Behind the Port Hedland refugee raid

June 6, 2001
Issue 

BY SARAH STEPHEN Picture

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.”

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