The Anti Raids Network invites you and your groups, friends, and family to join us for a noise demonstration outside Holloway HMP, London (N7 0NU) Friday 27th June, 7pm
No More Immigration Detention – Freedom for all Migrants
The Anti Raids Network calls a demonstration outside Holloway prison to demand an end of the detention and criminalisation of migrants. In the UK, the state uses prisons as well as detention centres to detain an increasing number of migrants. The demonstration is outside Holloway HMP, a women’s prison, to highlight the injustices which migrant women and the poor are subjected to a system which criminalises survival, poverty and immigration status. Many imprisoned are survivors of sexual abuse and torture; pregnant women and children are also detained for months, sometimes years, creating severe physical and mental health issues. Mothers are often separated from their children in detention. There are also many known cases of racist, physical and sexual abuse by guards in detention centres.
When around 70 women in Yarl’s Wood detention centre went on hunger strike in 2010 to demand better conditions for migrants and an end to detentions, their protests were met with severe repression, and four of the women were transferred to prison, two of them to Holloway HMP. They were held without charge for over a year. Detention is inhumane and murderous.
On the 30th of March 2014, Christine Case, a national of Jamaica aged 40, died in Yarl’s Wood detention centre of a heart attack, when her screams were unattended by guards. Since 2007 there has been 1425 recorded attempted suicides across the UK detention estate. Migrant women are also at the mercy of the murderous police force. We remember Joy Gardner, murdered by police and immigration officers in her home in 1993 for overstaying her visa.
We will make noise to show solidarity with and demand freedom for our sisters in prison.
Bring pots, pans, drums, banners or just yourself.
See you there,
The Anti Raids Network