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SEA welcomes Human Rights investigation of immigration detention centres

Press Statement from the Socialist Environmental Alliance

The SEA welcomes today's (January 11th) announcement of an investigation of immigration detention centres by the Human Rights Commission. However, we believe that no advance notice of the impending visits to the Crumlin Road and Hydebank centres should have been given.

As Monica McWilliams has said, Northern Ireland is the only part of ithe UK where detained immigrants are held in prison as a matter of course. This scandal is compounded by the near-silence of the major political parties on the issue. Attempts by other groups and by the Anti Racist Network to raise the issue over the past year have largely fallen on deaf ears.

We hope that the HRC initative will amplify concern about the official racism involved in handling immigration and asylum issues generally.

The SEA also welcomes the action of Derry Sinn Fein councillor Gerry MacLochlainn today in publicising the racist bigotry experienced by a black woman passing through City of Derry Airport. As Cllr. MacLochlainn says, the fact that the airport is publicly-owned puts an extra onus on public bodies to ensure that there is no repeat of this disgusting behaviour.

We should note, however, that the behaviour of immigration officers at Derry was par for the course at Aldergrove and Belfast City, where black people are routinely harrassed, insulted and, in many instances, imprisoned in either Crumlin Road or Hydebank. Again, efforts to push this issue into the mainstream has so far failed.

Today's initatives will need to be followed through if real resistance to the official racism in our midst is to be combatted.





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