BY SARAH STEPHEN 
Public anger is mounting at the federal government's treatment of
asylum seekers, following a May 26 raid on the Port Hedland detention centre
and the arrest of 22 refugees singled out from a May 11 riot at the isolated
complex.
Spokespeople for the Port Hedland asylum seekers have labelled the government's
handling of the situation as being “like Nazis” and 300 detainees staged
a four-day hunger strike, beginning on the evening of May 26, to demand
the release of those arrested.
Following reports of the raid, around 100 detainees at the Woomera detention
centre began a hunger strike in solidarity, while 200 asylum seekers at
the Curtin camp rioted on June 1 after being told that 50 of them were
to be deported.
On the outside, supporters of refugee rights have staged a national
day of action, on June 3, demanding the immediate closure of the camps,
in one of the largest public protests about the controversial mandatory
detention policy to date.
Information obtained from asylum seekers at Port Hedland has confirmed
that around 170 police and guards made the surprise raid on the detention
centre at 4am on the morning of May 26, locking detainees in their dormitories
for more than eight hours while they made repeated searches.
Twenty-one men and one woman were handcuffed, photographed and transported
to a South Hedland police holding cell, on charges of threatening and violent
behaviour towards Commonwealth employees. Those arrested were six Iranians,
five Iraqis and eight Palestinians, one Kuwaiti, one Tunisian and one Moroccan.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment.
During the raid, men, women and children were handcuffed. Women were
batoned to force them to sit on the ground. Police in riot gear entered
the Islamic prayer room and stomped on the heads of refugees at prayer.
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock reacted defensively to questions
about the excessive force and enormous resources used, stating, “You need
to abstract those people from the centre. How do you do it? Do you go to
the gate and say, `please come out', or do you have sufficient people there
to ensure that your objective is achieved?”
Long brewing
The May 11 riot at Port Hedland was long brewing. Weeks before, detainees
had taken strike action to demand an increase in the pay rate from $10
to $20 for a minimum of eight hours work, a proper roster of available
work and paid overtime after eight hours. The strike action by detainees,
who mostly work in the kitchen, severely disrupted the detention centre.
Soon after, five men were removed from Port Hedland and taken into custody.
The detainees believe one of the five, a 15 year old Iranian boy, was beaten
by guards. This was the trigger for the outbreak of anger on May 11.
Media coverage following the raid has been tightly controlled. Phone
communication has been cut.
Despite the restrictions, Port Hedland detainees were able to send out
a statement signed by 150 asylum seekers two days after the raid.
The statement calls on the government to tell the truth about the protests
at the detention centre.
“Why has only a part of the video tape of the protests been shown on
television?” the detainees ask in the statement. “The government is hiding
the truth.”
They call for a thorough investigation of the events at Port Hedland,
rather than a trial by selective video footage. “Why don't they show a
tape of what ACM [Australasian Correctional Management] did to us”, they
ask, “What about what ACM threw at us?”
The statement calls for the dropping of the charges against the 22 arrested
in police raids, stating “They are innocent”.
The statement confirms that the trouble began over the strike in the
kitchen and an attack by ACM guards on two teenage boys.
“If you want the truth, it was ACM that lit the match at Port Hedland,”
it says. ACM provoked events by starting the engine on the water cannon
and, dressed in riot gear, attacking groups of detainees. “We stood with
women and children in the middle to protect them from the batons of ACM.”
“The ACM is creating hatred in the detention centres. They humiliate
us, they discriminate against us. They put us in chains.”
“What have we done?”, they ask, “We are human beings, with feelings.
What have we done to this country to be treated this way? We faced persecution
and distress and came seeking protection. We do not get protection, but
more distress and punishment.”
Conditions in Port Hedland are at breaking point, they say. In a phone
conversation, one detainee said, “The police and ACM act like Nazis. We
have never seen anything like it, even in Iran or Afghanistan.”
The statement ends with a call on the courts to recognise the innocence
of those charged.
Not the first protest
This isn't the first, and it won't be the last, outbreak of anger and frustration
in Port Hedland. In less than two years, there have been two mass breakouts,
three riots and two hunger strikes.
The last outbreak of unrest was in January this year, and the only person
convicted of violent offences was the former ACM head of operations at
Port Hedland, Graeme Hindmarsh, convicted of bashing a handcuffed refugee.
It was this bashing which provoked a response from detainees.
Independent member of federal parliament Andrew Theophanous explained
in a recent press statement, “On April 26, [Hindmarsh] pleaded guilty to
twice bashing a detainee on January 19 — the night before 120 detainees
engaged in violent actions, obviously a direct response to this bashing.
The fact that this ACM guard has been convicted with two counts of occasioning
bodily harm clearly shows that the asylum seekers acted only when provoked
by the guards.”
Commenting on the arrest of “instigators” of the recent Port Hedland
riot, Theophanous remarked “I don't think there were any `instigators',
because it was a spontaneous reaction by detainees to the beating of a
young boy.”
The recent acquittal of the alleged “ring leaders” of an August riot
at the Woomera detention centre is further confirmation that the courts
can find nothing to charge asylum seekers with and that the arrest of the
Port Hedland 22 is nothing more than a government stunt to justify its
policy of mandatory detention.
Patricia Corcoran, an activist with the Sydney-based Free the Refugees
Campaign, asked, “Why is anyone surprised that there are occasional tense
scenes of conflict in Australia's detention centres?”
“Consider the experience from the inside: thousands of innocent people
are jailed in veritable concentration camps, with limited access to information
about their rights, little regard given to the experiences of torture and
terror which have brought so many of them here, coupled with the endless
waiting they are subjected to, which amounts to a sentence without trial
or conviction of any crime, and detention without a definite end.”
Corcoran believes the government's policy is a form of torture. “It's
a different kind of torture [than what many have been subjected to in their
home countries], but it remains for many an unbearable torture.”
“Anger and frustration are understandable responses to these sorts of
conditions”, Corcoran said. “The onus must be on the government to end
mandatory detention.”
Random selection of scapegoats?
Some of the detainees who weren't singled out for arrest on May 26 claim
that they played an equal role in the recent riot which led to the raid.
A Catholic Priest, Father Wally McNamara, who visited the centre confirmed
this, saying that some inmates believe those arrested and charged were
unfairly selected.
All but one of those selected for arrest had had their claims for refugee
status rejected prior to the riot and were due to be returned to their
countries of origin. This certainly raises questions about the immigration
department's motives in searching and holding people for eight hours before
removing 22 detainees. Were they selected because they were unsuccessful
asylum applicants?
It is only possible to speculate, but for some time Ruddock has claimed
that protests in detention centres are a calculated attempt by detainees
to “intimidate” and “pressure” the government into processing their claims
more quickly, or that they are an expression of “sour grapes” by those
who are angry at having had their claims rejected. The raid would seem
to conveniently confirm these allegations.
Two days after the raid, Ruddock said, “People who are detained don't
like being detained, and people who have paid large amounts of money and
entered Australia unlawfully often try to put us under pressure and this
is part of what you have to manage”.
These allegations take the heat off some of the real reasons for outbreaks
of unrest: intolerable conditions in the detention centres, and asylum
seekers' treatment at the hands of ACM guards.
Ruddock's allegations also aim to bury the fact that the majority of
those held in detention centres, especially those fleeing from Iraq, Iran
and Afghanistan, are “genuine” refugees, even within the definition of
the UN convention.
According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a signatory,
it is not unlawful to enter a country without documentation if you are
fleeing torture or death. No refugee, therefore, is “illegal”; they all
have a right to sanctuary, regardless of whether or not they had proper
documents or entered a country legally.
“Ruddock treats detainees as if they have no rights at all. He has denied
them the right to strike, and now wants to deny them the right to protest
by ensuring the media portray every protest as the unprovoked action of
inherently violent terroristic Middle Eastern people, a groundless and
racist stereotype”, said Corcoran.
“As long as asylum seekers are denied their rights, protests will continue
inside and outside the detention centres.”
