A Nigerian man detained at a Japanese immigration detention center has reportedly died after embarking on a hunger strike for several days to protest his lengthy detention.

The man, who was said to be in 40s died on Monday, June 24, 2019, in the southern city of Nagasaki after he lost consciousness.

According to Reuters, a detention center official who declined to be identified did not give any reason for the death of the Nigerian man.

But RINK, a group supporting detainees at the detention center made it known that the Nigerian had been on hunger strike to protest his lengthy detention.

Reuters reports that the death of the Nigerian man was 15th death since 2006 in a system widely criticized over medical standards, the monitoring of detainees and how guards respond to a medical emergency in Japan.

Another group supporting detainees said another 27 foreigners are on hunger strike at a detention center in Ushiku, northeast of Tokyo, Reuters reports.

A spokeswoman for the group, Kimiko Tanaka said some of the detainees at the centre have gone without food for 47 days.

She said one of them, a 23-year-old Iranian man, who according to her sought asylum over two-years ago has lost weight and is now using a wheelchair, adding that there are two other men at the centre who have been detained for more than five years.

She said, “The reality of a lengthy detention is nothing but a human rights violation,”

Confirming the claim about hunger strikers inn the Ushiku detention centre, an official at the national immigration agency said authorities are providing medical care and trying to persuade them to eat. </s> A Nigerian, yet-to-be-identified, has died in a Japanese immigration detention centre, bringing to an end a hunger strike an activist group said was intended to protest against his being held for more than three years, an official said, yesterday.

 Sources said that his death was the 15th death since 2006 in a system widely criticised over medical standards, the monitoring of detainees and how guards respond to a medical emergency.

 The man, in his 40s, died last Monday, in the southern city of Nagasaki after he lost consciousness and was taken to hospital, a detention centre official said.

 He did not give a cause of death.

 The RINK, a group supporting detainees at the centre, said the Nigerian had been on hunger strike to protest his lengthy detention.

 Another 27 foreigners are on hunger strike at a detention centre in Ushiku, northeast of Tokyo, a separate group supporting detainees at that facility said.

 Some of them have gone without food for 47 days, a spokeswoman for the group, Kimiko Tanaka, said. </s> TOKYO, June 27 (Reuters) - A Nigerian man died in a Japanese immigration detention center this week, an official said on Thursday, bringing to an end a hunger strike an activist group said was intended to protest against his being held for more than three years.

An inside view of a shared cell is seen at the East Japan Immigration Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan, March 19, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino

It was the 15th death since 2006 in a system widely criticized over medical standards, the monitoring of detainees and how guards respond to a medical emergency.

The man, in his 40s, died on Monday in the southern city of Nagasaki after he lost consciousness and was taken to hospital, said a detention center official who declined to be identified.

He did not give a cause of death.

RINK, a group supporting detainees at the center, told Reuters the Nigerian had been on hunger strike to protest his lengthy detention.

Another 27 foreigners are on hunger strike at a detention center in Ushiku, northeast of Tokyo, said a separate group supporting detainees at that facility.

Some of them have gone without food for 47 days, said Kimiko Tanaka, a spokeswoman for the group.

She said a 23-year-old Iranian man who sought asylum more than two years ago has lost weight and is using a wheelchair.

Two other men at Ushiku have been detained for five years, she said.

“The reality of a lengthy detention is nothing but a human rights violation,” Tanaka said.

An official at the national immigration agency confirmed there are hunger strikers at the Ushiku center, but he did not say how many. Authorities are providing medical care and trying to persuade them to eat, he added.

Immigration is a contentious issue in Japan, where ethnic and cultural homogeneity are deeply rooted.

Japan held about 1,500 detainees as of June 2018, according to the latest public data, nearly half of them for more than six months.

Some 604 were asylum seekers whose applications were rejected, while the rest were held for various immigration infractions such as overstaying visas. </s> A man died early Saturday morning after he reportedly tried to attack a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Washington state. More specifically, the man was targeting the Northwest Detention Center, which is the holding facility in Tacoma for ICE. The man apparently approached the privately run facility that is used to hold migrants while they await their deportation proceedings at around 4 a.m. That is when an employee at the prison reported that a man armed with a rifle was throwing homemade incendiary devices at the detention center as well as cars in the parking lot. The man was also allegedly trying to set a propane tank on fire.

Law enforcement officers went to the scene and reported seeing a man holding flares and a rifle. Officers called out to the man and then reported “shots fired.” It isn’t clear whether the gunman also opened fire on police. When medical help arrived, officers confirmed the gunman had been shot and killed but said it remains unclear whether he was killed by officers or whether he shot himself. The gunman has yet to be identified and there is no word about a possible motive. GEO Group, which runs the facility in Tacoma, said in a statement that incorrect claims about mistreatment of detainees at the facility “have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees, whose safety is our top priority.”

The shooting came a day before the national raids by ICE are set to begin. The effort that had been delayed is meant to arrest 2,000 undocumented migrants with deportation orders. A few hours earlier, protesters had gathered at the detention center in Tacoma to protest. The raids were originally planned for 10 cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Atlanta. Officials, however, said that due to Hurricane Barry, Houston and New Orleans will not be targeted. </s> A friend of the man who authorities say died after throwing explosive devices at an immigration jail in Tacoma, Washington says that she thinks he wanted to provoke a fatal conflict.

Deb Bartley, who tells the Times she has been a friend of Willem Van Spronsen's for about 20 years, described him as an anarchist and anti-fascist, and believes his attack on the detention center was intended to provoke a fatal conflict.

'He was ready to end it,' Bartley told the Seattle Times. 'I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs . I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.'

She says that she and other friends of Van Spronsen, 69, got letters in the mail 'just saying goodbye.' He also wrote what she referred to as a manifesto, which she declined to discuss in detail, the Times reports.

Van Spronsen was accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest outside the detention center in 2018.

The newspaper also reports that court documents say he lunged at the officer and wrapped his arms around the officer's neck and shoulders, as the officer was trying to detain a 17-year-old protester June 26, 2018.

According to court documents, police handcuffed Van Spronsen and found that he had a collapsible baton and a folding knife in his pocket.

Van Spronsen pleaded guilty to the charge of obstructing police, and was given a deferred sentence in October.

But on Saturday, Van Spronsen, armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at an immigration jail in Tacoma.

He was killed after four police officers arrived and opened fire.

The Tacoma Police Department said the officers responded at about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.

The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Donald Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.

The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention center, police spokesman Loretta Cool said.

Cool said all four officers fired their weapons, but she didn't have specific details of what took place. She said the officers weren't wearing body cameras, but the area is covered by surveillance cameras from the detention center.

Police said the man caused a vehicle to catch fire and that he attempted to ignite a large propane tank and set buildings on fire.

Police said that besides the rifle, he had a satchel and flares. Police said officers called out to the man, and shots were fired.

After the gunfire, officers took cover, contained the area and set up medical aid a short distance away, police said.

Officers then located the man and determined he had been shot and was dead at the scene.

Authorities say investigators are processing the scene and police are continuing to investigate. No law enforcement officers were injured.

The four Tacoma police officers who fired their weapons have been placed on paid administrative leave as is standard in officer-involved shootings.

The incident occurred just a day ahead of ICE's planned national raids in 10 cities, targeting hundreds of immigrants who were given deportation orders. Nearby Seattle, however, is not one of those cities on the list.

Activist group La Resistencia — ⁠ also known as NWDC Resistance, after Northwest Detention Center — has postponed its planned Saturday afternoon protest of the facility after reporting road closures and the facility's 24-hour lock down following the incident.

La Resistancia activist Maru Mora-Villalpando told the Seattle Times that they were notified about what occurred, but that the detainees inside the facility had no idea about the incident.

'They were not told that visits would not happen, were not told that the accident happened in the early morning. People in detention always are the last ones to know what's happening outside,' Mora-Villalpando told the newspaper.

She added that the organization handled three cases of medical neglect recently, including one that resulted in deportation and then death.

GEO Group, which runs the 1,575-bed Northwest Detention Center, in an email to The Associated Press said baseless accusations about how detainees are treated at its facilities 'have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees, whose safety is our top priority. Violence of any kind against our employees and property will not be tolerated. We are thankful for the quick and brave action by the Tacoma Police Department, which prevented innocent lives from being endangered.'

GEO Group said the detention center in Tacoma has modern amenities with air conditioning, recreational activities, a bed for every individual and medical care available at all hours.

Last year, a federal judge ruled that Washington state could pursue its lawsuit seeking to force GEO Group to pay minimum wage for work done by detainees at the detention center.

In November, a Russian asylum-seeker who conducted a hunger strike to protest the conditions at the detention center died by suicide, the Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office ruled.

Mergensana Amar, 40, was taken off life support after attempting to kill himself while in voluntary protective custody at the detention center on November 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. </s> 'This morning's attack at the ICE detention center in Tacoma was a horrific act of violence that has shaken us all,' said Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

A man armed with a rifle attempted to attack a Tacoma, Washington, immigrant detention facility with incendiary devices early Saturday morning, before dying in a shootout with police, Yahoo News reports.

At about 4:00 a.m. on Saturday, according to police, a man approached the Northwest Detention Center — which is privately operated by The GEO Group, through a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — and began throwing incendiary devices at the building and at cars in the parking lot. By the time an employee realized what was happening, a car was on fire and the suspect was attempting to ignite a propane tank outside the facility.

When police arrived, the suspect opened fire. Police returned fire, and the unnamed suspect was shot dead. No police were injured in the shootout. All of the police officers involved in the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave, per Tacoma Police Department policy.

According to a police statement, the man was carrying a bag that had flares in it.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee called the incident “a horrific act of violence that has shaken us all.” Meanwhile, the man’s identity and motives remain unclear.

The treatment of immigrants at detention facilities has been under fire of late, with some describing inhumane conditions, such as lack of food and lack of clean water, at some facilities. Hours before the attack on the Northwest Detention Center, there had been a protest that police spokeswoman Loretta Cool described as “peaceful.” Another protest had been scheduled for Saturday, but since the Northwest Detention Facility was an active crime scene, that protest had to be moved.

In this particular case, however, the man’s motive remains unclear. A spokesperson for The GEO Group said in a statement that the allegations about inhumane conditions at immigration detention facilities played a role in the attack.

The spokesperson went on to say that none of the allegations about inhumane conditions at immigrant detention facilities apply to those run by The GEO Group. The spokesperson said that all of its facilities are modern and that no unaccompanied minors are kept there.

As for the suspect, he remains unidentified, and an autopsy is scheduled for the coming days. Authorities hope to be able to identify him by Monday. </s> The death of a previously little-known Iranian dissident who was on a hunger strike to protest his detention by Iran has sparked an outcry from rights activists and other social media users.

Family members told VOA Persian that prison authorities in the northern city of Qom telephoned them Wednesday to say that Vahid Sayyadi-Nasiri had died in a Qom hospital earlier that day. His mother and a brother said they later tried to locate his body but hospital staff told them it had been taken to a morgue at Qom’s main cemetery.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) described Sayyadi-Nasiri as a 28-year-old real estate specialist who was critical of Iranian state policy on social media, but had little national name recognition until his death.

Iran’s Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) said Iranian intelligence agents detained Sayyadi-Nasiri in Qom in July and authorities put him on trial in September on charges of disseminating propaganda against the state and insulting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It said a revolutionary court later sentenced him to 4½ years in prison.

Rights groups said Sayyadi-Nasiri previously had served a two-year prison term on similar charges before being released in March this year. They said he began a hunger strike against his latest detention Oct. 13 to protest inhumane prison conditions and a lack of access to a lawyer and he died on the 60th day of his protest.

In a Thursday report, Iranian judiciary news agency Mizan quoted Qom province’s chief prosecutor Shokrollah Bahrami as saying Sayyadi-Nasiri had been in poor physical health as a result of a liver disease and was transferred to a hospital, before dying there seven days later.

Bahrami said the cause of the activist’s death was under investigation.

CHRI said Sayyadi-Nasiri’s apparent death from a hunger strike heightened the urgency of resolving what it called “legitimate” grievances of other Iranian dissidents who have been on similar hunger strikes to protest their ongoing detentions.

The group highlighted the case of 48-year-old Iranian physician and rights activist Farhad Meysami, who it said has been on a hunger strike at Tehran’s Evin prison since Aug. 1. Authorities had detained Meysami a day earlier for possessing books and badges protesting Iran’s Islamist policy of forcing women to wear a hijab in public.

CHRI said Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, detained in June for expressing support for women who had been publicly protesting Iran’s compulsory hijab law, began a second hunger strike Nov. 26. It said she was protesting authorities’ refusal to allow Meysami, her friend, to receive hospital treatment.

“Sayyadi-Nasiri’s death and the danger of more deaths are a result of a judicial system that is out of control and which has abandoned any semblance of defending the rule of law,” said CHRI executive director Hadi Ghaemi. “More deaths will come if the authorities persist with these unlawful imprisonments, their denial of due process and the inhumane incarceration conditions in Iran,” he added.

Reports of Sayyadi-Nasiri’s death sparked further outrage on social media. Twitter users posted about 25,000 tweets with the hashtag #Vahid_Sayyadi_Nasiri in Farsi in a 24-hour period from Wednesday to Thursday, with many expressing sorrow for not previously having heard about his case.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Ramin Haghjoo contributed to this report. </s> Police in Tacoma, Washington, say they shot and killed a man armed with a rifle and throwing flammable objects at a migrant detention center. The attack followed a rally outside the facility by several hours. The motivation of the attacker has not been released at this time.

An employee at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma called police early Saturday morning to report a man with a rifle who was throwing “incendiary devices” and setting vehicles on fire, according to a report by QFox13.

The attack on the migrant detention center followed by several hours, a rally by migrant supporters outside the facility operated for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by GEO Group.

It is unknown at this time if the individual was attacking the facility with anti-ICE motivations, anti-migrant motivations, or if it was unrelated to either motive; however, a statement from GEO Group, a Florida based company that operates the facility in Tacoma, attributed the attack to the anger resulting from misrepresentations in media.

The statement, published by QFox13 blamed a “factually inaccurate portrayal” of their detention centers for spurring “misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees.”

Tacoma police reported that officers responded to the call at about 4 a.m. on Saturday. The officers say the man wore a satchel and was holding flares, the Seattle Times reported. Spokeswoman Loretta Cool told reporters that officers reported, “shots fired.” The officers then fired at the suspect, she said. When officers approached the man, they determined he had been shot and killed.

“Police fired on the man in a parking lot across from the facility, striking him fatally,” QFox 13 reported.

Cool told the Seattle Times it is not clear at this time if the suspect shot himself or if police officers shot him. Officials have not yet released the suspect’s identity.

A rally planned for Saturday afternoon by the group La Resistencia had to be postponed due to road closures around the facility and the ongoing investigation, the group posted on its Facebook page.

Cool said that four officers were involved in the shooting. The four officers have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

The statement from GEO Group concluded, “Violence of any kind against our employees and property will not be tolerated. We are thankful for the quick and brave action by the Tacoma Police Department, which prevented innocent lives from being endangered.”

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face book. </s> TACOMA, Washington - A man armed with a rifle and throwing "incendiary devices" at an immigration jail in Washington state on Saturday died after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.

The Tacoma Police Department said the officers responded to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings. The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.

The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention center, police spokeswoman Loretta Cool said. She said another rally was planned for later Saturday, but it would have to be held in a different area because of the investigation into the police shooting.

Police said the man caused a vehicle to catch fire and that he attempted to ignite a large propane tank and set buildings on fire. Police said that besides the rifle, he had a satchel and flares.

Police said officers called out to the man, and shots were fired.

Cool said all four officers fired their weapons, but she didn’t have specific details of what took place. She said the officers weren’t wearing body cameras, but the area is covered by surveillance cameras from the detention center. She said she didn’t know if the man fired at the officers.

After the gunfire, officers took cover, contained the area and set up medical aid a short distance away, police said.

Officers then located the man and determined he had been shot and was dead at the scene. His name hasn’t been released.

Authorities say investigators are processing the scene and police are continuing to investigate. No law enforcement officers were injured. The four Tacoma police officers who fired their weapons have been placed on paid administrative leave as is standard in officer-involved shootings.

A motive for the man’s actions hasn’t been determined, Cool said.

GEO Group, which runs the 1,575-bed Northwest Detention Center, in an email to The Associated Press said baseless accusations about how detainees are treated at its facilities “have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees, whose safety is our top priority. Violence of any kind against our employees and property will not be tolerated. We are thankful for the quick and brave action by the Tacoma Police Department, which prevented innocent lives from being endangered.”

GEO Group said the detention center in Tacoma has modern amenities with air conditioning, recreational activities, a bed for every individual and medical care available at all hours.

Last year, a federal judge ruled that Washington state could pursue its lawsuit seeking to force GEO Group to pay minimum wage for work done by detainees at the detention center.

In November, a Russian asylum-seeker who conducted a hunger strike to protest the conditions at the detention center died by suicide, the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled.

Mergensana Amar, 40, was taken off life support after attempting to kill himself while in voluntary protective custody at the detention center on Nov. 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
A Nigerian man dies in a Japanese immigration detention center this week, an official says. It ends a hunger strike that an activist group said was intended to protest against him being held for more than three years.