A former detainee at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre has alleged that women held there have been subjected to unwanted sexual advances and abuse by security guards and other officials.
Detainees at Yarl’s Wood immigration centre ‘facing sexual abuse’ | UK news | The Observer
The “asylum seeker industrial complex” not only profits from the lives of vulnerable immigrants forcefully detained while awaiting deportation but, as expected, its bureaucrats are, indeed, part of rape culture. From the article:
The claims raise fresh questions over the treatment of vulnerable women at the Bedfordshire site, which is Britain’s largest immigration removal centre for women and can house up to 400 people. Sources at Yarl’s Wood say that more cases are likely to come to light following Tanja’s testimony, as women have been too fearful to come forward until now.
I have said on numerous occasions that the detention of undocumented migrants is a decisively urgent feminist issue. Some feminists have openly and vocally disagreed with me (one specific Australian woman even went as far as claiming that, if anything, this is an issue for human rights advocates to get involved and something feminism has no business working on). As if rape culture didn’t have a centuries long history of always targeting the most vulnerable Women and children of color.
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