BY JODY BETZIEN
The Baxter refugee detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia is the latest addition to the federal government's anti-refugee arsenal. The purpose-built facility was supposed to demonstrate the government's commitment to "humane detention", but evidence is emerging that Baxter is just another Woomera-style hell-hole.
With the Western Australian Curtin detention centre now closed and the remote Woomera prison camp, in outback South Australia, due to close at the end of the year, Baxter was built to give the Australian government's brutal policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers a "compassionate face".
During an orchestrated media tour of the centre in July, before it opened, immigration minister Philip Ruddock described the accommodation at Baxter as "three-star". Ruddock's web site details the range of facilities on offer to refugees there, which include recreation rooms, children's playground equipment, an education complex and a visitors' centre.
The reality is much darker. The centre is surrounded by a 9000-volt electric fence. There is an isolation cell (referred to as a "separation unit"). Detainees are unable to see the land around them, only sky. To prevent inmates communicating with each other, the population is separated into nine compounds composed of circular buildings with windows that face inwards. Visitors must give 72 hours notice.
If detainees want to visit friends and family members imprisoned in another compound, they must apply in writing and, if the visit is approved, meet in an unoccupied area. The entire facility, excluding the bedrooms and bathrooms, is monitored by closed circuit cameras.
An article in the November 11 British Guardian noted: "The few who have managed to visit the detainees describe entering through a succession of intercom gates and metal security cells, oddly reminiscent of the psychopaths' wing in The Silence of the Lambs."
By all accounts, the facility resembles a maximum security prison. The difference is that there are no convicted criminals inside. As at November 14, there were 212 refugees detained in the centre; 150 adult men, 27 adult women and 35 children.
The governments PR campaign suffered its first major blow on October 30, when refugees were beaten by guards. Anne Simpson, from the Bellingen Rural Australians for Refugees group, told Australian Associated Press (AAP) that an asylum seeker had told her that around 30 guards in full riot gear beat a detainee after a window was broken. Simpson said another refugee advocate was told that detainees were made to lie on the ground and were kicked in the head by guards. The immigration department has dismissed the accusations.
Ruddock's response to the accusations was to claim that "two of the detainees who made the allegations had acted violently. The two detainees broke tables, threw food around (and) behaved in ways that are quite unacceptable". The minister's web site claims that guards were threatened with "weapons" such as chairs, rubbish bins and other items as a group of detainees attempted to prevent the removal of the two men involved in the initial incident. Ruddock has refused to release the video of the incident, stating that to do so would be a breach of the detainees' privacy.
Refugee advocate Marion Le told AAP on November 8 that detainees were sworn at by guards, denied access to visitors, families were split up and a gym instructor was sacked after she refused to beat a detainee.
Despite government claims of the superiority of the new centre, many detainees have asked to be transferred back to the centres from where they were first imprisoned. As one refugee at Baxter put it: "All the facilities are better than Curtin — toilets, showers, television — but [there is] one big problem, we cannot move out or visit other friends, we have to write a request form every couple of days. It is very hard, like a prison".
Having heard about conditions in Baxter, many asylum seekers being held in Woomera detention centre are refusing to be moved. A standoff between detainees and Australasian Correctional Management came to a head on the night of November 27, when a detainee was called to the office of the ACM manager. Upon arrival, he was taken behind the office where he was beaten, handcuffed and forcibly removed from the centre, presumably to Baxter.
For continuing coverage of what's happening at the Baxter detention centre, visit <http://www.baxterwatch.net>.
From Green Left Weekly, December 4, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.