BY SARAH STEPHEN
Since the December-January fires in five refugee prisons, there has been much corporate media attention on those charged, or accused (and locked up without charge) of starting them. But we have seen few reports of the brutal collective punishment of detainees being carried out by Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA).
On December 31, two days after the fifth fire in the facility in a week, all 220 Baxter detainees received a letter from DIMIA advising them that their asylum applications had been rejected. Some of the detainees were still in the process of appealing for a review of initial decisions. Detainees were also advised of a new regime in the centre, which included no phone calls in or out, no newspapers and access to only ABC television.
The letter also suggested that people could "go home". On January 3, attorney-general Daryl Williams "explained": "It is open to anybody in a detention centre, who is detained because they are an unlawful arrival, to cease being in a detention centre by returning to the country from which they came. It is open to them to terminate detention at any time."
An Afghan asylum seeker in Port Hedland detention centre told the January 4 Sydney Morning Herald, "How can I say I want to go back to die? It's human nature. We want to live on this planet."
Some of the Baxter detainees are traumatised enough by their detention experience to agree to go home, yet DIMIA has not made arrangements for them to go. Angered by the letter, these detainees packed their belongings on December 31 and were joined by all 60 people in the compound to stand outside the ACM office. ACM staff told them to "piss off".
The Centre Emergency Response Team arrived and gave them five minutes to disperse. Asylum seekers responded by sitting down and chanting "We want freedom!". CERT guards fired tear gas at them, but asylum seekers stood their ground for half an hour.
An officer then read out the names of four people, randomly selected from the muster book, asking them to come forward. The group of asylum seekers at first refused to give them up, but eventually the four came forward and were taken to isolation cells as punishment.
The asylum seekers were suffering the effects of the gas attack — sore eyes and throats and at least eight people had problems passing urine two days later — but they were denied medical attention.
The government is denying that it used tear gas, perhaps feeling that it can get away with even less regard for human rights because detainees are unable to make contact with the outside world.
A number of ACM guards quit their jobs during December, unable to cope with the brutality they were asked to inflict on asylum seekers. One officer was sacked for refusing to use his baton.
A January 2 press release from Jack Smit of Project SafeCom, used information from a former ACM employee to report that 130 detainees, including 16 children and 30 women, were handcuffed and herded into the mess room at Woomera detention centre on December 31, where teargas was used indiscriminately. All male detainees were also strip searched.
The following day they were taken into the centre's basketball court and left in the desert sun for an entire day while officers searched everyone's rooms. The handcuffed detainees weren't given anything to drink.
Police have also transferred 40 detainees, who they labeled "ringleaders", to state prisons and police lock-ups.
At Port Hedland detention centre, 70-100 ACM guards arrived at 4am on December 30, and handcuffed all detainees until 3pm in the afternoon while rooms were searched.
At midnight on New Year's Eve, while most Australians were toasting the new year, detainees at Port Hedland were dealing with an influx of around 25 federal police officers bashing on their doors, waking people up and kicking property around. A detainee reports being told "You're in Australia now. This is not a Muslim country". When asked why they were behaving like this, one officer answered, "Because we can. It's our job."
On January 2, 10 men were taken from Port Hedland detention centre and placed in the holding cells at South Hedland police station. DIMIA representative Di Millar stated that the men had no right to legal support "because they are not being charged, just held in immigration detention in an alternative place of detention".
In a January 9 media release, Victorian Greens refugee spokesperson Pamela Curr said that on two occasions a lawyer had been denied access to assist them, even though he had authorisation from the wife of one man and from legal representatives in Melbourne. No phone calls from friends, family or lawyers are permitted, and a nun has been refused access. Curr condemned this as incommunicado detention, just as the United States is using with its prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
From Green Left Weekly, January 15, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.