Pictures on the NCADC website - credit: Stalingrad O'Neill.
Thanks to Anne-Marie Sweeney for the following pictures.
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The Eleven Years Too Long protest kicked off with a bike ride from Oxford with cyclists wearing messages calling for an end to detention and for rights for migrants.
Asylum seekers Azim Ansari from Afghanistan, Jean-Baptiste from Rwanda and Mansoor Hassan from Pakistan addressed the demonstration. Other speakers were Emma Ginn of Stop Arbitrary Detentions at Yarls Wood (SADY) and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns and Gill Baden from the Campaign to Close Campsfield and Bail for Immigration Detainees.
Right from the start, detainees could be heard calling to us from inside the detention centre. None of the rooms or the small outside area is anywhere near the front of the centre and normally we can't make contact here so they were making a big effort to be heard.
The demonstration moved round to the back of Campsfield to make contact with detainees. Detainees appeared to be locked in the buildings (there is one small outside exercise area). This was later confirmed by detainees to their visitors. Still some contact was made with detainees calling from windows across the disused playing fields. (These are not accessible to detainees at any time.)
After the demonstration there was a small social gathering in Kidlington followed by a meeting of the Barbed Wire Britain Network to End Refugee and Migrant Detention (http://www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk/). This is a network of UK campaigns against immigration detention, including the Campaign to Close Campsfield.