Riotous Fun

A LARGE-SCALE riot broke out last Tuesday at Britain's biggest 'Immigration Removal Centre' (IRC) in West London. It took specialist anti-riot officers some 18 hours to bring the rebellious inmates of Harmondsworth IRC to heel, during which time fire ravaged much of the structure. Apparently the disturbance started following the publication on the same day of a report by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers which criticised the management of the facility.
Operational since October 2001 the £70 million complex, which is privately owned and run by Kalyx (previously UKDS), can hold some 550 deportees, although 482 were being detained at the time of the unrest, and comprises four wings, providing the inmates with satellite television, game consoles, basket and volleyball courts, and five-a-side pitches. They reside in 'cells' with en-suite facilities, dine in a canteen providing six different meals a day and can worship in a variety of prayer rooms. VPL could not confirm whether or not there was Krug on tap.
HMCIP's report revealed that some 60 per cent of detainees said they had felt unsafe and that they found some custody officers to be 'intimidating' and 'unhelpful'. Telephoning his British partner Joanne Bean during the riot, Diyako Rasul, 20, who is awaiting deportation to northern Iraq, told her that, 'officers there have an attitude problem and they don't treat any of the detainees with respect.'
Okay, so the regime might be a little rigid and the guards insensitive, but please do remember that this is, after all, a detention facility for people who aren't even meant to be in this country in the first place. Considering about a third of the population of Harmondsworth is comprised of foreign nationals who have committed crimes in the UK, and are awaiting deportation alongside the illegal immigrants and sham asylum seekers, the administration doesn't sound too bad. Satellite? Games pitches? Champagne on tap (ahem)? Come on, this place isn't exactly Buchenwald and these people are wrongdoers.
As usual the situation soon descended into total farce when perennial 'tough-man' and Stalinist boot-licker John Reid was 'forced' (obviously his Communist conscience was holding a gun to his head) to release on bail 150 deportees from other IRCs in order to house those more dangerous inmates made homeless by the extensive damage they caused at Harmondsworth. Was that really necessary? Would not a large barn in the vicinity, a hefty padlock and a dozen armed officers have sufficed instead? Okay, conditions would be somewhat Spartan, but, hey, that's what you get for burning your IRC down, friends! Of course, and despite 'orders' to report regularly to local authorities, there is little doubt that any of the 150 bailed illegals will ever be seen again.
And if this all sounds strangely familiar, you're right.