BY ERIN KILLION
Jane Keogh is a refugee-rights activist in the Canberra Refugee Action Committee. After visiting Baxter detention center in January, she spoke to Green Left Weekly about the conditions in the centre.
Keogh met 41 people in the centre, and spent a few hours with about 13 of the asylum seekers who she had had contact with before coming to the centre. "It was quite daunting each time to get in [to the detention centre]", she explained, "Six electronically controlled doors to go through, full escort, wrist-band, stamp, empty pockets, locker for belongings, and they required three forms of ID. You fill out long forms for any items you want to bring in."
Keogh explained that as everything she took in was x-rayed, it took her about half an hour to get into the centre, from the time she buzzed the gate. "Sometimes you are left for some time", she added, "standing in full sun in the cage between the first and second electronically controlled gates".
Unfortunately, Keogh wasn't able to see the six single men she had intended to visit. Those in the single men's compounds had been denied visitors since the New Year. Baxter manager Greg Wallace had told the detainees that this was punishment for the fires in the detention centre that occurred over the New Year.
"Everyone I spoke to opposed the fires", Keogh told Green Left Weekly. She added that "most of the single men understood how some men might do something desperate. Many have been in detention for three or four years now."
"To me", Keogh added, "the miracle is, when people are so traumatised, that for 360 days of the year they didn't light fires, or they didn't break things".
"During the week that I was there, a meeting took place between of delegates from all the different compounds and the Australasian Correctional Management and immigration department staff. The detainees asked why they were being punished, and were told it was at the express direction of the minister."
Keogh explained the extent of this punishment: "They were being denied incoming or outgoing phone calls, and their beds, mattresses, mirrors and chairs had been removed from their rooms. The washing machine from the common area, and furniture from the recreation room had also been removed. They had to sleep on the floor."
The latter may be the worst punishment for many detainees, because the trauma they have endured makes asylum seekers likely to suffer sleeping disorders.
Keogh also explained that the guards had been hassling detainees. "They try to provoke people who haven't slept that night, it is almost like they want violence", she said.
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock has claimed that most of those remaining in Australia's detention centres are not "genuine" refugees. Keogh disagrees, pointing out that she did not meet anyone who had completed the appeals process unsuccessfully. "Many of those rejected as 'not genuine refugees'", she added, "have either not been able to afford a lawyer or have not been able to prepare their case, having only limited phone access to a lawyer. It is rare for most detainees to even see their lawyer — most have an occasional phone conversation."
"Some people think that the government provides them with lawyers, but that's a myth. Everyone I met there has been borrowing money, desperately trying to find a lawyer. Most people owe money to lawyers. One young woman had to pay $1800 to a lawyer, and she didn't win the case. She is a practising Christian from Iran. [In Iran] a whole family can be persecuted if one member of the family is a Christian. So it's not only what happens to her that she was concerned about, but also what would happen to the rest of her family.
"To hear their stories it's hard to understand how they could have been judged not to be genuine refugees, but I've heard that Ruddock isn't recognising any of the Christian persecution in Iran. She's applying for another appeal, but that will cost her more as well."
Keogh was clearly moved by what she saw inside the centre. She told GLW that a detainee had told her: "You see us all here looking happy and being cheerful with our visitors. We are grateful that visitors come. Some come a long way and we try to show our best face. But everyone here is sad inside their hearts. They have heavy problems and they cry inside and cannot sleep. They have a big question to ask themselves — do I stay here with this heavy bullet to my heart or do I go home and catch another kind of bullet to my heart?"
Another detainee spoke to her about the changes that people undergo in detention. "For three months they are okay. They smile. They move around quickly. They want to do things — maybe they learn English or go to the gym. Then they slow down and their eyes no longer smile. After six months, you begin to see the black under their eyes and they are getting sick and they get angry at nothing and they talk and they want to change things.
"After one year they have lost hope. They do not like to do anything. They are depressed. By two years, they are very desperate. They do not care anymore what happens to them; they do not care anymore if people write to them or help them; they are sorry that they came and death in their own country looks better than slow death here. Their heart is already dead, so why not all of them? But still they are scared and keep asking in their heart 'why?'. They cannot believe their life is really gone."
Keogh described how the three-year-old child of a detainee she was talking to tugged her dress and said "guards took my mummy". She found out the child's mother had suffered severe psychological disturbance and had not spoken for months.
The woman had been traumatised after a hospital visit, during which she was accompanied by eight guards — unable to change or go to the toilet in privacy. Then, inexplicably, another four guards arrived at the hospital, handcuffed her husband and carried her off by the arms and legs in front of her children.
Now she will not eat any food that comes from the guards, or leave her room. Her husband would like her to take medication, but she won't accept it from the guards. She would take it from him, he told Keogh, but the rules do not allow this and so she lives in this disturbed state and her husband and children try to cope each day.
Keogh described the poor medical facilities as her "biggest concern". "It's a very big problem for all of [the detainees], and they keep telling you about it", she said.
"One woman had serious lower-back pain early in her pregnancy, and was greatly worried that something was wrong. She couldn't see a doctor, and was told to take two Panadol tablets and water. She had to wait three weeks for the pain to go. One person told me 'If you say you are sick, they tell you that you are not sick. Then they come to you and tell you that you are sick, you have to see a doctor, or we have to sedate you'.
"Often a person's medical condition has to get very serious before any help arrives. One woman had severe pain over several days, and a much distended stomach. She was told to take Panadol tablets and water. Two days later she collapsed unconscious and had to be taken to hospital, where she needed several days treatment."
Keogh pointed out that detainees are also punished following protests, whether their own or by refugee-rights activists. One woman told her that they may lose access to visitors after the protest planned for Easter: "Every time there is some kind of protest, every time we complain we are put on more punishment."
Others were depressed at any prospect for change. "One refugee said 'I don't think you'll change this government, Ruddock has not been here to see us, he hasn't heard our stories, he doesn't know and he doesn't want to know.'"
Keogh believes the campaign for refugees' rights must seek to change Australians' view of refugees. "Education is the answer, getting into schools", she argued. "We've got such support from the [NSW] Teacher's Federation. I would like to see the same support from the private teachers' organisation. There's been no public statement from the catholic education systems. Are they too tied to the establishment to look at the justice of the situation?
"When Australians can hear the stories, they are forced to recognise they are real people. That's when real change can happen. For example, the mayor of Port Augusta was known to be anti-refugee, and yet the biggest positive note that came from my visit, was when the detainees told me about her visit. They told me that once she heard their stories, she cried. That's a beginning.
"I would say we would have moved a lot faster if we had a more progressive media, the media in Australia, is too tied with the establishment and is not prepared to take a stand."
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
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