BY DAVE McKAY
[The author protested at the Woomera detention centre at Easter, then remained in the township of Woomera and set up a "Refugee Embassy", visiting the detainees and writing of their situation. This abridged statement was written on June 28, after the June 27 break-out of refugees from the Woomera detention centre.]
WOOMERA — We at the Refugee Embassy must stress once again that we were definitely not involved in the breakout, and that we oppose such action in principle, not because we believe it is right for the detainees to be held in custody, but because we believe that true freedom will only come through changes in the system, and not through running away.
We strongly object to repeated efforts from the media during interviews this morning to refer to a group of demonstrators who arrived in Woomera yesterday as being the ones who helped in the escape, in such a way as to trick us into saying that, when, to our knowledge, no such connection has yet been made. They may be, but we cannot say.
It is not fair to them, and definitely not fair to us to manipulate questions in such a way as to imply that we ourselves are accusing these people of anything. We will refuse to co-operate with those Â鶹´«Ã½ of the media who persist in this kind of dishonest and unfair reporting. We can confirm that a group of demonstrators (about 20) arrived in town yesterday morning and told us that they wanted to set up a vigil outside the detention centre, in solidarity with the hunger strike presently going on inside. We supported them in such a plan of action, but urged them to make an application to actually visit the detainees.
To our knowledge, these people were all present in the parking lot at the Pimba Roadhouse when we were awakened by police around 3am. A search was made of our bus and of the vehicles that the other demonstrators were travelling in, and the police left, presumably without finding any detainees. However, when we re-awoke at 8am, the group was gone.
Mobile phones, which had been placed in the compounds a few days before the visit by a UN delegation, have now been confiscated, and all visits to detainees have been called off. But, in fact, there is, to our knowledge, no reason to expect that visits or phone conversations were in any way related to the breakout.
We phoned contacts inside the detention centre this morning, before the mobile phones were confiscated, and we were told by the detainees themselves that events at the centre started some time in the middle of the night, when about five cars pulled up with their horns blaring and people shouting and hollering. It woke the detainees, who moved over to the fence. The people in the cars then got out and approached the fence with a video camera and actually conducted interviews with the detainees (presumably through the fence). At some point the subject of escaping came up (presumably initiated by the detainees), and an offer was made to assist them in prying open the fence.
The detainees told us that most of them declined the offer, which we at the Refugee Embassy take as a significant triumph for our official position, which is that escape will never take the place of release. According to the detainees themselves, only about twenty men chose to escape, three from Iran and the rest from Afghanistan. We understand, however, that the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs has confirmed that a total of 39 detainees have escaped, and that 34 of them are still at large.
A rule was announced yesterday that medication would no longer be give to any prisoners engaged in the hunger strike. This includes antidepressants, pain-killers and sleeping tablets. As of last night, there still had not been one detractor from the hunger strike, which has involved 190 prisoners since Sunday night, including children as young as nine years old.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, July 10, 2002.
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