What is happening in detention centres? Are they overcrowded like prisons? Or has the rate of deportations increased? “asked Harmit Athwal, editor of IRR News, which monitors the deaths of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.

“Very little is known about the three men who have died in recent weeks and very little will probably be revealed about them and the circumstances of their deaths until their inquests which are unlikely to be held for some years,” Athwal said.

The latest death occurred on Tuesday of a yet unidentified man, who was apparently facing imminent deportation at Campsfield removal centre near Oxford.

In central England, conflicting reports suggest he was either found hanged or that he cut himself with razor blades.

A spokesperson from the Campaign to Close Campsfield, which held a vigil in Oxford following the death, said that “just being locked up in these conditions is enough to seriously affect a person´s mental health.”

“This is yet another shocking event in the history of Campsfield House, where innocent people are locked without time limit, and in daily fear of removal to the nightmare conditions that drove them to leave their home country in the first place,” the spokesperson said.

Two days earlier, the Home Office confirmed that a 35-year-old male, who has not been named, died at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre, near London´s Heathrow Airport and that it is in the ´process of contacting his family.

Also at Colnbrook, just a few weeks earlier, a 47-year-old Pakistani migrant Muhammed Shuket, died on his way from the detention centre to hospital on July 2.

The IRR said that it had monitored the deaths of the fourteen others who have died at immigration detention centres since 1989.

End.
Last Updated: 6 August 2011