Three women share heartbreaking stories from the notorious Yarl’s Wood detention centre

Three women from the notorious Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre have shared their heartbreaking stories.

#SetHerFree

From 7pm to 9pm on 30 January, Miriam, Agnes and Mary ‘took over’ EverydaySexism‘s Twitter page:

Near Bedford, on an industrial estate that was a former military research facility, there is a detention centre for women called #YarlsWood.

Here, over 1500 women who have come to the UK to escape persecution are locked up each year. #SetHerFree pic.twitter.com/MFf0vomIk1

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Mariam: “For what reason am I being locked up?”

As part of a minority Somali tribe, Mariam fled from “war and rape”. She hoped to find safety in the UK. And she thought she’d left her “problems” and “perpetrators” far behind.

Initially, she thought Yarl’s Wood was a “hostel for women”. But soon, the truth dawned, and she “realised after four days that I couldn’t leave the building”:

I thought, “For what reason am I being locked up?” And no one could give me the answers, because even the women who were explaining to me that it was a detention centre did not know why they were there. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Mariam feels fortunate that she only had to spend two weeks in Yarl’s Wood. But she met many women detained for over a year. Now, she campaigns to show support and solidarity for all the women who’re still locked up:

We have been campaigning, organising demonstrations and protests, and we have gone to Yarl’s Wood in Bedford to show solidarity and support to women locked up there. This gives them hope, strength and determination not to give up. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Agnes: “I am an asylum seeker, I am a woman, I am a human being”

No matter where they come from, all the women in Yarl’s Wood fled from dangerous situations. As Agnes said, “I am a woman, I am a human being”:

I had spent 55 years of my life in my country, but then I was forced to come to the UK. I never expected to leave my country – I love my country, I had a job, I was married. But I was forced to come here to save my life. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Although Agnes arrived in the UK with a visa, she couldn’t renew it and spent eight years in the asylum system. Eventually, she was locked up in Yarl’s Wood:

Yarl’s Wood is a terrible place. Every day you are scared that they will take you to the airport and send you to your death. Three times they took me to the airport to take me back to the country I fled. I was always asking myself, what will happen to me tomorrow? #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

The situation in the UK is appaling because there’s:

no time limit on immigration detention in the UK, so women can be locked up for weeks, months or even years. The UK is the only country in Europe with no time limit on detention. This is a human rights scandal.

Yarl’s Wood, Agnes said, “is a prison”:

But I didn’t do anything bad, I just came to claim asylum because I was scared to be killed or tortured in my country. I don’t know why they lock up people who fled violence, persecution, torture. They need security and safety. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

But as Agnes explained, no one knows how long they’ll be there. There’s no time off for “good behaviour”, no parole, and “you just don’t know when you will get out”. Agnes has a clear message for home secretary Sajid Javid:

.@sajidjavid should go to Yarl’s Wood. To meet the ladies who have nowhere to go. To talk to people. To see what they see, to see what it is doing to their minds. We are people, not numbers. We left our families because of persecution; we came to seek safety. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Going through the asylum system means people can’t work or study. This leaves too many people destitute:

The second thing is not to make people destitute. I meet a lot of young women who are put in very dangerous situations because they have no home and no money. Allow us to work, because we have a lot of skills. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Like Mariam, Agnes is also helping other women in similar situations. And her message to the UK government is powerful:

Thank you for reading my story.

My message is: Let us be part of society, let us be free, let us have hope. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Mary: “Yarl’s Wood is a horrible place”

Mary (name changed for safety) is still detained. She was sold to human traffickers in the UK to pay off a family debt, and then forced into sex work:

The people who brought me here made me have sex with a lot of men for money. Often they would beat me up until my whole body was covered with bruises. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

Although Mary said “Yarl’s Wood is a horrible place”, her bigger fear is deportation back to China:

We are terrified for our lives, because if we are sent back to China we will be killed. We want to be released so that we can finally be safe. #SetHerFree

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

The Home Office has recently been accused of “failing vulnerable trafficked women by locking them up in Yarl’s Wood”.

“Everyone in detention is under threat”

Antonia Bright, a lead campaigner with the Movement for Justice, told The Canary that everyone at Yarl’s Wood also faces potential deportation:

Everyone in detention is under threat, though they may still be going through cases and working on applications. The risk of what will happen, or what each person stands to lose, is the critical reason why they are fighting to stay. 

According to the latest Home Office statistics, 2,545 people are currently held in detention centres. Up to 400 of these are women held at Yarl’s Wood, in conditions that Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has called “psychological torture”. Yet the Home Office is allegedly failing to act to protect survivors:

The Home Office promised to stop routinely detaining survivors, because of the harm it causes them, when it introduced its 'Adults at Risk' policy.

But we have shown how this guidance is continually ignored and how vulnerable women remain in detention. #SetHerFree pic.twitter.com/78Zis8OmOc

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) January 30, 2019

These women are not criminals. And their Twitter interventions give a vital insight into the horrible treatment they have suffered.

We must stand together and fight to end deportations, force change in the UK’s brutal asylum system, and give every woman who’s detained the love, support and solidarity they deserve.

Featured image via Max Pixel