Protests flare across Australia against the arbitrary
internment
of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants
Australia
- Monday, August 28, 2000.
Rioting
asylum seekers today burned down buildings at the Woomera
detention
centre following a weekend of trouble during which inmates
were
sprayed with tear gas after stoning staff.
Protesting
detainees began chanting and causing damage to the
centre
on Friday night, with the noise able to be heard at least five
kilometres
away.
Water-cannons
and tear gas have been used against prisoners in
the
refugee internment camp at Woomera in Western Australia in an
attempt
to put down protests that began early in the morning.
Reports
filtering out indicate that 80 rioters have so far
destroyed
four buildings including the recreation building, dining
room,
school and ablution block.
Federal
Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, has claimed that
stones
were thrown at security staff. According to the Minister,
"The
fences have been breached, they have taken pickets from the
fences
and using them as weapons. They have been stoning the
administration
building."
Local
service station operator David Kirby says the protest has
been
building for a couple of days. "They've been building a
secondary
fence to keep them all in, and they've been pulling that
down
everytime the workers have been putting it up," he said.
On
Saturday, August 26th, protests were held outside the Perth,
Villawood
(in Sydney) and Maribyrnong (in Melbourne) internment camps
calling
for the camps to be shut down and the internees to be
released.
This
follows a series of mass escapes from three remote
internment
camps (Woomera, Port Hedland and Curtin) in mid-June this
year
when over 700 internees escaped to make their way to town
centres
to stage protests in order to break out of their political
and
geographic isolation.
Prisoners
in Woomera -- as in the other refugee internment camps
--
have been incarcerated without charge, without trial, without any
ability
to access the courts to review the length or merit of their
incarceration.
Most of those held at Woomera have been there for over
seven
months, most of whom face the prospect of being forcibly
returned
to Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq.
This
is Australia's system of 'mandatory and non-reviewable
detention',
where anyone who arrives by boat without papers seeking
asylum
is automatically imprisoned. Since January, and after
increasing
restrictions on who may eventually qualify for a visa, the
small
proportion of those who are granted visas can only, at best,
look
forward to a 3-year "temporary protection visa", with limited
access
to welfare and health care.
Australia's
is the only western government that practices a
system
of automatic and non-reviewable incarceration. It also
receives
and grants fewer applications for asylum, both on and
offshore,
than any other western country.
On
the eve of the Sydney Olympics and the World Economic Forum's
Asia-Pacific
Session in Melbourne, as the Federal Parliament debates
a
bill that will give the army 'shoot to kill powers' against
dissent,
it has become clear that the only movement that is not
subject
to repression is that of money -- tourism, trade and meetings
of
corporate executives.
Whilst
the Minister for Immigration argued that those who were
engaged
in the protests would no longer be able to apply for asylum
under
the provisions that require applicants for visas be "of good
character",
no one has attempted to stop Bill Gates' entry into
Australia
as he prepares to speak at the World Economic Forum,
despite
the fact that he, as head of Microsoft, has been found guilty
of
breaking anti-trust laws in the US.
Calls
for policy review
The
director of the Australian Refugee Association, Kevin Liston,
says
the trouble at Woomera shows a review of Federal Government
policy
on the handling of illegal immigrants is warranted. "We as a
nation
need to look again at whether we do need to detain in remote
areas
in spartan conditions all those people who come to us, albeit
without
our permission, but nevertheless as refugees," he said.
The
Australian Democrats say the riot at the centre is not
surprising
given the Federal Government's hardline attitude. Senator
Andrew
Bartlett says the Government has tried to make the stay of
illegal
immigrants as uncomfortable as possible to discourage others
from
coming to Australia illegally. "If you treat people like that
then
sometimes, as one can see with a history of prisons in Australia
and
around the world, if you overdo that sort of thing then you're
almost
guaranteeing unrest," he said. "Particularly when you've got
people
who have have experienced some of the suffering that these
people
have.