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Tag Archives: hunger strike

U.S.: Growing Waves of Collective Migrant Resistance

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Hundreds launch hunger strike at immigrant detention center in Adelanto, Calif.

Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2015

Immigrant advocates say hundreds of men have launched a hunger strike at an immigrant detention center in the high desert city of Adelanto, Calif., making it the fourth immigrant detention facility in the United States where protesting detainees have refused food in recent weeks.

Attorneys for some of the men and advocates with a detention center visitation group say more than 300 men stopped eating Oct. 30 to protest conditions at the center. They said another group of detainees joined them in the strike on Wednesday. Continue reading →

Women Migrants on Hunger Strike in Texas

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Hunger Strike at Texas Detention Center Swells Into the Hundreds

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by Kanya D’Almeida, Race and Justice Reporter, RH Reality Check

November 2, 2015

The number of hunger strikers at a Texas immigrant detention facility has swelled to almost 500 since last Wednesday, an Austin-based advocacy group revealed in a phone call with RH Reality Check.

When news of the protest action broke on October 28, about 27 women at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, 35 miles east of Austin, were reportedly refusing their meals.

While grievances ranged from abusive treatment by guards to a lack of medical care, the women, hailing primarily from Central America, were unanimous in their one demand: immediate release.

The strike snowballed over the weekend, according to Grassroots Leadership, an organization that forms part of a larger umbrella group known as Texans United for Families (TUFF).

Cristina Parker, immigration programs director for Grassroots Leadership, told RH Reality Check that one striker who contacted the organization Sunday night to brief them on the situation used the Spanish expression “casi todo,” suggesting that nearly all of the roughly 500 detainees are now observing the strike. Continue reading →

On the Mass Political Movement Inside US Prisons

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Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Four years and still fighting

July 14, 2015, SF Bayview Newspaper

by Claude Marks and Isaac Ontiveros

Four years ago prisoners in California – led by those in the control units of Pelican Bay – organized a hunger strike to demand an end to the torturous conditions of solitary confinement. Two more strikes would follow, with over 30,000 prisoners taking united action in the summer of 2013 – both in isolation and in general population in nearly every California prison.

“Will You Stand Up and Let Your Voice Be Heard July 8th 2013?” – Art: Michael D. Russell

The strikes reflected significant shifts in political consciousness among prisoners and their loved ones. The violence of imprisonment was further exposed by demands and heightened organization from within the cages. Prisoner-led collective actions as well as growing public support dramatically have changed the political landscape.

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Indian Political Prisoner Kobad Ghandy ends hunger strike

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June 6, 2015
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Kobad Ghandy, arrested in 2009

Kobad Ghandy, the 68-year-old undertrial lodged in Tihar Jail here, called off his hunger strike on Friday soon after a court ordered the jail authorities to provide him easier access to basic facilities and adequate health care.

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“Suspected Maoist” DU professor on hunger strike in Nagpur jail

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Pradip Kumar Maitra, Hindustan Times, Nagpur, India, April 14, 2015

Delhi University professor GN Saibaba (centre) is lodged in Nagpur jail after police booked him for alleged links with Maoists. (News Agency photo)

A Delhi University professor, arrested for allegedly being a Maoist sympathiser, launched an indefinite hunger strike on Sunday, protesting against the inhuman treatment at the Nagpur central jail, where he is currently lodged.

GN Saibaba was arrested by the Gadchiroli police in May last year and booked under six sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

On Tuesday, former high court judge and human rights activist BG Kolse-Patil said Saibaba – who is wheelchair-bound as he is physically-challenged – was not given a personal assistant in the jail and was being denied basic needs.

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Texas: Some Hunger-Striking Mothers Were Put In Isolation At Karnes Immigrant Detention Center, Lawyers Say

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[The massive detention and deportation of migrant workers and their families is still at record levels (in the many hundreds of thousands), and the detention industry (part of the larger prison industry) is a very profitable capitalist industry, with GEO and CCA the largest exploiters–and maintainers of large prison and detention populations, but in notorious abusive and overcrowded conditions.  Even more abusive are the family detention centers, which are the new growth industry for GEO and CCA.  In Texas, Karnes Immigrant Detention Center is among the worst. Many supporters, organized by Detention abolitionists, have protested repeatedly.  And from inside, the mothers have faced abusive repression but have gone on hunger strikes, to protest the detention/imprisonment conditions.  —  Frontlines ed.] 
Huffington Post, 04/02/2015
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KARNES DETENTION Karnes Immigrant Detention Center

Authorities at Karnes Detention Center in Texas have responded to a hunger strike launched by a group of 78 mothers this week by placing some women in isolation with their children, according to lawyers and advocates working with the detained migrants.

The group of detained mothers announced Tuesday that they had launched a hunger strike, and demanded that they be released along with their children while they pursued asylum claims outside of detention. The Karnes facility houses hundreds of Central American women who crossed the border illegally with their children during a surge of migration from the violence-plagued countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras last year.

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UK Hunger Strike Continues Over Refugee Detention Centersrmondsworth Detention Center: Asylum seekers’ hunger strike spreads

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[As hundreds of millions of workers and peasants are driven by hunger, desperation, oppressive conditions and displacement to migrate in search of livable and workable conditions, governments worldwide stigmatize, harass, and force into desperate lives, all the better to divide the working class, heighten xenophobia, and exploit in slave-like conditions.  In the UK, migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers are rounded up and stuffed into detention centers–prisons, by all estimates.   But the migrants have organized and waged collective protests, as prisoners do, because “where there is oppression, there is resistance.”  Here is a report on the huge hunger strike in centers across Britain. — Frontlines ed.]
Source: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Hunger-Strike-Continues-Over-UK-Refugee-Detention-Centers-20150319-0034.html.
http://www.teleSURtv.net/english, 19 March 2015   

 

Harmondsworth detention center, from where up to 100 detainees were deported to Pakistan this week.

Harmondsworth detention center, from where up to 100 detainees were deported to Pakistan this week. | Photo: AFP

The protests began last week, and have spread across several detention centers around the country, with hundreds of refugees reported to be taking part.

Migrants across the United Kingdom continued hunger strikes Thursday in protest against the horrendous treatment of asylum seekers in detention centers.

According to asylum seeker advocacy group Detained Voices, which records stories of the experiences of refugees in detention centers, a number of refugees were sent back to their home countries Wednesday. A source, known only as “Chowdery,” told RT that detainees were calling  for the cancellation of a deportation flight to Pakistan, while another said that 100 asylum seekers were due to be deported.

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