BY SARAH STEPHEN
Hundreds of refugee-rights campaigners will converge on Baxter detention centre from all over Australia on the Easter weekend to focus the national spotlight on the horrors of mandatory detention.
There is disconetent among local Indigenous communities about refugees being detained on their land without their consultation. Many Indigenous people have welcomed the Easter protest and are looking forward to meeting protesters at a barbecue in Port Augusta's Gladstone Park at noon on April 18, which will also include an official welcome from the Bungala community.
An Indigenous band from Melbourne, the Brolga Boys, will join local bands to play at a concert, organised by the Socialist Alternative activists from Melbourne, on April 19 at the protest site.
Refugees held in Baxter are already feeling the heavy hand of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA). On April 6, eight detainees were placed in solitary confinement. Pamela Curr, refugee spokesperson for the Victorian Greens, wrote in an April 12 report: "They were told that they were considered to be likely to escape, so they were being removed and locked up until after Easter — a pre-emptive strike, as it were."
Some time between April 6 and 10, the eight detainees became upset at their continued isolation and began to cry out. It is alleged that they were then beaten, their hands and feet flexi-cuffed, their arms shackled to their waist with belts, and had tape placed over their mouths.
Since then, several refugee supporters have attempted to contact lawyers, politicians, human rights organisations, DIMIA and Australasian Correctional Management (ACM). None have been able to make contact with the detainees.
Curr spent three hours on April 11 making phone calls to state and federal police, only to be told that assaults would not be investigated unless the victims made a complaint (but they cannot make phone calls); that South Australian police investigate rapes and murders, but not assaults on federal land; and that, according to Ray McDonald from the Federal Police, ACM is a private firm and the police operate on the basis that they know what they are doing and are trained to do what they do.
Curr is disgusted that South Australia "is marshalling 300 police and guards to face off the protesters at Easter but there is no-one available or willing to investigate the alleged assault of eight men".
Women and children in the Woomera housing project and in Baxter detention centre have been told by DIMIA that they will be taken away to a secret location where they will be held incommunicado during the Easter weekend protests, for reasons of "security and safety".
For details of the Easter weekend protests, visit <http://baxter2003.baxterwatch.net>.
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
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