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Vigil for Bereket Yohannes at Harmondsworth

By Harmit Athwal

2 February 2006, 12:00pm

On a bitterly cold Sunday morning last week, over eighty people gathered outside Harmondsworth removal centre for a vigil in memory of 26-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker, Bereket Yohannes, who was found hanged in a shower block at Harmondsworth on 19 January.

Bereket's is the eighth asylum seeker to take his own life in an immigration detention centre in six years and the third death at Harmondsworth. After his death sixty-one detainees at the centre signed a joint statement with ten demands concerning conditions. There have also been reports that those who signed the statement have now been moved to other removal centres across the country and others have allegedly been held in solitary confinement.

The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

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