Asylum Seekers Stage Hunger Strike in UK Detention Centers

Date: 13 March 2015 - 19:43

News ID: ۱۱۹۹۳

LONDON (PRESS TV) – Asylum seekers in several immigration centers in the UK have staged hunger strikes and demonstrations to protest living conditions in the facilities.
Several hundred asylum seekers at Harmondsworth detention center, Britain's largest immigration center, have been on strike since Monday.
About 300 refugees are attending the strike at the detention facility, located near London’s Heathrow Airport, to protest overcrowded, prison-like conditions which they say are "comparable to animal cages.”
Similar strikes have also been staged in other detention centers across the UK since last week, with many of the detainees resorting to Twitter and Facebook to share their experiences.
An asylum seeker, who attended the hunger strike in Harmondsworth, said in a tweet message that several people had passed out from lack of food and water in the center.
The detainees have also protested their condition in an open letter to the Home Office, complaining of inadequate healthcare and lack of access to legal service.
The protests come in the wake of a UK parliamentary inquiry which urged an end to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in centers that resemble high-security prisons.
In a report released earlier this month, a panel of British MPs confirmed alleged abuse and inhumane conditions in detention centers for asylum seekers in the UK. It added that the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in the facilities is "expensive, ineffective and unjust.”
The UK is the only country in the EU that has no limit in the length of time that asylum seekers can be detained.
According to Britain’s Home Office, more than 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers are estimated to have been detained indefinitely in the country with many held for months or even years.