The Human Rights Alliance calls for a UN Special Rapporteur to enter the Curtin Detention Centre

The Human Rights Alliance
Curtin Detention Centre - UN Special Rapporteur must be called in. Independent observers must enter Curtin. The protests have ceased due to promises made by DIAC to the Asylum Seekers. The media must be allowed into Curtin Detention Centre.

We have been updated by our Asylum Seekers who are unlawfully detained in the illegal facility of Curtin Detention Centre that the protests did begin to cease Tuesday and appeared to be over by Wednesday. This was due to eight DIAC officials arriving to speak to many of the protestors. DIAC officials PROMISED the protestors that the processing of their visa applications and of their appeals would be better assisted and most certainly sped up.

We have been informed that as a result of these promises in that applications would be expedited and coupled by the fact that many Asylum Seekers were falling ill our Asylum Seekers have taken DIAC at their word and invested goodwill in their promises.

It is an indictment upon DIAC and the Government that it takes such unnecessary unfolding, such as the Refugees Rights Action Network's 100 visitor applications en masse, the Asylum Seekers' protests, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and the at least 25 people who collapsed from exhaustion to precipitate some promised humanity and regard for people. Let us hope that some of what DIAC promises is the truth. However the goal of an end to Mandatory Detention must be vigilantly pursued.

We understand that if our Asylum Seekers believe they have been deceived by DIAC that they will coalesce in further protests at Curtin.

We call upon the Government once again for bona fide Independent Investigators and Observers to enter the Curtin Detention Centre facilities with unfettered access to all 1,371 Asylum Seekers. The Investigators must be demarcated from the Commonwealth and State Governments and whose impartiality can be best assured if they are UN Special Rapporteurs or a delegation from the Australian Human Rights Commission or from Amnesty International. They must report findings in accordance with the public interest, declare the extensiveness of the recent protests, hunger strikes, those who fell ill, the reasons for DIAC and Serco rejecting at the last minute the 100 visitor applications by the RRAN delegation which coalesced a doctor, lawyers, mental health and social workers, academics, students, advocates, others. An investigation into why DIAC and Serco circumvented visitor protocols and the right to visits and human contact were cheated must emanate so it does not reoccurr. DIAC and Serco by their actions exacerbated tensions and incited the protests and hunger strike.

We also understand that there maybe abominable sleeping quarters and facilities at the Curtin Detention Centre. We understand that 40 people are sleeping to a room. We understand that mobile structures have been brought in to Curtin to be converted as en masse sleeping quarters. Many Asylum Seekers have been in Detention for one and half years. We need any Independent Delegation to report on accommodation and facilities.

We encourage DIAC and the Commonwealth Government to allow the media unfettered access into Detention Centres. The media should not be denied access and the right to interview where granted, and the right to film inside these Detention Centres.

"The spectacle of racism has permitted the horrific incarceration of Asylum Seekers by the Australian Government. Australia is now shamed by the burgeoning phenomena of Detention Centre deaths, six in the last eight months, and by Immigration Deaths in Custody, 29 since 2000. If current policies and practices continue the statistics will exponentially rise and further stain the Australian landscape."

THE HUMAN RIGHTS ALLIANCE

Working towards a Better Future

We acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians whose ancestral lands we are now part of. We acknowledge and remember the horrific atrocities inflicted upon them. This is and will forever be their land.

CONTACT - Gerry Georgatos - 0430 657 309