Ramesh Fernandez a former immigration detainee gives his view of the Detention Centre protests via the R.I.S.E. website
On Thursday 11 March, after waiting many months for a decision regarding their visas, several asylum seekers received rejection letters from DIAC. In the early hours of the next day, between 50 and 150 asylum seekers broke through iron gates and escaped the Christmas Island detention centre. Though the SERCO guards immediately tried to catch the escaped detainees, they were largely unsuccessful.
I learnt of the escape at 1am on Friday morning. Initially I was very worried and terrified because, having been a detainee at Christmas Island myself, I knew there was no place to hide on the Island, nor any ways to escape the Island, since it is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Christmas Island, north of mainland Australia, is surrounded by deep water. I also became very wary of how Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott will portray the escape. I was angry at the idea of them giving media interviews in which they politicise, for their own benefit, a topic which should only be dealt with humanely. I was dismayed by the reluctance of the Australian media to cover our police using force, rubber bullets, and bean bags on asylum seekers.
I recall the events of one early morning in 2003, while I was detained at the Baxter Detention Centre. Around 7 am, I was dragged out of my room and handcuffed, and kept outside for several hours. When the guards took me, I was naked, but they didn’t bother to help me, or let me, put my clothes on. The whole event was filmed by GSL guards, even the part of me redressing. There were many occasions where guards used capsicum spray on us and where detainees were denied proper medical care. I remember times we were fed expired food, and sometimes not even given enough water. Because of these experiences I endured in detention, I understand why people would protest or try to escape from those hellholes. This awful treatment meted out to detainees still continues.
The current state of Australia’s detention centres is appalling. They are overcrowded, sanitary conditions are poor, and some SERCO guards are very rough with the detainees. Furthermore, given the long wait that asylum seekers have to wait for their refugee status determinations and security clearances, the detention centre “vibe” is one of great angst, frustration, depression, and fear.
The escape of detainees has to be viewed with consideration of these problems. However, instead of addressing the underlying and important concerns, the Gillard government sends troops to Christmas Island to forcibly put an end to asylum seeker resistance: to stifle protest and return the asylum seekers back to the detention centre from which they escaped. And while Australia’s troops use tear gas and bean bag guns on asylum seekers, the Gillard government continues to ignore the massive human crisis occurring within the detention centres and, in doing so, fails to implement policy that will effectively resolve these issues.
Rather than using coercive power to silence detainee dissent, the Gillard government should address the legitimate concerns raised by detainees during their acts of protest and resistance. For example, one concern that has been raised by detainees multiple times is the amount of time that ASIO takes to determine security assessments and also ASIO’s lack of transparency in making these assessments. After being granted refugee status by the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC), many refugees have to wait for over a year ASIO to complete their security assessments.
After waiting for many months behind barbed wire, the negative decisions (from DIAC and/or ASIO) are terrible responses for those dying for freedom. Many of these asylum seekers have immediate family members relaying on them to reach a safe environment. And while these family members wait, they are threatened, tortured, kept in refugee camps, sometimes even murdered. While rhetoric about children in detention within Australia is given media attention, the fact that many asylum seekers have young children in other countries waiting for freedom as well is ignored.
Asylum seekers inside Australia’s detention centres are oppressed. The vast majority of those in detention arrived in Australia by boat. People only flee their homes and take the dangerous sea journey to Australia to escape horrific situations. It is a desperate measure caused by desperate situations. For the crime of fleeing persecution, they have to spend years of their lives behind bars and in solitary confinement. The fundamental rights of refugees, defined through the UN Refugee Convention are not respected inside detention centres. In this context, I am not surprised that asylum seekers are trying to escape. It is understandable, given the conditions within detention centres, how long cases take to be decided, and the amount of negative decisions.
Under the United Nations Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a signatory, we have a responsibility towards those who seek protection on our shores, irrespective of how they arrive or what papers they arrive with. And while the Australian government has shirked off the responsibilities of running detention centres onto private companies, they still have the responsibility to ensure that asylum seekers are treated humanely. Detention centres are not humane. They are often squalid and exacerbate mental trauma. Australia also needs to implement a fairer visa processing system—one where people are not kept in limbo for years and one which will not return people to danger.
Comments
Re: Detention uprising
This post contains some valuable insights on the background to the current crisis in immigration detention centres. The treatment and conditions described here are not within government policy, and should be condemned and if existing still, rectified immediately. There are a few insights that need to be added, however, to balance the picture and to be more fair all round.
Christmas Island is the end of a chain of crime and corruption that provides an alternative route for faster access to Australia's humanitarian obligations to those who can pay for the passage. Inevitably, some who are not genuine refugees, but who seek access to better money, will creep in amongst genuine refugees. These people are not only committing a crime against refugees without money who are trapped in far worse conditions than anywhere in Australia by unlawfully trying to bump them off the quota for humanitarian visas. They also contaminate the group of smuggled refugees, causing many terrible problems. For one, it takes a lot of time and wasted resources to sort the genuine from the fake. It exacerbates overcrowding. It results in asylum seekers being advised to lie and to destroy evidence of identity. It adds to the demand for dangerous passages over sea, and to the bribing of corrupt officials in Indonesia whose job is supposed to be to prevent the crime of people smuggling.
As to the complaints against ASIO; this organisation and the way it works, paid for by the Australian tax payer, but not ever answerable to the payer, is a fact that anyone living in Australia has to accept or strive by constitutional means to change. Its methods may contradict many endearing values of the Australian people. This is unattractive at best. If that is reason to not be drawn to Australia for asylum or immigration, then so be it. Citizens, immigrants and asylum seekers are free to head elsewhere if ASIO is unacceptable to them. Few other attractive free countries will not have an equivalent to ASIO, however. Secrecy is the opposite of freedom. Truth sets one free, so the hiding of truth is oppression. It is an evil, but to the extent it is a neccessary evil, its secrecy should be crushed into the smallest possible space by free media and dissident researchers.
One more insight. In South Africa there exists the world's largest group of asylum seekers said to be some 240 000, compared to Australia's roughly 6000 irregular maritime arrivals plus another 15 800 visa overstayers. Immigration detention in South Africa seems far worse than in Australia, and many refugees remain undetected and out of detention (see http://www.lhr.org.za/sites/lhr.org.za/files/LHR%20detention%20monitorin...). The result is that the poor communities that absorb asylum seekers walking in from the rest of Africa, are robbed of scarce resources by the uncontrolled refugees. Inevitably, this causes South African citizens to take violent action against the arrivals. The refugees have no protection and no rights. The South African Government largely ignores their Convention rights. Just read the report by Lawyers for Human Rights in RSA. What Australia does is surely less evil than this.
What will help make Australian handling of IMAs better? No more fake refugees, no more people-smuggling, better matching of demand for legitimate protection obligations with resources in the Dept of Immigration, as well as other clearing agencies such as ASIO, and cooperation between detainees and staff working at IDCs and other parts of the Immigration process.
Re: Detention uprising
You could have said all that in a few sentences, rather than writing another article on top of the article. This would have been more succinct "When people make the choice to risk life and limb to flee another country where they are being treated less than human, then they shouldn't complain when I am paying through my taxes to have them treated only slightly better in Australia"