Oxford joins campaign against reopening of “cruel and harmful” Campsfeld detention centre

Suzanne Antelme reports.

Following a motion passed by Student Council in its 1st Week meeting, the Oxford SU has joined the Coalition to Keep Campsfeld Closed (CKCC).

The CKCC is a campaign group calling for the government to scrap plans to reopen an immigration removal centre on the site of the former Campsfeld House detention facility in Kidlington, about six miles outside of Oxford.

The SU motion, proposed by Hajar Zainuddin and seconded by Juliet van Gyseghem, stipulates that in addition to becoming a named member of the CKCC, the SU will facilitate educational activity for students on the issue and publicise the campaign’s various protests and petitions. The motion also says the SU must push for the campaign’s demands to be added to the agenda of the National Student Union (NUS).

Najar Zainuddin, the motion’s proposer, told Cherwell: “The attitude from student groups so far has been really positive and determined. As Oxford students, we have enormous collective power to drive change. Together, we need to tell the Government that immigration detention is not the answer until it listens.”

Anna-Tina Jashpara, SU VP for Charities

and Community, has been assigned to support the campaign and will attend all of the CKCC meetings. She told Cherwell that the SU will launch its formal support for the campaign via social media. They plan to help promote an online petition set up by a previous Campsfeld detainee, and to work with the CKCC on an open letter to the government that the campaign wants to disseminate in the coming weeks.

A CKCC spokesperson told Cherwell that they are “delighted to have the support of the Student Union”, as “Oxford students were part of the original 1993-2018] Campaign to Close Campsfeld and we are pleased and grateful that this solidarity is continuing”.

This follows an announcement from the Home Offce in June that it is planning the development of a new “immigration removal centre” on the site of the old Campsfeld centre. Before closing in 2018, the centre had seen a riot and several hunger strikes, one of which involved over 100 detainees. There were at least two incidents where children were accidently detained at the centre, apparently because assessments of their age had taken too long.

The centre was also criticised by an independent monitoring body after it