BY ANNE COOMBS
Before the arrival of the MV Tampa off Christmas Island last August, the locals were accustomed to "boat people" landing on their island. There was an accepted procedure: One of the port barges would go out with police and a customs officer to meet the boat. The asylum seekers would be read their rights by the police officer, then they would be transferred to the barge and ferried ashore.
The whole procedure would be done with care and courtesy. In the cove, local people would meet them with greetings: "Welcome to Christmas Island" or "Glad you made it".
The boat people were housed in the community sports hall with nothing more than a piece of plastic tape to demarcate the area they were meant to keep inside. Local residents did the initial interviewing and processing. They cared for and were sympathetic to the refugees.
In recent years, around 900 unauthorised arrivals were handled in this way. Then they would be transferred to the mainland, to end up, unbeknown to the Christmas Islanders, in the horror of Port Hedland or Woomera detention centres.
All that changed with Tampa. Just about the entire island was traumatised by the Tampa standoff. As one person told me, "There was no getting away from it — there that big red boat was, right in front of your eyes every time you stepped out the door. People felt sick at what was being done to those poor people. And it just kept going on and on. We wanted them brought ashore."
The locals held a demonstration at the port, which had been closed by the authorities. Even the local fishermen were prevented from taking their boats out — in case they rescued the asylum seekers.
After Tampa, there were more arrivals, people picked up from Ashmore Reef or the Cocos Islands, but with the excision of Christmas and the Cocos Islands from the migration zone, the ability of these people to claim asylum became almost impossible.
The sports hall was overcrowded and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) decided to build an interim detention centre on the island. This centre, completed late last year, was built next to the rubbish tip in Vagabond Road. The site was chosen by Canberra; perhaps some bureaucrat's sick joke.
Not a migrant hostel
The local people knew the sports hall was unsuitable for large numbers of people or lengthy stays, but they were horrified to see the fencing going up. They no doubt thought, like many Australians, that a detention centre was a bit like a migrant hostel — until they saw the double row of five-metre fencing with barbed wire on top and coils of razor wire between the inner and outer fences.
Local residents held a vigil outside the centre and talked to the inmates through the wire. The group was addressed by speakers in English, Chinese and Malay.
People were in tears. They were joined by some Australasian Correctional Management guards, a couple of whom were also moved to tears. One is reported as saying, "I've never looked at it from this side of the fence before".
There are currently about 80 people in the interim detention centre: two Afghan families; two Iraqi families; two other Afghan men, one the widower of one of the two women who drowned at Ashmore reef; a Bangladeshi man who, according to officials, mysteriously turned up at Ashmore reef alone two weeks ago; and a large number of Sri Lankan men.
The centre consists of two large dormitories with an ablutions block in between. The four families share one of the dormitories, with no partitions except those they have managed to erect themselves, and 60 men share the other dormitory.
Last week, I visited two of the Sri Lankans. Arranging the visit required several phone calls between the DIMIA manager and Canberra, even though the Sri Lankans were expecting me. I believe I was the first "layperson" to visit the detention centre.
Despite the fairly basic accommodation arrangements, the regime at Christmas Island appears far more benign than at many other centres. Outings are arranged each day for about a dozen people at a time; they are taken swimming, to the temple, to play cricket and even golf. Half a dozen children now attend the school.
Nonetheless, the detainees have no access to television, newspapers or magazines. Recently, some computers were donated by the local school and an education officer is giving English lessons and encouraging some of the inmates to write.
At least some of the detainees have been able to make a phone call home to family. They have access to a fax machine, but there is no pay phone in the centre.
It is only in recent weeks that some of the Sri Lankans have been able to seek legal assistance; two of them were put in touch with the Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Sydney. They have been in detention for nine months with, until now, no legal assistance and no word on the status of their application.
The two I spoke to were among a group of 71 Sri Lankans who arrived at the Cocos Islands on September 15. Thirty-five were repatriated. The remainder were transferred to Christmas Island in February.
Because Cocos was excised from the migration zone on September 17, the government is hoping to disallow their applications by arguing that they didn't arrive until September 19. But I have a document signed by a West Australian magistrate which shows them as arriving on September 15.
Fait accompli
These men's cases should be addressed; they deserve a response after nine months of detention. It appears as if they may have been held simply to make them give evidence against a people smuggler currently being held in Perth. What will happen to them after that is anyone's guess.
The new $200 million detention centre that the government is building on Christmas Island was announced to islanders on March 12 by Wilson Tuckey in a flying visit to the island. He later claimed this was a "consultation", but the locals were handed a fait accompli.
At its maximum capacity — 1200 people — the new detention centre will hold almost as many people as the current permanent population of the island.
The islanders' protests about the proposed location of the centre have been ignored. It is to be built on an old mine site in the middle of the forest, 20 kilometres from town, literally at the other end of the island. The site is surrounded by national park, adjacent to nesting sites for the endangered Abbotts Booby, a bird unique to Christmas Island.
The location means that not only will the detainees be completely isolated, but all water, power and communication services will have to be laid on for the purpose. The pipes for the water supply have already arrived.
This road is on the path of the annual migration of Christmas Island's amazing red crabs; millions of them swarm down from the forest towards the sea each year to spawn. The road to the detention centre site is normally closed by Parks Australia during the height of the migration.
Opinion on the island is divided. Some people remain outraged at refugees being detained on the island, but others, particularly businesspeople, see it as good for the economy.
But even among those who support the construction of the centre, there is a determination that it should not be like the detention centres on the mainland. One member of the chamber of commerce told me: "There's no need for razor wire on Christmas Island".
The chamber of commerce has made a submission to the government on the kind of humane establishment it would like to see. Whether the government will take any notice is moot. Given the past treatment of Christmas Island by successive administrations, that seems unlikely.
[Abridged from a report. Anne Coombs is a convenor of Rural Australians for Refugees. She returned from Christmas Island on June 18.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 26, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.