Free the refugees!
By Sean Healy
Having fled misery, oppression and persecution, Australia's asylum seekers are greeted with little better when they arrive in this country. Labelled as criminals by the federal government because they arrive the only way they can — unannounced and without documents — they are imprisoned in detention camps, isolated from society and denied their rights. This is hidden from the Australian people.
Last week's Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly revealed that detainees at the Curtin air base outside Derby in far-north Western Australia had gone on hunger strike. In a letter smuggled to us from inside the camp, the detainees appealed for help:
"We are the detainees in Curtin camp, Derby. We are suffering inside the camp. Where is human rights?
"We started hunger strike since yesterday morning [February 1] because of very bad behaviour and treatment of DIMA [the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs]. We are 1240 people, among us hundreds of women and children.
"Please help us, we will die if nobody comes to help us. We are dying. Hurry up before we die.
"We have no access to outside, not any way to reach help."
Since then, Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly has learned more about what the refugees were protesting about.
Curtin air base
The detainees at Curtin, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, have been in the camp for months. They had demanded that their refugee visa applications be speeded up, that they be moved to a major city where they could be in contact with their respective communities and that they no longer be detained and be allowed to come and go as they wish.
The refugees received no reply from the immigration department. By February 5, a large number of the hunger strikers had sewn their lips partially together. According to a department spokesperson, the refugees ended the hunger strike on February 8. Their requests remained unmet.
The detainees' brave action caused panic in the department, which had gone to great lengths to keep the story out of the public eye. They imposed a media blackout at the camp, warned all staff and service providers not to talk to anybody about the protest and refused access to anyone from outside.
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock tried to play down the numbers involved, saying that only "several" took part. He said government officials had no idea how many sewed their lips together, "somewhere between a half and one dozen ... many of them have beards and the stitching is only to one side".
He also alleged that some of the hunger strikers were forced to protest by other detainees. "There are a number of people who endeavour to provide a form of leadership in matters of this sort and who try and pressure people to participate", Ruddock charged. "There has been a degree of coercion used."
WA Premier Richard Court went further, accusing the detainees of being "ungrateful". "What a nerve to be complaining about the system they have sort of thwarted. They have come in illegally and just have complete disregard for the proper processes of coming into this country, so I don't think they are in any position to protest."
Isolated
Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly has learned that the detainees had been planning their action for some time, frustrated at constant attempts by the department and camp officials to restrict their access to lawyers, care workers and the outside world. Previous protests had gone unanswered.
Many of the detainees are depressed and becoming increasingly desperate for help. They fear they will never be allowed out or, if they are, it will be to be deported. The hunger strike is unlikely to be the last action the detainees take.
In January, four refugees from Bangladesh jumped the fence at Curtin because they had been denied access to legal advice and information about their cases. They have been sentenced to four months' imprisonment.
The Curtin air base is 40 kilometres from Derby. The detainees are kept in small, air-conditioned huts like those on a building site. There are communal toilets and showers, and a mess hall. There are few if any recreational facilities. At this time of year, it is unbearably hot.
There is only one telephone and it is located in the administration hut. Detainees have very limited access to the phone and then only at the sufferance of camp officials. There is little or no access to outside news, including newspapers, television or radio.
There are signs that the camp will be there for some time. The department is building a new mess hall to allow the camp's expansion.
When the detainees first arrived at Curtin, they were not provided with legal advice or counselling and were held incommunicado. Some have since been able to contact friends and relatives in Australia, after long delays. Some have been able to get legal advice, but many have not.
Jackie King from the Refugee Council of WA told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that her organisation and other advocacy groups have been denied access to the camp by the immigration department. A Catholic priest who sought access to the camp at Christmas to conduct church services was refused.
Camp staff and others who provide services at Curtin have also been muzzled; they fear losing their jobs if they speak on the record. Lawyers representing individual detainees are also warned that if they rock the boat, their private tenders won't be renewed.
The camp's security guards are employed for six-week periods — paid $17,000 for each stretch — and nurses receive three times the normal rate of pay, on the condition of remaining silent.
Condemned
Australia has six detention camps. Curtin, and Woomera in South Australia's desert, have opened in the last six months. Curtin's official capacity is 1000 people but it already exceeds that. No information is available on Woomera.
Facilities at Port Hedland, in north-west WA, and Villawood, in Sydney's western suburbs, hold 800 and 275 people respectively. Centres at Maribyrnong in Melbourne and at Perth airport operate as short-term holding areas before deportation.
In other Western countries, asylum seekers are detained for brief periods, at most. Once they apply for refugee status, they are released into the community.
In April 1997, the United Nations Human Rights Commission found in the case of A v Australia that Australia's mandatory detention policy was in breach of Â鶹´«Ã½ 9.1 and 9.4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because it was "arbitrary" and "unlawful". In May 1998, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission released a report, They Came From Over The Seas, which also criticised the mandatory detention policy and the wide-ranging breaches of human rights in detention centres.
Ruddock dismissed the claims of the UNHRC and HREOC. He said that releasing asylum seekers into the community would "actively encourage others to follow and enter Australia illegally". Detention, he said, was the easiest way to ensure that asylum seekers are "readily available for removal when their attempts to remain are unsuccessful".
Control
Des Hogan, Amnesty International's national refugee support director, is fiercely critical of the government's policy, which he argues is a violation of the human rights of detainees.
"It's a control thing", he told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly. "They justify it by claiming that we face inundation from abroad and they identify anyone without papers as criminals and traffickers."
Hogan said that the immigration department has a deliberate policy of seeking to deny detainees information about their rights. Section 256 of the Migration Act states that all detainees have the right to legal advice. Departmental instructions state that each detainee should be informed of that right — except those who have arrived by boat.
"It's a truly Orwellian law", Hogan said. "You have rights, but no right to know you have rights."
The federal Coalition government has also restricted the ability of other government agencies, such as the HREOC and the Ombudsman, to investigate conditions in the camps. Complaints to both bodies have been steadily rising.
Last May, federal parliament passed the Migration Legislation Amendment Act #2. As a result, the HREOC and the Ombudsman no longer have immediate access to the camps, nor can they initiate their own investigations. Both must wait until a specific complaint from a detainee is brought before them. Of course, if detainees don't know about the existence of the HREOC and the Ombudsman, that is very unlikely.
Out of sight
Nick Poinder is a barrister who has dealt with refugees' cases since mandatory detention was officially introduced by the Labor government in 1994. He has no doubt that the government is deliberately keeping the camps, and the detainees, out of sight in order to prevent public sympathy.
Officials at Port Hedland, for instance, will order the refugees back into their huts whenever the media arrive so that no-one can be seen through the fence. Curtin's isolation works against media exposure.
Poinder told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that the camps are deliberately sited to deny detainees' access to the support of their communities and legal advice. "They're held incommunicado specifically and overtly to prevent 'contamination'", Poinder said. "The department doesn't want them receiving advice as to what their rights are." The government wants "iron control" in order to get the detainees out of the country as soon as they can.
Even when detainees know their rights, they are at the department's mercy. They are held until the department decides they can apply for a refugee visa, Poinder said. He has dealt with many cases in recent months in which the department has repeatedly denied access to legal advice and misled detainees.
Poinder thinks that the government may have a bigger problem on its hands now. The newly arrived refugees from the Middle East are aware of their rights and know to ask for a lawyer. "They're well educated and feisty", Poinder told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly. "They're not going to give up easily. They've had many demonstrations in the camps and they're causing the department all sorts of difficulties."
The government's hope is that their protests and "feistiness" find no sympathy or support outside. Our job is to make sure it does.