Britain silent over migrant abuse at Yarl’s Wood
The UK Home Office is unwilling to disclose the number of detainees who have endured rape and other forms of abuse inside Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Center, a new report shows.
The Independent report said Monday it could prove that the Home Office refuses to publish the information in order to protect the “commercial interests” of private companies involved in running the detention center, which is located in Bedfordshire.
UK law requires all government departments to disclose information subject to public interest but so far the Home Office has refused to do so despite a request by the British daily in March.
“Disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests” of people involved with running Yarl’s Wood,” a member of the Home Office staff was quoted by Independent as arguing.
The notorious camp’s personnel are accused of numerous sexual assault and rape allegations.
Chief prison inspector Nick Hardwick called the center a “place of national concern” after it was revealed that more than half the female detainees do not feel safe there.
The UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, has also been denied entry to the center, saying the move raised the question of whether the government has “something to hide.”
Keith Vaz, Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, blasted the Home Office for its refusal, saying, “It’s absolutely absurd that the Home Office should refuse a request of this kind when it is clearly in the public interest for this information to be available.”
Women Against Rape and Black Women’s Rape Action Project, two activist groups working with female detainees at the center for over a decade, published a dossier last year, detailing complaints from current and former detainees.
According to the dossier, some women received sex offers from the guards in exchange for help to get released.
Constant strip searching was another form of abuse that made the women feel humiliated, causing some rape survivors to feel retraumatized.
Operated on behalf of the Home Office by a private company called Serco, the detention center holds women who seek UK asylum while their status is established to either remain in the country or get deported.
Yarl’s Wood opened in 2001 and continues to operate as one of the country’s thirteen such centers.
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