About 50 detainees at the Campsfield Removal Centre have gone on hunger strike in protest against the treatment they are receiving.

An estimated 100 detainees at the centre in Kidlington refused breakfast yesterday morning and although half stopped their protest at lunchtime, as of yesterday evening 50 detainees were still refusing food.

In a letter to the Oxford Mail the hunger-striking detainees said: "We are treated like animals and moved around different detention centres. The Immigration Service have taken husbands from their families and taken people who ran away from persecution in their various countries, and dumped everyone in here.

"Once you are put in here the Immigration Service forget you. There are detainees who have applied to go back to their own countries that are still being held here for months without any news about their cases.

"Campsfield has become a slave house. We detainees are treated like slaves, to do odd jobs for officers. Detainees are handcuffed to see doctors or dentists in hospitals or clinic appointments."

One detainee, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said he was prepared to die if his case was not reopened.

He said: "At the moment they think we will crack, but they will not break me. If they try and move me from here to another centre I am not going to go. I am going to fight them for as long as I can. If I have to commit a crime to get attention I will.

"I know definitely there are about 10 others who are prepared to go all the way. I have got to take this to the end, I would rather die here than get tortured to death back in my own country."

Neither the Home Office or management group GL were available to comment.