Six people have died in immigration detention since 1987. Joy Gardner's death attracted a lot of publicity. Ahmed Katangole and Kimpua Nsimba hanged themselves in prisons where they were meant to be watched. Omasase Lumumba was killed by prison officers "controlling and restraining" him in Pentonville. The verdict was unlawful killing and no charges were brought. You can still see faded posters of Siho on north London streets. He set fire to himself when they came to deport him to Turkey.

Immigration detainees live in a system that is largely outside the law, facing daily abuse and harassment in a regime governed by immigration officers who are unaccountable to any court. People are held for months and even years (18 currently detained for over a year), terms which only those found guilty of serious crimes would normally suffer. Their basic needs are ignored. They often have no real access to medical or other facilities. They are held essentially as a deterrent to anyone else who considers applying for asylum: hostages of Howard's policies.

A recent conference, organised by the churches and the Asylum Rights Campaign, called again for the "release for the captives", having heard a moving account of the mental health problems caused by such detention from a doctor who has just completed some research. "Detention ... generates a climate of misinformation, threat, deterrence, lack of choices, punishment, criminalisation, powerlessness, adverse conditions, discrimination and ... recreates the oppression from which people have fled. It places detainees in predicaments parallel to those they may have faced under torture or previous detention. It maintains the mechanisms of persecution which precipitated their flight. Detention is clearly abusive and inhumane." The Labour front bench has given no assurances about ending this flagrant abuse of human rights. Campaigning is needed now.