Sarah Stephen
On July 14, officers from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) forcibly moved four families from the Villawood detention centre in Sydney's south-west to the Baxter prison in the South Australian desert.
Eyewitnesses say that the DIMIA officers singled out three Chinese and one Korean family whose English was poor and who were therefore more intimidated and forced them to sign consent forms. They were given an impossible choice: pack your own bags, or we'll pack them for you. DIMIA officials tried to move a fifth family, but weren't successful.
Virginia Leong and her two-year-old daughter Naomi were one of two families who climbed onto the laundry roof on July 14 to protest against the forced relocations. Leong and a Tongan mother of two (who wanted to remain anonymous) had been told by DIMIA staff that they would be next.
Angry, and determined to stop this from happening, they held up a banner which said: "No, forget Baxter, we refuse to go, release the children." They refused to come down until they had been given an undertaking by DIMIA that they would not be moved.
The roof-top protest was widely reported, but there was little follow-up about what happened to these families afterwards. Green Left Weekly went to Villawood and uncovered a horrifying story.
After the protest, Leong was singled out for punishment. She was accused of "bad behaviour" and was told that GSL (Global Solutions Ltd, which now runs the detention centres) had concerns about her child's welfare. She was forcibly separated from her daughter by six GSL officers, and held overnight in solitary confinement in Stage 3 in a room that GSL and DIMIA call the "management unit".
Naomi woke repeatedly during the night, crying for her mother. Nurses at the detention centre clinic were concerned that Virginia's separation from Naomi could have a serious impact on both of them, but GSL management refused to allow them to be reunited.
Leong explained to me on July 21 that she had been ordered to take Valium pills. When she refused, the guards threatened to inject her. Determined to avoid this, she agreed to take them but had to do it with her face inches from the floor as they held her down. Leong said that being in the management unit was just like being in a jail cell. She said the light was on all night, and she was humiliated by having to use a toilet that was in full view of a security camera.
But it got much worse for Leong. On July 15, she was accused of having mental health problems and was taken to Bankstown general hospital and put in the psychiatric ward. An officer from the Department of Community Services, who didn't properly identify herself, grabbed Naomi and said she was being taken away for her own good.
Leong's friends later found out that they planned to keep Naomi in foster care for two weeks. As Naomi was being taken, two guards pushed Leong to the floor and injected her despite her pleas to stop. She still doesn't know what she was injected with.
Leong was returned to Villawood on July 19 having been diagnosed as free of any psychiatric condition. She was forced to spend another night in solitary confinement before she was reunited with her daughter.
On July 20, Leong signed an agreement with Villawood management that stated: "As a result of an incident that occurred on Wednesday 14 July 2004, Ms Leong was involved in a major disturbance and demonstration at the centre by climbing the roof of a laundry building. The following management plan will be undertaken and commences 20 July.
"Ms Leong will be placed in Lima [an isolation area within the Stage 2 compound] until Friday to ensure she doesn't create any disturbance or partake in any incident. If there are reports of no adverse behaviour by Friday, she will be transferred to the general population in Stage 2 with her baby. Ms Leong will be permitted normal phone calls, visits, mess and medical.
"I, Leong (VW2357), hereby agree to abide by the detainee code of conduct and terms of agreement by GSL management at all times. I understand that while I am in Lima I will be constantly watched by a GSL officer, I will promise that I will not do anything that will harm myself or others to create any disturbance."
Since her return to Villawood, Leong told me she was threatened by the Villawood operations manager, a woman who they know as Tara, who told her that if they wanted to take Naomi away again, they could easily do so.
Leong is angry and frightened at the prospect of being moved from Villawood against her will. She was more confident than other detainees to take the risk of protesting loudly, and it helped to produce the desired effect — the transfers were halted.
Roberto Jorquera, an activist with the Free the Refugees Campaign in Sydney's west, commented: "The way that GSL management has singled her out for punishment is disgraceful. The fact that they are prepared to use the threat of taking Naomi away as a form of blackmail to stop her from protesting again is totally unacceptable."
A regular visitor to Villawood, who wrote to the immigration minister to complain about Leong's treatment, commented: "I can only remember such repressive actions during my childhood in France by Nazis during the Second World War."
"I don't trust them", one detainee mother, who wanted to remain anonymous, told me on July 21. "They could move me at any time."
There are concerns that the undertaking made by DIMIA in the Federal Court on July 15 to stop the forced removal of families from Villawood to Baxter is only temporary. The families are convinced that the decision to try to move them to Baxter is designed to get them further out of sight. But 14 families remain in the centre, a reminder that immigration minister Amanda Vanstone lied when she claimed on July 5 that only one child remained in detention (at Baxter).
According to figures compiled by ChilOut (Children out of Detention) as of July 14, 112 children are still in detention, 85 of whom are behind barbed wire, and the rest in hospital or home-based detention.
Vanstone seems to have forgotten about the 19 children on Nauru, the 11 on Christmas Island, the 32 in Villawood, the seven in Baxter, the 27 in home detention, the 13 in the Port Augusta residential housing project (or houses turned into mini-detention centres) and the three in Maribyrnong. Let's make sure she's reminded!
[A protest is planned outside the Villawood detention centre on July 31 at 1pm. For details contact Roberto Jorquera on 0428 190 276.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 28, 2004.
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