By Iggy Kim
Imagine yourself on the "other" side for a moment; or perhaps you've been there. You're an Iraqi with children who are starving because of the US sanctions. Or a South Korean welder thrown out of work by the IMF's de-development of your country's economy. Or perhaps an Afghani under the heel of the Taliban regime. Or one of the millions of poor in New Order Indonesia or south China's "export processing zone".
You want to get out, but you speak no other language and have little money. With no hope of legal entry into fortress Australia, you turn to those who can sneak you in at a price. You sell everything you own to pay a deposit and promise to pay the rest when you begin your new life in the "lucky country".
Mandatory, non-reviewable detention
Unfortunately, the most that those seeking such an escape see of Australia is the dry scrub and endless ocean visible through the barbed wire fence of the Port Hedland Immigration Detention Centre (IDC).
But they are not there for long. Since September 1994, almost all boat arrivals have been quickly expelled, back to economic chaos, sanctions, war and poverty. Only those who seek asylum using the "correct" terminology get a second glance.
For Chinese nationals, deportation is near certain — either immediately or after a lengthy detention while their asylum application is shuffled around and then routinely rejected.
Located in WA's remote Pilbara region, Port Hedland is the largest and most isolated of the four IDCs run by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA). It is also the exclusive preserve of those "illegals" who arrive by sea — the "boat people".
Acquired in 1991 from BHP, this former single men's quarters can hold about 700 people in nine accommodation blocks. Since 1995, these blocks have been separated from each other by internal fences topped with razor wire. Three blocks are set aside for new arrivals, who are prohibited from communicating with other detainees.
Inside these fences, the overall material facilities seem adequate. Gabrielle Cullen of the National Council of Churches (NCC) reported after a two-day visit last December, "The conditions in the general [i.e., non-segregated] section are in most areas quite suitable". In fact, the DIMA recently completed an $11 million refurbishment of the centre.
However, Cullen says that material adequacy is heavily overshadowed by the psychological impact of such indefinite and isolated detention. "Asylum seekers get very angry, dispirited and demoralised after prolonged detention", she told Green Left Weekly. Between October 1991 and November 1995 there were 11 suicide attempts, 17 demonstrations and numerous hunger strikes.
The trauma is compounded by the infrequency of successful asylum applications, the result of a government strategy based on deterrence and exclusion. Commenting on the IDC manager's interception of lawyers' phone calls to those detainees whose Refugee Review Tribunal hearings have failed, Cullen observed in her NCC report: "This seems to occur in the 28-day period post-RRT, when a claim to the Federal Court can be made".
The daily goings-on in the Port Hedland centre are not transparent to the ordinary visitor. One regular religious visitor described for Green Left the intimidation used by IDC management and security — "bureaucratic smokescreens" thrown up to make the centre "not visitor friendly".
Visitors are required to supply photo identification and the name of a specific detainee. Then a form has to be filled out, followed by a considerable wait before contact can be made. At one time, visitors were required to wear security wrist-bands.
Cullen reports that discussions between detainees and religious visitors are time-restricted and closely scrutinised by guards. A number of double and triple fences covered in hessian surround parts of the centre to block visual contact between detainees and outsiders.
One refugee advocacy worker told Green Left Weekly that those who deal with the asylum seekers have to give an undertaking to the DIMA that they will not speak to the media about the situation of the detainees. When I tried to verify this by phoning the centre, I experienced numerous delays and run-arounds before finally being fobbed off to the DIMA's public affairs section in Canberra. From there, I was referred to the DIMA web site.
Assault, injections, taunts
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) report Those who've come across the seas: detention of unauthorised arrivals was tabled in federal parliament on May 12, 1998. It is the result of a two-year inquiry into all four IDCs, conducted by the HREOC after it received numerous complaints of human rights abuse from and on behalf of detainees.
The report "found that the policy of mandatory detention violates international law". It identified disturbing security practices at Port Hedland, even before security was privatised in late 1997 to Australasian Correctional Services Pty Ltd, part of a US private prison company.
These practices include frequent room and body searches, and searches of all mail to detainees. Room searches are reported to be conducted at all hours, often leaving detainees' belongings in disarray.
In December 1996, a room search at 6.30am resulted in a violent confrontation between several guards and one detainee. Even the federal police, after investigating the incident, concluded that the guards had conducted the search inappropriately.
There are noisy 24-hour foot patrols of the accommodation blocks and segregated detainees are subject to hourly surveillance by security guards.
There have been allegations of arbitrary strip searches. There is also the disturbing use of "observation rooms" and drug injections to control "unruly" detainees.
In May 1997, a woman complained of being attacked by guards after taking an extra orange from the dining hall. Despite the woman's attempts to explain that she was given the fruit by a kitchen worker and her repeated requests for an interpreter, she was taken to an observation room where, according to the guards, she removed her clothes and attempted to hang herself with them. The on-site mental health nurse was then called to inject her with an anti-psychotic drug.
This confrontational approach is even more starkly revealed in the way guards handle incidents involving multiple detainees, usually protest actions.
In December 1996, 72 detainees tried to present a petition regarding the imprisonment of a fellow detainee. In their complaint to HREOC, they told of how they were taken to the "isolation block" and held in solitary confinement for up to six days. Six detainees complained that on the way to the block and during isolation they were assaulted by guards.
After an investigation, the federal police referred the assault allegations to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but he was unable to pursue them because witnesses to the event had already been deported.
The police investigation found that a guard had been instructed to disconnect the public phone during the incident to prevent detainees from contacting people outside. Other evidence suggests that the IDC manager intimidated one detainee for contacting the commonwealth ombudsman after the incident.
Incoming information is also controlled. Weekly Australian Chinese-language newspapers have often had articles censored out before they reach the detainees.
Asylum seekers resort to hunger strikes to prevent deportation when all formal avenues have failed. HREOC was told by security staff that DIMA policy is to make things as difficult as possible for these strikers by isolating them and withdrawing their privileges. Complaints of taunts and verbal abuse, sometimes with racist overtones, have been made against guards and the IDC manager.
One group of 22 hunger strikers who were repeatedly taunted by the manager attempted mass suicide by slashing their wrists. The guards responded by handcuffing them, putting them in solitary confinement and injecting four with sedatives.
The injection of sedatives is also common in the "extraction setting", that is, when detainees are being prepared for deportation.
There have been also been several allegations of arbitrary assault by security guards. One case involved a seven-year-old boy being kicked off a fence by a guard who had previously been reported for assault.
From the HREOC report, a picture emerges which exposes the label "administrative detention" as double-speak for punitive imprisonment.
Service staff are often dismissive and negligent towards detainees' needs. This includes a perception among medical staff that detainees over-seek medical help. In one complaint to HREOC, a detainee alleged that he was accused by the IDC nurse of pretending to be ill, until he passed a kidney stone and took it to her.
Mental health treatment is also grossly deficient, in particular because many asylum seekers require trauma and torture counselling.
Above all, there seems to be a general pressure on all staff to comply with the overriding political policy of deterrence and exclusion: that detainees be shipped out as soon as possible, that seeking refuge is made difficult, and that anyone who takes protest action be harassed.
The real criminals
All these practices are consistent with the criminalisation of immigration, a vicious weapon being employed by the First World against Third World people trying to escape the horrors of imperialist exploitation. This criminalisation involves slanders against "economic refugees" which imply that those merely seeking better living standards have no right to immigrate because their countries' economic problems are entirely of their own making.
But the line between political and economic refuge is largely meaningless to Third World people: is an Iraqi fleeing the US's crippling sanctions a "genuine" refugee or an opportunist out to manoeuvre themself into a better deal?
In international legal terms, such a person falls into the "displaced" category. But there is no access to political protection in another state for displaced persons. There are only provisions such as the "humanitarian" category of immigration used by the Australian government, and this category is less subject than others to international law and scrutiny. It is, therefore, more susceptible to xenophobic and racist manipulation, and arbitrary administration by capitalist governments.
And who are the real criminals and opportunists anyway? Australian governments and big businesses have a large hand in creating the sickening state of affairs in countries such as Iraq and Indonesia. Australia's current fortress policy is akin to setting a neighbour's home alight then locking the neighbour inside so they can't seek refuge in your own home.
The only lasting and genuine solution to the Third World Diaspora is a just and humane global order. In the immediate struggle to end the need for millions to flee their homes, however, some demands are key: the unconditional lifting of sanctions against Iraq, the cancellation of all Third World debts, political and material assistance for democracy and workers' movements, a massive increase in development aid for the Third World aimed, not at improving infrastructure for imperialist corporations, but at genuinely improving the welfare of the people, and immediate self-determination for all peoples who want it.