Dear Ellie,

Thank you so much for your comment in which you requested to know more about or to probe into —the post-modern heart of darkness. Unfortunately, in spite of my attempt to explain/ to give you a faithful portrayal of this world, you will not penetrate its mystique and you will not come to terms with its absolute darkness unless you visit someone here. Nevertheless, it’s not that easy to come. You have first to provide a copy of your passport and a UK driving license or/and a proof of address. Then the guardians will take a smiling photo of you, then you will be fingerprinted. After that you have to wait probably 45 minutes or an hour so that you will be allowed to go to the visiting room to see your friend, son, husband, neighbour, colleague….

Let us first have a look at the definitional construction of this world so as it would be easy for readers to go through its darkness afterwards. Harmondsworth IRC, that is, Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre points to a detrimental prejudice : Immig. Removal Centre. It means that the dwellers of this place are subject to and subject of a painfully harsh process, i.e. removal, even though the decision has not been given/made yet. To remove means to take away, pull out, cut off, knock out, tear away/off, by pushing some thing forcibly so as to get rid of. It means also to remove a threat. These people are therefore a threat that should be removed immediately.

The darkness of this world stems from the strict machinery of control to which these people are subjected. This world is utterly dark, black; one could say bleak, because it is out of sight. Neither newspapers, nor TV channels, nor human rights activists talk about this dark universe. It is a taboo. A crime not against humanity, but against immigration if you try to pirce its problematic. The detainee’s voices should not be heard. It should be buried between the 30-feet fences. Mobiles with cameras are not allowed. If you bring a book or a newspaper to your visitor, that very book or paper should be taken to the main reception and remain there for two or three days to be checked/ microscoped/ diagnotized; for you might have placed a knife, or some skunk or revolver between the pages. Everyone, every action is under close scrutiny. People are not under the gaze of the Orwellian Big Brother, but under the stripping gaze of immigration. Monitored, enchained, inspected, controlled, normalized to the point that they should always say YES, even though this act of affirmation is detrimental and damaging, and most importantly is against their will. Anything is written down, reported, and calculated mathematically. Who says NO, that is, who dares resist or even think to resist finds himself in the block. What is the block? A single room locked 24 hours wherein there is no facility. The generous custody officers, however, provide the subject with food and water. When the locked up tries to understand, he is given no answer.

The custody officers do not have any contact with Immigration nor do they have a clue about the law. But ironically they are the doorkeepers of this law. They say, “ Immigration is our boss. We know your frustration, but we can’t assist you mate. Sorry, we do apologize” Let’s speak to an immigration officer. The latter however does not know, too. In a brilliant amazing tone, “ Well, you have breached the immigration laws. You will be removed soon. Anyway, I’m not your caseworker! I don’t know.! Sorry no clue. Your life is not above the UK laws. The helpless detainee replies “ Why have you lost my passport, why don’t you send me to the country where I first claimed asylum? The Immg. officer replies “ I don’t know. This is law”. Isn’t the UK a state party in the Dublin convention? The Immig. Officer replies, “ You can do nothing! Do you have a solicitor? “ It is not us who made the decision. It’s the judge… “

Everyday, you are brought to a deadlock. Everyday you reach the acme of absurdities. Everyday the custody officers write something in your file so that their boss, the immigration will have a look and see who is disruptive and who is compliant. Everything has to go through the main reception. Letters that are not tracked, i.e. not special or recorded delivery will never ever reach the addressee! If you are expecting something, a fax, a letter, to come over, it should come through the main reception as well. And when you receive your letter, the custody officer has to know what does it contain?

Grim World, bleak, unaesthetic, appalling, repelling, disgusting. No one knows when he will be released. By the time you will be given your DMS card, you become subject to an indefinite continued detention even though you are not criminal, you have never used or attempted to use deception. It is true, we are not tortured physically, but we are tortured mentally. The strategic location of the IRC , that is to say, the fact of being next to an airport( Gatwick or Heathrow) , wherein detainees grow accustomed with the noise of the planes, is meant to deepen their psychic lassitude, despondency and frustration. Sooner or later you will be removed, my dear detainee!

It is true we are in the UK, the “Vestal Temple” of law and human rights. But these maxims, these notions, these ethics are ignored and overlooked when dealing with a third-world detainee. Third world people in the IRCs, i.e. detainees and asylum seekers are not conceived of as human beings, but as monsters, neurotic, satanic creatures whose very existence pose a threat to the UK. Even if one might justifiably assume that some of us, the detainees, are barbaric and uncivilized; others are respectful and peace-loving individuals. The cold machinery of control does not bother. Guardians of that icy machine believe that all the detainees are the same and hence they should be treated in such a decent human manner.

I hope I have answered your question. However, I am terribly sorry if I failed to give further clarification. Honestly, I lost my passion. I lost all the qualities with which I am what I am. Now, I am what I am not. I have to accept blindly my insubstantiality, my degrading place. This is the rule of the game as long as I am foreigner. This is the post-modern-post-humanist culture. People are judged not by the content of their souls, not by their humanity, but by their nationality papers, i.e. the passports they hold. You and I are humans but we are not the same. You are more human than I. You are more powerful than me.

May be we will be equal one day! Who knows?

Kind Regards!

It is upon watching a BBC TV programme on the 6/07/2008 that I thought of submitting this comment. Your story, I think, which is the name of the programme, cut through different experiences of people. A story of a Russian journalist caught my attention. She has been living in Birmingham for 18 years; however, some people find it hard to get rid of their racial discrimination or /and prejudice. Nadine, the journalist, lives in painful agony in spite of her luxurious life.

What about asylum seekers, who are subject to indefinite continued detention? Don’t they deserve to be sympathized with ? Aren’t they human beings who need help, at least at a good listener ? Let’s piece the problematic! Here you go!

England, Great Britain, the UK, the EMPIRE, are not only names but also attributes of quality that expressly set the glory of a nation whose past, say contribution to Human Progress/ Civilzation goes goes beyond words. I am not British, I wish I were even though the protective shadow of country is priceless, too.

Even though, in the plethora of images, the Mother Earth seems to be mapped, discovered and unfolded, some parts are however still out of sight, out of thought, out of the aesthetic of representation. Unknown, undiscovered, and ignored. It is a crime, say, taboo in the ostensibly restrictive meaning of the term if a journalist or TV presenter/producer talks or tries to talk about those silenced parts. Many of us have not been in those parts, have not been able to penetrate the mystique of the grotesques who inhabit those parts, who live in the dark corners of those parts. Those parts are neither portrayed in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, nor revealed in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, nor even dealt with by Frost in Passage to India”. These parts are unfortunately in England, i.e. in London, Oxford, Leeds, Doncaster, Dover… They are called IRC, i.e., Immigration Removal Centres, filled with degraded domesticated normalized monitired enchained individuals, say inhabited by crippled souls, who are overwhelmed by their difficult-to-achieve dream, disempowered by their muted repressions, by their mighty aspirations of freedom: freedom of choice, freedom of decision, freedom of opinion. They are subject to and subject of not physical but mental torture. They embody all that is inhuman. They are not human, even though humanity speaks to them. God, say His representatives, i.e. officials working on His behalf , speak to them. Creation speaks to them as well. Creation because they are so keen in silence, so proficient in accepting their humiliation, their mistreatement, their repelling peculiarities. The God who talks to them is not the creator, is not the Lord of the Worlds. He is not the God we believe in. It is a newly-old Hobbesian God, called Immigration.

Behind the walls, they could not make their voices heard. They utterly failed to understand notions of justice, law , humanity. They utterly failed to understand their very objective in this lunatic universe. They are labelled as monsters, criminals, pernicious satanic creatures, whose life, to coin a phrase after some atheists or./and observers, is nothing but a “divine fault”. What seperates them from the outside world is not Berlin Wall, not even the Great Wall of China. What seperates them from the outside World is LAW, JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS, in short Immigration laws. According to the latter, any foreigner, i.e. detainee or/and asylum seeker is by definition not only a monster by a monster par excellence. In ethical terms if evil is an excessive transgression of what is prohibited, then a detainee is EVIL in the real sense of the word. This are the epitemological as well as the ethical standards of the New Post-Humanist-Post-industrialized World we live in. Observance of and submission to Human Rights laws are nothing but fiction, one could almost say a lie in the strict sense of the term. Equality is a myth, Justice is a legend, law is a “false consciousness”. Do you believe/think that we are equal, i.e. we are on equal footing with one another? Do you think that we speak the same language, we live in the same world?

Absolutely No! Not at all! . We are neither equal, nor do we refer to the same laws, nor even live in the same world, nor even speak the same language. As a detainee, I live in disfigured universe , i live in a pre-historic era. I am an oustider, outside myself, outside history, outside law. My addressee, you are a heavenly divine creature. I am satanic, devellish. This is the amazing post-modern-humanist definition of a foreigner/detainee/asylum seeker! This is the truth in its crude palpability. Shoking, appalling, disgusting; yet “real”. I am trying to tell you the truth not as worse as it is, but as faithful as possible, as it is. God bless humanity! God bless you human rights!

Would like to discover/ peer deeper into the darkness of my world, that is, the detention centre, please do not hesitate. I will be your amicable guide, your faithful companion in this existential journey, i.e. in Harmondsworth blissful mansions of paradise.

It’s most painful, most saddening, maddening and frustrating that in a country like England, human rights are violated at an alarming rate.
Even though the UK is a member party/state in th ECHR, as well as in Dublin Convention, complaince with and observence of these conventions are put aside if not ignored and rejected once and for all.
I have been detained for three months. The Home Office lost my passport, and now they try to send me back to my country without giving conisderation to the obvious consequences and real incalculable risk to my safety. Although I claimed asylum in other country, the immigration authorities don’t bother at all. Who cares ? A foreigner is not a human being. S/he is nothing but a dark spot on the ground, a number, an inroganic shadow, in short a rock of negativity, expressing degradation and barbarity.
There is a apainful discrepancy between what one has been learned and what is seen, witnessed and experienced in the Heavenly Mansions of Harmondsworth IRC. How on earth that the immigration challenge becomes a taboo, a sin in the religious sense of the term? You can criticize God, but you cannot criticize/ challenge an immigration officer! It’s most painful!
No matter how often the decicion is flawed, it remains transcendental. The voice of immigration seems to be the voice of truth, the voice of reason, the undaunted eternal voice that everyone should abide by and submit to!
Where is the law? Where is justice? No one Knows! One has to accept his destiny gracefully and cheerfully. One must accept his insubstantial projected picture .
Asylum applications have become shakesperean tragic excerpets, whose protagonists ( Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Richard I, III, are not the detainees, but the legal aid solictors, immigration officers and the judges). The detainees are flat charcters, numbers, spectres in the acts of the play!
Who can shatter the wall of silence? Who can make a stand? Who can arrest the wheel of temporal flux?

I look forward hopefuly to hearing from you.

Many thanks.

Thirld-wroldist overwhelmed detainee!
Harmondsworth Mansions of Paradise!