Campaigners hold protest against Arora Hotels

Campaigners hold second protest against plans to turn Gatwick hotel into a
detention centre

5th November 2009, 7pm

* Arora Management Services Ltd plans to turn its four-star Mercure
Gatwick hotel into an immigration detention centre.

* Campaigners vow to target Arora and Mercure until the plans are dropped.

Anti-detention campaigners are currently holding a peaceful protest at the
Mercure London City Bankside Hotel (71-79 Southwark Street SE1 0JA)
against what they describe as the hotel company's "cynical, profit-driven
opportunism." They are distributing leaflets to staff and guests,
demanding that Mercure/Arora drops its plans to turn one of its hotels
into an immigration prison.

Arora Management Services Ltd has applied to Crawley Borough Council for
planning permission to turn its four-star Mercure Gatwick Hotel into an immigration
detention centre. If the planning permission is granted, the hotel will be converted
into a secure prison and the 245 bedrooms into single and family cells.

Like other private companies that run privatised detention centres across the
country, Arora is trying to sell its plan by arguing that locating
detention centres at airports would make deportations easier and less costly for the
government.

Gatwick airport already has two detention centres: Tinsley House, which
can hold 125 male and female detainees, and the newly opened Brook House, which can
hold 426. Both are run by private security company G4S.

One of the protesters Dan Rosenthal said: "We are disgusted by these plans
to make yet another detention centre. Already the UK's immigration detention
centres hold thousands of people every year, sometimes for months or even years at a
time, whilst the government tries to deport them to so-called safe countries such as
Afghanistan and Iraq. This is just another example of cynical, profit-driven
opportunism of big companies."

Email: noborderslondon@riseup.net


1. The planning application CR/2009/0421/COU, with all the relevant
documents, can be viewed on the Crawley Borough Council website (follow this link to open
the page:
http://tinyurl.com/AroraApp).

2. Established in 1999, Arora International Hotels is one of the UK's fastest
growing privately owned hotel companies, with six luxury hotels in and around
Heathrow and Gatwick airports and one in Manchester city centre. For more
details about the hotels and their locations, see Arora's website at
http://www.arorainternational.com.

3. The first protest against Arora/Mercure took place on 6th November,
report here: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/10/439285.html

3. London No Borders, part of the No Borders UK network, struggles against
all immigration controls and for the freedom of movement and equal rights for
all. In September 2007, No Borders UK organised a No Border Camp near Gatwick
airport in protest at plans to open a new detention centre there. Brook House was
subsequently opened in March 2009. For more information about No Borders London, see
http://london.noborders.org.uk.

Contact email: noborderslondon@riseup.net