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In Hobart’s Pontville detention centre, 35 Afghan refugees had been on hunger strike for a week, putting three of them in hospital, when they were joined by more than 100 others. It meant almost half the centre’s detainees were refusing food by January 24.

The actions were in protest against the government’s failure to deliver its promise to release more refugees from detention to live in the community on bridging visas while their claims are assessed.

The Gillard government said in November that it would grant 100 bridging visas each month to refugees that had spent more than a year in dangerously overcrowded detention centres. But by January 13, only 107 such visas had been granted.

Sydney Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul told the Hobart that most involved in the hunger strike had been detained for “between 15 and 33 months and are becoming increasingly frustrated”.

There are 381 Afghan, Iranian and Syrian refugees presently held in the centre, which has a maximum capacity of 400.

The protesters decided to suspend their fast for seven days on January 25 while continuing talks with immigration staff, Rintoul said.

Another prolonged hunger strike ended in a Melbourne detention centre on January 24, where a 33-year-old Iranian refugee starved himself for more than 14 days in a bid to see the immigration case manager handling his refugee claim.

He became severely ill and was hospitalised, but resumed his fast as soon as he returned to detention. Refugee supporters said he has been locked up for more than 16 months, and began the hunger strike after a second visa rejection.

Four other men who have been held for more than 12 months also took part in the hunger strike, but ended it on January 24 after immigration staff told them it would affect their visa bids. Other detainees have reported similar threats, despite immigration minister Chris Bowen’s constant assertions that protests such as hunger strikes have “no effect” on the outcomes of cases.

The Refugee Action Collective Victoria said some of the men have already been granted refugee status, but have been waiting months for “security checks” by ASIO.

Another man at the centre lay on the ground outside for two days, refusing to eat or drink. Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said on January 14 she saw him “in the dirt curled up and clutching the wire fence”. A guard stood by and another asylum seeker came to lay a blanket on him overnight.

Curr said he was accepted as a refugee more than five months ago but was also waiting for ASIO to clear him for a visa.



He was on a suicide watch and reportedly said: “They treat me like animal so I am animal.” Refugee advocates told �鶹��ý Weekly that Serco-employed guards “showed an incredible lack of care”.

They said the 33-year-old might be moved into community detention after his two-week ordeal. The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture told GLW they found him to be in a “critically ill state”.

“Security checks” carried out by ASIO at the request of the immigration department have dragged out the detention time of hundreds of proven refugees.

ASIO director-general David Irvine told the parliamentary committee on detention centres in November that “80% of … security assessments have been completed in less than a week”.

But “the 20% or less of remaining cases are what we call complex cases”. For these cases, there is no time limit, no oversight and ASIO does not need to reveal any of its information, sources or evidence.

There are now more than 400 refugees in the new compound at the Wickham Point detention centre, 40 kilometres from Darwin. The first 100 were flown from Christmas Island in early December, and the centre is intended to hold up to 1500 people.

Refugee and human rights groups strongly opposed the site. It was previously deemed “unbearable” for workers of a Japanese gas company, because of a high level of biting midge and mosquitoes. The salt marsh mosquito, prevalent in the area, can transmit Ross River and Barmah Forest virus, which cause fever, rash and joint pain.

The immigration department’s solution was to provide insect repellent and instruct detainees to wear long sleeves.

In early January, a report surfaced of a refugee who was moved from the Scherger detention centre in far-north Queensland and put in solitary confinement on Christmas Island, Curr told The Cairns Post.

“He has been put in an isolation cell coming up to four weeks now,” she said. “Troublesome” asylum seekers are being locked up in “Guantanamo” style cages on Christmas Island, confined for 23 hours a day as “behaviour modification”.