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The
high number of deaths among asylum-seekers held in
British detention centres has prompted human rights
and refugee groups to demand an urgent public
inquiry to prevent any further loss of life.
Manuel Bravo, who hanged himself in front of his
13-year-old son at Yarl's Wood detention centre in
Bedfordshire, was the sixth asylum-seeker in custody
awaiting deportation to commit suicide in the past
12 months.
At least three other asylum-seekers living in the
community have also committed suicide after losing
their appeals this year. Mr Bravo's death follows
that of Ramazan Camlica, 19, who took his own life
seven months after arriving in Britain. Mr Camlica
came to his country to escape the persecution he
felt as a Kurd living in the Turkish city of
Gaziantep, eastern Anatolia. He was found dead in
June at Campsfield House detention centre,
Oxfordshire, after his application for bail was
rejected for a third time.
Deborah Coles of the pressure group Inquest said the
time had come to establish what had gone wrong with
the system. She said: "This death once again raises
fundamental concerns about the treatment of
asylum-seekers in the detention centre system.
What's needed is a full and independent inquiry into
all the deaths because unless action is taken lives
will continue to be at risk."
Amnesty International said it was important that
lessons were quickly learnt. Amnesty's UK refugee
programme director, Jan Shaw, said: "Our recent
research points to a quite unacceptably high level
of suffering for thousands of people who are locked
up in the UK under immigration powers. The human
cost of this policy is frighteningly high. We found
that people are languishing in detention with no end
in sight - leading to hopelessness, mental illness,
self-harm and even, tragically, to people attempting
suicide."
A spokesperson for the Refugee Council said: "This
is both very sad and hugely appalling. It
demonstrates in such stark terms the enormous
failures of a system that seems to concentrate more
on increasing the number of removals than it does on
ensuring that people who need safety here are able
to get it. It is vital that procedures are urgently
reviewed to ensure this cannot happen again."
Emma Ginn, a co-ordinator from the National
Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, also
supported the call for an inquiry that would go
beyond what the Home Office investigation had
ordered. She asked: "Why is it that so-called bogus
asylum-seekers continue to choose suicide rather
than returning to their own countries? The
Government knows that these people face real dangers
yet they continue to order their return."
Harmit Athwal, of the Institute of Race Relations,
warned the Government that the more ministers tried
to speed up deportations the more likelihood of
similar acts of self-harm.
In July this year Yarl's Wood, Britain's largest
immigration detention centre, was condemned in a
report by Anne Owers, the chief inspector of
prisons. Ms Owers said her inquiry had found that
children detained at the centre were "damaged" by
their experience. In one case a five-year-old
autistic girl was so badly neglected she had not
eaten properly for four days.
Ms Coles said many of the immigration detention
centres were run by private companies and "shrouded
in secrecy". She added: "The circumstances of some
of these deaths are simply never made public."
www.independent.co.uk
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