Among the people I work with, there are those who live in daily terror of being imprisoned at such centres as Campsfield Detention Centre at Kidlington.

They are asylum seekers, some of whom have been here well over 10 years without a resolution to their application for asylum in this country.

Not allowed to work, forced to sign at the police station every week regardless of health or circumstances, they live in poverty and despair, unable to move backwards or forwards as the years of their lives pass.

They cannot work, marry, buy a house, or make any choices about how they live.

If they have children, the children, too, live with poverty and insecurity, and their parents' fear of detention and deportation.

I also see those whose applications for asylum have been turned down, but they are not being returned to their own countries because our Government acknowledges their countries of origin as too unstable, or there are no safe routes back.

These people are homeless and penniless, as well as living in terror of detention and deportation.

When you put people to whom this country affords such little humanity into prisons without charge, where they face loss of all personal volition and hope, (and may also be reminded of atrocities they had tried to escape when they fled their home countries), is it any wonder that a few commit desperate acts, such as setting themselves on fire, going crazy and starting to scream, and are unable to stop?

Will we ever learn to see that others are like ourselves, and react as we would do, and like ourselves, have a breaking point?

SUSHILA DHALL (Councillor) Green Party Central Oxford