Saturday, January 17, 2015

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Yarl’s Wood: still a nightmare

Posted: 16 Jan 2015 07:01 AM PST

women for refugee women, Yarl's Wood, female asylum seekers, I am Human, research‘Men watched them in intimate situations such as while naked, partly dressed, in the shower or on the toilet.’

A report ‘I Am Human: Refugee women's experiences of detention in the UK’, has been published recently that looked at the experiences of 38 women who came to the UK to seek asylum and were detained in Yarl's Wood detention centre between June 2012 and October 2014.

It focussed particularly on what these women told Women for Refugee Women (WfRW) about how they were treated during their arrests, detention and attempted removals.

WfRW undertook this research in order to gain more insight into the way that the Home Office and their contractors treat women who come to this country seeking protection.

In 2013, 6,396 women came to this country to claim asylum in their own right, out of 23,584 asylum applicants overall.

During 2013, the Home Office detained 2,038 women who had come to the UK to seek asylum. 43 per cent were held for more than a month.

Many of those held in immigration detention are not asylum seekers, but WfRW were only looking at the experiences of those who come to the UK seeking asylum.

In January 2014 Women for Refugee Women published a longer report which explored the experiences of women who had been detained in the UK after seeking asylum.

That report, ‘Detained: women asylum seekers locked up in the UK‘, discovered compelling evidence that women who are survivors of rape, sexual violence and other torture are often being held in immigration detention for long periods when they come to this country to seek asylum, and that this detention has a very negative impact on their mental health.

The research WfRW undertook for this new report adds more weight to those original findings. For instance, the women spoken to for this report also talked about grave experiences of persecution in their home countries.

Of the 34 women who disclosed their experiences of persecution, 19 women said they had been raped; 21 women had experienced other sexual violence; 28 women said that they had experienced gender-related persecution under the headings asked about – rape, sexual violence, forced marriage, forced prostitution, or female genital mutilation – and 21 women said that they had been tortured in their home countries.

WfRW said, ‘We cannot know how representative these findings are compared to the whole population of asylum seeking women, but this suggests that the UK government is still routinely detaining large numbers of women who are survivors of rape, sexual violence and other torture.

‘We should state that all our research relies on women's own accounts of their experiences of seeking asylum and being detained.

‘We did not seek corroborating evidence but simply allowed women to tell their own stories in their own way.’

‘Again, we found that detention had an extremely negative impact on the mental health of those who have already experienced persecution.

‘Among the women we spoke to, half of those who answered said that they had been on suicide watch in Yarl's Wood, and 40 per cent said they had self-harmed.

‘This is comparable to findings in our previous report, where one in five of the women we spoke to said she tried to kill herself in detention.’

There have been recent reports of sexual assaults within Yarl's Wood. In June 2014 the management of Yarl's Wood said that 31 allegations of sexual contact had been investigated and 10 staff had been dismissed.

Six women in the sample said that staff at Yarl's Wood had made sexual suggestions to them, and 3 said that they were touched sexually.

However, research suggests that the intimidation of women in Yarl's Wood does not start and end with sexual assault. Almost every woman told us about other ways in which they felt their privacy was invaded, especially by the male staff at Yarl's Wood.

Almost all of them said that men watched them in intimate situations such as while naked, partly dressed, in the shower or on the toilet.

Of the 38 women, 33 stated that they experienced men seeing them in these situations. Three did not answer, one was on the family wing with her husband, and only one stated this never happened to her.

Of these 33, 13 said that men saw them naked, 29 said men saw them partially dressed, 29 said that men saw them in bed, 16 said men saw them in the shower and 14 said men saw them using the toilet.

Nineteen of the women spoken to were on suicide watch for some or all of their time in Yarl's Wood. For them, the invasions of privacy felt particularly extreme, as they were watched continuously night and day, and even told not to cover their faces while they slept.

Seven of the women in the sample had also been put into solitary confinement in Yarl's Wood, for reasons ranging from punishment after they protested, to having suspected communicable diseases – and the majority of these were also watched by men while they were in solitary confinement.

The women also talked to WfRW about how they felt their privacy was invaded by being searched by men.

‘Thirteen of them told us that they were searched by a male member of staff. Twenty-two of them said that they were watched by men while being searched by a female member of staff,’ the report continues.

‘These experiences of being watched by men were distressing. Thirty-one of the 33 women who were watched by men said that this made them uncomfortable, 27 said they felt ashamed, and 27 said they felt scared.

‘It is also something that the Home Office has denied. In January 2014, when we published our previous report, the Home Office made this statement: 'Male staff would not supervise women showering, dressing or undressing, even if on constant supervision through risk of self-harm.'

‘Our evidence shows that this is not the case, and that either the Home Office does not know what roles are given to male staff and how they have been behaving in Yarl's Wood, or it is deliberately misleading the public.’

Women also spoke of other ways in which they felt victimised by staff members, male and female.

For instance, while only 6 women said that they resisted being taken into detention, 15 of them said that they were handcuffed.

They also spoke about how they felt abused or bullied in Yarl's Wood.

Six women said that a member of staff made a sexual suggestion to them, and 3 said that they were touched sexually. Seven said that they were assaulted by a member of staff. Twenty-nine said that they were bullied by a member of staff. Twenty-five said that they experienced a member of staff being racist to them. Twenty-four women witnessed another woman in detention being subjected to some kind of abusive behaviour.

This report builds up a more detailed picture of what happens to women when they are detained in the UK.

WfRW believe that detention is unnecessary in the asylum process and that women who seek asylum should not be detained.

In 2013 only 633, or 31 per cent, of women who were detained after seeking asylum left detention to be removed from the UK, the rest re-entered British society to continue their asylum claims.

Their detention had served no purpose.

All asylum claims can be considered while the asylum seeker lives in the community. This need not compromise immigration controls, as the government learned after it announced it would end the detention of children for immigration purposes in 2010. An evaluation of the new family returns process in 2013 found that '5 per cent of families within the new process [with minimal use of detention] had absconded. This is exactly the same as in the previous process.'

Detention is also very expensive.

In 2013, the UK government reported in Parliament that the cost of detaining an individual in an immigration removal centre for a year is £37,230.5

Maintaining an asylum seeker in the community has consistently been found to be significantly cheaper.6

Women for Refugee Women is not the only organisation that is recommending a change or end to the process of detention for those seeking asylum.

The recent Parliamentary Inquiry into Detention heard from many organisations including Liberty, Amnesty International and UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency), all of whom are challenging current detention practice.

WfRW recommend an end to the detention of those seeking asylum.

In the immediate future, WfRW recommend that those who have experienced rape or other gender-based violence should never be detained, that pregnant women should never be detained, and that there should be an upper time limit of 28 days on all immigration detention.

WfRW also recommend that immediate changes should be made to the conditions under which women are detained and to the training and recruitment of staff at Yarl's Wood detention centre.

For more detailed recommendations please see page 25 of the report.

New EU rules to help victims of domestic abuse

Posted: 16 Jan 2015 06:21 AM PST

European-Union_flag (2)‘Rights of victims of violence now guaranteed outside their own country’.

Victims of violence, especially those who have suffered domestic abuse or stalking, will be guaranteed better protection in any state which is a member of the European Union now, due to new rules which entered into force on 11 January.

New rules which mean that restraining, protection and barring orders issued in one member state are now quickly and easily recognisable across the European Union (EU) through simple certification.

The European Commission wanted to ensure that any citizen who has suffered domestic abuse is be able to feel safe to travel outside their home country.

This has now been made possible by making transferring the order that protects them from the offender possible.

Previously, victims had to go through complex procedures to get their protection recognised in any other member states – and go through a different procedure for certification in each country.

“The new procedure will mean that women or men who suffer violence can have the protection they deserve and go on with their lives," Věra Jourová, the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, explained.

"They will be able to choose to live in another EU member state or to travel on holiday without fearing for their safety.”

The new mechanism consists of two separate instruments: the 'Regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters' and the 'Directive on the European Protection Order'.

Together, these two will ensure that all victims of violence will be able to get their protection orders recognised in any EU member state, and ensure free circulation of the most common types of protection measures within the EU.

The mechanisms reflect the differences in the member states' national protection measures, which can be of civil, criminal or administrative natures.

The need for support and protection of victims was backed up by a report published recently by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), which concluded that more targeted victim support services were needed in the European Union.

Because despite recent improvements, challenges did still remain for victim support services in many member states.

Specific suggestions for improvement include ensuring victims have access to targeted support services, for example: trauma support and counselling, the removal of bureaucratic hurdles so victims have access to legal aid, and ensuring that people have information about their rights and the services that are available.

“Rights of the victims of violence will now be guaranteed outside their own country too, wherever they are in Europe,” Jourová said.

“In the EU, an estimated one in three women face violence at some point in their life and unfortunately most often this physical violence comes from someone close to the person, such as their partner.”

The rules establishing minimum rights for all victims, 'Directive 2012/29/EU on common minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime', include women as victims of gender-based violence, and aim to ensure that:

They are treated with respect by well-trained police, prosecutors and judges and get understandable information on their rights;

They can get specialised support in all European Union countries;

They can participate in proceedings and have certain rights (such as the right to be heard, the right to legal aid, the right to interpretation and translation, and the right to review a decision not to prosecute; and

They are protected from secondary and repeat victimisation, from intimidation and from retaliation during police investigations and court proceedings e.g. by limiting the number of interviews and medical examinations to a minimum, by ensuring special measures to avoid visual contact with the offender during court proceedings.

The European Commission also organises regular exchanges between countries of best practices so that EU countries can learn from each other about successful policies, find ways to overcome common obstacles and improve their approaches.

These include exchanges on awareness-raising campaigns, using new technologies to better support and protect victims, and on putting in place treatment programmes for male perpetrators.

The European Commission also funds numerous awareness-raising campaigns in EU countries and supports grass-roots organisations, NGOs and networks working to prevent violence against women.

The main funding programmes are DAPHNE III and PROGRESS. As from 2014, provision of funds will continue with the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme, supplemented by funds related to the Justice Programme.

One of the examples of recent projects has been the Cypriot government receiving funding in 2013 to give training to professionals who are in contact with victims e.g. the police, law enforcement officials, social workers and journalists.

The Commission has also been supporting the activities of the European Women's Lobby (EWL), the largest network of women's organisations in the EU, which works to promote women's rights and gender equality, and to combat all forms of male violence against women since 1990, as well as Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE), a network of European women's NGOs working to combat violence against women and children, in particular focused on improving victim support for the last 7 years.

Black deaths: still fighting for justice in the UK

Posted: 16 Jan 2015 05:30 AM PST

black deaths in the UK, justice, openDemocracy‘We try to go peacefully, just ask for the truth but all we keep getting is lies’.

By Amrit Wilson.

In the last few weeks of 2014, I joined thousands of people in London to demonstrate in solidarity with Mike Brown’s family and the protesters in Ferguson.

On one occasion outside the US embassy, Carole Duggan, aunt of Mark Duggan, whose shooting by the police was a trigger for the 2011 riots across England, addressed us: ‘We know what it feels like’ she said ‘to know that a member of your family has been murdered in cold blood. That is why we stand in solidarity with the community in Ferguson’.

Another speaker Marcia Rigg, sister of Sean Rigg, a musician who died in 2008 after being arrested and ‘restrained’ by police in south London said: "What are they supposed to do? We try to go peacefully, just ask for the truth but all we keep getting is lies."

The anger and pain that day were palpable, not only in solidarity with Ferguson but in remembrance of those who have been killed in Britain at the hands of the police, prison officers, and private guards employed by the immigration service.

Some of their names are fairly widely known – Joy Gardner in 1993, Sean Rigg in 2008,  Habib (Paps) Ullah in 2008,  Jimmy Mubenga in 2010 and Mark Duggan in 2011. Others have not been mentioned by the mainstream media, they will not be remembered by British society but their deaths remain a testimony to the kind of country we live in.

The numbers speak for themselves – in 2014 alone there were some 231 deaths in prison, immigration and police custody and in other contact with the police.

What is it like to lose a loved one in these circumstances? How far is it possible to get justice from the complex and baffling apparatus which is the Criminal Justice System (CJS)? What is the alternative? These are the themes and questions addressed by Ken Fero’s five films about Black deaths at the hands of the police in Britain.

Made over the last three decades, each with the same intense empathy with the Black working class families who are fighting for justice, they tell of a continuing struggle uniquely relevant to the future. The most well-known, Injustice (2001), which Fero co-directed with writer Tariq Mehmood,  traces the struggles of the families of Joy Gardner, Ibrahim Sey, Brian Douglas, Shiji Lapite and Wayne Douglas who died at the hands of the police between July 1993 and December 1995.

Despite winning international awards and being shown on television in South Africa, New Zealand, Greece, Iran and on cable channels in the US, not one of Fero’s films has ever been shown on the BBC or Channel 4.

He told me, ‘Injustice has been screened internationally. In the UK it has been shown in cinemas across the country and by the British Film Institute, but UK broadcasters refused to take the risk of libel action as the police are accused of murder. The BBC negotiated for two years about showing it and then claimed it was out of date’.

The films demonstrate stark parallels with the US.

Shiji Lapite was walking home from a restaurant in East London when he was grabbed by the neck and brought to the ground by three police officers for ‘behaving suspiciously’. The neck hold (or choke hold in American usage) continued with all three officers on the ground and Shiji face down or on his side. The post mortem on his body revealed ‘crushed bones at the front of the neck’.

Ibrahim Sey, was celebrating the birth of his daughter at home when he appeared to have a mental breakdown. His wife called the police assuming that they would take him to hospital. They took him instead to Ilford police station where he was thrown to the ground and sprayed with CS gas at close quarters. He was placed face down by four police officers who kept him ‘restrained’ for 15 minutes. Eventually, noticing that he was not breathing, one of them called an ambulance. When it arrived Ibrahim was dead – still in handcuffs and face down.

As his cousin Kura Jagne Njie says, in Injustice, ‘They treated him like an animal. He was nothing… He wasn’t worth it…another piece of meat to them.’

In the case of Joy Gardner, the suffocation was by other horrific means.

Early one morning five policemen and women burst into her home. They claimed she had overstayed her visa. She was thrown to the ground and forced face down on the floor in front of her five year old son Graeme. Then sitting on her body, they bound her hands to her side with a leather belt, strapped her legs together, shackled her feet and wound thirteen yards of surgical tape round her head to gag her.

Injustice shows her mother, the indefatigable Myrna Simpson, unable to hold back her tears as she speaks at a public meeting. ‘It has been a long struggle’, she says, ‘it has been a lot of pain for me and my family and for Graeme…Sometimes I break down in court. I couldn’t take in what I was listening to. I couldn’t believe that human beings could be so cruel to another human being. You don’t know how much I cry. My tears will catch them.’

In Britain as in the US, racist stereotypes are used to justify murder.

While Mike Brown was described as ‘like Hulk Hogan’ and a ‘demon’, Jimmy Mubenga was described by G4S officers recently as ‘extremely strong’, Shiji who was five foot ten and of medium build was described as ‘the biggest, strongest most violent black man’ and Joy Gardner the ‘most violent woman’ they had ever encountered.

Not one of the families in Fero’s films achieved justice despite negotiating every difficult step of the Criminal Justice System.

Even verdicts of unlawful killing by juries in the cases of Shiji and Ibrahim did not lead to police officers being jailed.

Faced with incontrovertible evidence, as Francis Webber noted recently, inquest juries have delivered at least nine verdicts of unlawful killing in the last twenty five years, but no police officer has ever been convicted of homicide – not since 1969 when the policemen who murdered David Oluwale in Leeds were sent to prison for manslaughter.

As Fero and Mehmood say in their Director’s Statement  for Injustice, the message is that ‘in the UK, police officers can kill, safe in the knowledge that they will not be prosecuted for their actions, even if they are found by a jury to have been unlawfully killed’.

Gradually the families realise that justice under the law is a mirage and Injustice shows their attitudes changing.

Brian Douglas’ sister, Brenda Weinberg, says bitterly, “I can’t grieve, I can’t put Brian to rest ever if I know someone’s walking around out there responsible for his death and they haven’t been brought to justice. The only thing that does happen is that as the time gets longer it’s any justice. It can be legal justice or street justice. I don’t really care anymore.”

In Burn (2014), his latest film, Fero once again collaborates with Mehmood. The film looks at the riots which followed Mark Duggan’s death and explores the theme of collective memory.

As always in Fero’s films the main protagonists are working class. They include the families of four people who lost their lives at the hands of the police – Joy Gardner, Cynthia Jarrett, Roger Sylvester and Mark Duggan – who all live in a 3 mile radius of each other in the London Borough of Haringey. Interspersed with these voices, and highlighting them, are Ken Fero’s own poems.

Stafford Scott of Tottenham Rights Centre traces the thread of collective memory, ‘Seven and eight year olds hear Mark Duggan’s name and want to know more…they are going to grow up and be stopped by police officers on the street…. they don’t need to be stopped and searched a hundred times… It needs to happen once or twice, a bad encounter. All they need is something that reaffirms the community’s experience and then it becomes their experience and it runs deep.’

Speaking of the riots, Minkah Adofo, of the United Families and Friends Campaign  (a coalition of those affected by deaths in police, prison and psychiatric custody set up in 1999) says, ‘Even though we may have a temporary respite, as long as the issue of justice is not being addressed then you can expect to see more fires’.

The community’s view of the riots is counterposed with that of the police.

Chief Superintendent Colin Morgan, for example, says that the police must learn to monitor social media even more ‘If there is a significant incident, where people are aggrieved, possibly with the police… we must stay ahead of that use our own intelligence and be able to mobilise resources’. He is unable to see any cause for the 2011 riots; ‘What I saw was opportunism, criminality …I struggled with what I saw to link it to any form of rebellion’.

While police officers like Morgan may appear, on the face of it, very different from their American counterparts, there are clearly enormous similarities.

The main difference seems to be that the use of guns in Britain is less frequent. The use of Tasers, which, according to the UN Committee against Torture are as lethal as firearms, is on the increase. In the last two months of 2014 alone two people died after being tasered.

How do people in the US react to Fero’s films?

He tells me about a screening of Injustice for the families of  those killed by the police in Los Angeles, ‘They were shocked!’, he says,  ‘they said,  in America, when the police kill people it is usually by shooting them. It is systematic and clinical. They were shocked by the level of sustained physical brutality in Britain’.

As Burn indicates, and history demonstrates, riots are used by the state to increase coercion. After the 1981 riots, for example, Thatcher considered arming the police but settled on new equipment and new tactics like ‘saturation policing’ which had been developed in Northern Ireland.

One is left wondering what form increased coercion will take in this neoliberal era.

With Cameron’s promised cuts in police numbers accompanied by the use of rapid response units  greater use of privatised forces is likely, which, in the light of G4S and Serco’s record will make things worse. These forces and the police themselves, like their counterparts in the US, may well use military hardware and tactics from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Burn makes it clear that what we are facing is not just a crisis in relations between the state and the Black communities. As Minkah Adofo says, near the end of the film, ‘This is a crisis of democracy … How we as a society are going to be governed – are we going to be governed by just these elites and these lawless police? Or are we going to be governed by the people? With that understanding we can build up a base of resistance’.

A version of this article appeared in openDemocracy on 15 January 2014.