches and inadequate medical treatment.  I am suing the Home Office and Kalyx, the private company running Harmondsworth.

“I injured my spine from a fall while fleeing police in Kenya.  The Home Office refused my asylum claims -- from persecution as a Kikuyu disability activist living in the slum of Kibera in Nairobi, and for life-saving medical treatment and living conditions here.  Given the extreme violence in Kenya now, how can it be safe for me and others to be returned? 

“Why should we, whose only ‘crime’ is seeking asylum, be locked up and abused?”

The Harmondsworth 4 campaign is supported by: London No Borders, Barbed-Wire Britain, Institute for Race Relations, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike, All African Women’s Group, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, and other organisations.

For more on the Harmondsworth 4 Campaign: http://www.noborders.org.uk or email harmondsworth4@riseup.net

For more on Peter Gichura see: www.refusingtokill.net/Peter%20Gichura/PeterGichuraindex.htm