At 11.00am on Tuesday 5th of July activists attended and disrupted a Group 4 (G4S) consultation in Cardiff. G4S are bidding to run a service called COMPASS ( Commercial and Operational Managers Procuring Asylum Support Services). This is a project aimed at finding an outsourced provider for housing asylum-seekers, as well as associated services and transport.
Activists from No Borders and other groups disrupted the corporate double-speech to give one of their own, highlighting the violent and unaccountable nature of G4S. Questions were asked and activists argued that G4S were not fit to run services such as housing considering their history of abuse towards asylum-seekers. The response was one of denial and dismissal, when one young asylum-seeker spoke up about their fears of living under G4S they were flatly ignored.
Migrant housing is currently run by the UKBA, and their intention is that, by August 2012, asylum accomodation will be run by other organisations. G4S hopes to be that organisation. We argue that G4S should not be given this contract.
-G4S has serious allegations of abuse and unaccountability, most notably:
A 2008 report by Medical Justice details nearly 300 cases of alleged physical assault and racial abuse by private security in the deportation process. G4S is the largest private security company in this field.
In 2010, following a House of Lords report, Baroness O’Loan found that the majority of cases in which complaints were made, previous investigations were inadequate or not done. She said that, ‘on occasion there quite simply had been a failure to deal properly with the complaints’. Companies such as G4S are unaccountable.
In Oct 2010 Jimmy Mubenga died at the hands of G4S staff on a deportation flight. He was suffocated as he tried to complain about being returned against this will.
G4S are not social landlords. They are the worlds largest private army, running prisons, transferring detainees and are concerned with their profit, with a record of brutality and violence.