Durham: Campaigning against 'hostile environments'

Artist and human rights campaigner Lya Vollering is a member of the Passionist community, based in Minsteracres, County Durham. Here she reflects on two local campaigns - against a refugee detention centre and an opencast mine:

Recently a welcome sign appeared on Corbridge Road in Medomsley, County Durham. It reads: 'Welcome to Derwentside IRC' . (IRC could maybe have been 'Institute of Roman Catholics' but it stands for Immigration Removal Centre.) The irony is that it is a welcome sign for a place that makes it clear that certain women are not welcome!

The Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre, (DIRC) is a refurbished youth prison. A place notorious for the sexual and physical abuse that took place in the 1970s and 80s when 1,800 young men between 17 and 21 years of age were incarcerated there. Durham County Council's plan was to demolish the old prison and build much-needed houses on the site. Then last year, the government decided to override these plans and convert the buildings into a detention centre for women seeking asylum.

When I heard of the plans, a couple of friends and I decided to have a look at the site. From the main road there is not much you can see. We entered a housing estate and from there we could walk around the site but high walls prevented us from seeing much of the buildings. I realised that the women brought here won't be able to see where they are. They won't see the green hills, the open spaces. They would be literally locked behind high walls.

It is very hard to get information about how many women have been detained since it opened last December. Women for Refugee Women have asked for a judicial review of the legality of the detention centre. The judge who is dealing with the case asked for information. We do know that 51 women have been held there. Some of them have been placed there straight upon arrival. To get legal support from the detention centre is very difficult. Often the women can only talk on the phone. With language barriers this is very difficult.

On 29th June, the Home Office intended to deport 13 women from DIRC. 20 activists tried to stop this from happening; five were arrested for obstructing the road. Legal support prevented ten women from being placed on the coach. Only three were sent to Heathrow airport. They were on the plane when a judge prevented the deportation of two women. At the end one person was deported. At what cost? So much trauma inflicted on women already traumatised. So much public money spent on what feels to me something very immoral.

It is clear that the detention centre is part of the hostile environment policy of this government. It is part of their rhetoric about the existence of "illegal" immigrants. But as many placards at the protests against the Immigration Removal Centre say: No one is illegal.

To me there is a deeper issue which connects this with what happened only a few miles from the detention centre.

In 2018, despite a 30-year-long campaign by the local community to prevent it - Banks Mining was allowed to start open cast coal extraction in the Pont Valley.

A green valley where skylarks and curlews nested, with a pond, where the protected great crested newt was seen, was ripped apart to get to coal. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, contributing to the climate crisis. A crisis that is particularly affecting the poor countries in the global South, costing many lives.

When the mining company, despite the campaign and direct action, started to excavate the coal a small group of mostly women started a vigil every last Friday of the month. It felt important to witness what was happening.

As with the Immigration Removal Centre, from the road you couldn't see anything. The first thing the site operators did was to scrape off the top soil and with this form baffle banks at the edge of the site, the view was blocked.

Only from a higher point you could overlook the site and see how the enormous machinery went deeper and deeper.

In response we stood at the entrance. Local women would share an update about what was going on. We brought banners and planted trees. Then we would stand there in silence. In response of the desecrating of the earth that was taking place we tried to do the opposite by mourning the loss of habitat, the loss of life. We tried to reverse irreverence.

Action and campaigns have now stopped the extraction of coal extraction in Pont valley. Although Banks Mining has promised to restore the landscape, a year after closing the site it still looks awful… traumatised.

We are now making a similar response a few miles away from the old mining site - holding a vigil at the entrance of Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre. Every first Sunday of the month we come together to pray, to be silent, and to witness. We bring banners and flowers. The flowers are given to the guards standing at the barrier with the request to give them to the women detained there.

This is not the only action that takes place. Every 3rd Saturday of the month there is a protest at the site and sometimes bigger protests are held against the existence of detention centres in the nearby cities.

The vigils are acknowledging that all life is sacred. That what we do to the earth and our sisters we do to ourselves.

LINKS

Read more about Lya Vollering - https://passionists.org.uk/contributor/lya-vollering/

Minsteracres - www.minsteracres.org/