‘This becomes a form of torture itself’: a story from detention told to Refugee Tales

Since I was released from detention, I make it my business to fight for my brothers and sisters who are still stuck in detention with whatever little means I can. Not because I also passed through the same situation. Not because it’s the right thing to do. Not because the whole system has failed us rather than helping. And indeed, not because it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.

But simply because, as an asylum seeker, detention is the worst place I have ever been in my life, especially when I needed help the most. It gives me nightmares knowing that another person has to go through the same experiences every day. Put yourself in the shoes of those people fleeing their home country, seeking refuge here in the United Kingdom, or in neighbouring countries. Once you make it here you would expect to get some sort of help or some sort of protection, right? Well in my case it was the opposite. My experience in detention was worse than I can describe.

We were held under class B high security conditions, locked in prison cells for long hours, treated as criminals, and sometimes even worse. For an extremely vulnerable person seeking refuge from persecution in his own country, this becomes a form of torture itself. I remember a young man in the cell opposite mine who used to cry in pain to the officers every day and night. “Please, officer, please, take me to the hospital. Or at least give me some medication, I am dying.” But all his crying fell on deaf ears. One day, when his cellmate rushed out of the cell in panic that the man was actually dying, we had to go on strike so that he could get the attention he so badly needed. When he was eventually rushed to the hospital, after he couldn’t talk anymore, we were so eager to find out what had happened to him, whether he was still alive or not. But we have never heard a thing from him ever since. In shock, one of the committed men on our wing said that that sort of behaviour from the staff was not even common in the prison where he served his sentence. 

Winning your case in detention in the Fast Track system was close to impossible, as the great majority of the asylum cases were rejected, and so was mine. This didn’t surprise me because it seemed to me that the entire structure of the Fast Track system itself was designed to result in the refusal of asylum claims, rather than in a fair judgement on the vulnerable cases. Even though every solicitor who saw my case argued that I had a very strong case, I only managed to fight my case and be granted asylum after I was released.

Seeking medical help was a waste of time because we only had one doctor on each wing, who seemed only ever to prescribe Paracetamol. After suffering from diarrhoea two consecutive times, I went to the doctor and asked him why I was denied medication even though it was prescribed to me. This is what he had to say: “We fear people could take an overdose. Sorry, I can’t give it to you” But then I wasn’t even allowed to take it in his presence either. So, I wondered why he was there in the first place.

Eating anything was only possible with a really strong motivation to try to eat. Not because we didn’t want to but because we were so depressed and traumatised by the whole situation in detention. Most of us went on hunger strike to express our grief and dissatisfaction at the way we were being treated and also to protest about being detained in the first place.

Having to witness people attempting suicide is itself a form of torture, leaving you hopeless and helpless, unable to have the mental capacity to fight your own case. It really feels as if there is a deliberate attempt to crush your mental capacity. This is only to mention a few aspects of detention.

But somebody today might ask, has the situation actually changed for the better? I guess the answer to the golden question is, No. These things still happen today in detention. And this is where we come to the call for an end to detention. Imagine, it costs the Home Office about £96.66 per day to keep a detainee behind bars. And because of the appalling conditions in detention, and the many cases of unlawful detention, the Home Office has been challenged numerous times in the courts, by charities like Detention Action. Of course, some cases go unanswered, like those who are unlawfully deported and those who take their own lives, or face very serious medical conditions under this system.

I hope we can see a better tomorrow and make a change once and for all by putting an end to indefinite detention. We have to. It is a question of human rights.

JB was forced to leave his home country because he defended human rights. Having been granted asylum for five years he is currently training to be a gas engineer. The full version of ‘The Human Rights Campaigner’s Tale’ was first published in Refugee Tales Volume V.