BY PATRICIA CORCORAN
On the night of March 29, up to 60 refugees protested the removal for deportation of some of their fellow detainees from Port Hedland Immigration Detention Centre. Almost a week later, on April 4, more protests broke out at the Curtin detention camp, outside Derby in Western Australia.
These two incidents bring the number of protests in Australian refugee detention centres in the last six months to four, after protests at the Woomera detention centre in October and action by detainees in Port Hedland in January.
The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) calls these protests "riots", to delegitimise them, terminology replicated by the establishment media. In reality these are angry, but thoroughly legitimate, protests, organised spontaneously in reaction to the often violent treatment of Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) officers, who run the camps.
The department and ACM keep a tight media blackout on protests at the centres. An ABC helicopter attempting to film the April 4 protest at Curtin was ordered by DIMA to leave its airspace. All visits to Curtin and Port Hedland, and telephone access to the refugees, were cut for at least four days after the protests.
The specific incident that sparked the protest is not known, nor are the refugees' demands.
By the time the blackout was lifted, the demands of the refugees were no longer "newsworthy", at least not from the perspective of the mainstream media. And so, by default, the facts are censored.
Obtaining information from the detainees is always difficult. Before the latest incident at Port Hedland, I managed to talk to Abdul (not his real name), a detainee there. This was only possible because Abdul had access to a mobile phone. Mobile phones are prohibited at detention centres, presumably because, unlike the centre's fixed phones, they are difficult to moniter.
The detainees are forbidden from speaking to the media. Abdul was fearful that he would be caught talking to me. Our conversation was constantly interrupted, so he could check to see if any officers were approaching.
A refugee from Iraq, Abdul has been in detention at Port Hedland for 19 months. A Shiite from the southern part of the country, he was involved in an opposition party. He was forced to join the ruling Ba'ath party and threatened with torture — and then decided to leave.
As he, like many other Iraqi asylum seekers, came to Australia via Syria, Abdul's application for protection in Australia has been rejected — DIMA claims he could have received asylum from Syria.
Syria, however, has given no guarantee that he will be received there. So Abdul waits to be sent back to a country which may or may not want him, where he lived for barely a month.
Abdul witnessed the January protest in Port Hedland. He said it started when asylum seekers saw seven or eight ACM officers hitting detainees who had recently been brought to Port Hedland from Woomera. They were in a seperate part of the compound, shielded from the others by fence.
Rather than watching helplessly, some detainees started smashing windows in a gesture of solidarity and protest.
The situation escalated and the ACM staff decided to leave the compound, returning with the aid of riot police who used capsicum spray and batons to attack the protesters.
None of the detainees used weapons in what DIMA labelled a "riot". While police have claimed that an officer was hit by a rock, Abdul denies this, as there are no rocks in the detention centre.
After the demonstration, four refugees were confined in the "Juliet block", where the tiny cells have no toilet and no windows.
The conditions in the camps are a constant frustration to the detainees. Abdul said that, when he arrived at the centre, he was kept in isolation for 77 days. He was denied access to television, newspapers, telephone or post.
All refugees are kept in isolation for some period of time and many are kept there much longer than Abdul was — he said he knew of one person who had been kept in isolation for 15 months.
After 77 days, he was interviewed by DIMA officials and lodged his application for a protection visa. He was then allowed into the open compound, to await his fate.
Some refugees wait for 20 months for DIMA to respond to their applications, and the wait is a great strain on their physical and mental health.
Health care, however, is wholly inadequate, Abdul says — no matter what the ailment is, the advice is always to drink 10 glasses of water. There is only one mental health counsellor.
Some refugees give up hope, and ask to leave Australia, just because they are sick of waiting. Others attempt suicide or self-harm.
At the time that I spoke to Abdul, an Albanian refugee had been on hunger strike for 15 days. She had a baby in Australia but can't get a visa. All her family are here. Now her baby is six months old; she was suffering depression and refusing care for her child.
Abdul says there is one message he wants to emphasise: "We are peaceful people. We do not bring disease. We are educated. We came because we are facing persecution. We don't have a choice."
Refugee campaign committees are established in many cities around Australia, and are organising a national day of action on June 3. For information about these groups, visit