Protest after Villawood death

The Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) held a snap vigil on January 15 outside the Villawood immigration detention centre in response to the death of a 62-year-old detainee (known to other detainees by his last name, Pishehvar). Pishehvar died of a heart attack on January 13. Around 25 community activists joined the vigil.

Detainees' pleas for Pishehvar to receive medical attention for his heart condition had been ignored for three months by Global Solutions Limited (GSL), which runs the detention centre. He was only taken to St George Hospital after he collapsed two days before his death.

"Australia's mandatory laws should be ended", said Sylvia Hale, a Greens member of NSW's upper house. "The ALP was the first to introduce mandatory detention and they should be the first to end it. Yet we see an influence in the ALP of allowing detainees to continue to suffer when detainees are decent ordinary human beings."

"The ALP will pay the price to continue to lock these people up because we pay the price", said Motohar Hussain, a Bangladeshi refugee and activist with Community Action Against Homophobia. "Refugees are so poor and helpless yet are charged thousands of dollars for being detained. So it's all about the money. [Former prime minister John] Howard's homophobic, racist government has been neglecting these detention centres for years and so will [Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd. We need to build a rigorous campaign and a huge campaign to free these detainees."

Other people who addressed the vigil included RAC's Mark Goudkamp, Labor for Refugee's Jenny Haines and Luke Weyland of the Socialist Alliance.

From GLW issue 736