BY SARAH STEPHEN
Guards daily tell detained asylum seekers to return to their countries and try to screen phone calls to prevent detainees speaking to the media. Asylum seekers who had stitches forcibly removed from their lips reinserted them. An Afghan detainee was severely beaten by guards. These appalling allegations were made by Woomera detainees in a phone interview, reported in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age on January 25.
The newspapers reported that Jalil (not his real name), a 21-year-old Iranian, "accused immigration officials of lying about parents stitching closed their children's mouths. 'Nobody would stitch their child's mouth. The children who are doing it are between 10 and 15 years old. They see their family doing it, so they do it', he said."
Aziz, told the newspapers that guards were pressuring detainees to accept repatriation. "Every day they are saying to us, 'just sign and you can go back to your own country'", he said. Nobody had signed any undertaking.
The processing of Afghan refugees' claims for asylum was put on hold in December, as the Australian government "reassessed" the situation in Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taliban regime.
Protests by detained asylum seekers in the Woomera immigration detention centre, in the remote north of South Australia, began on January 17. By January 25, between 200 and 400 people were taking part in a hunger strike. As many as 70 sewed their lips together with needles and cotton thread. On January 24, some detainees attempted to hang themselves by tying sheets to the perimeter fences and jumping. Up to 70 swallowed shampoo and pain killers. A number were rushed to hospital unconscious.
To defuse the sympathy being aroused by the protests, immigration minister Philip Ruddock has appointed an Independent Detention Advisory Committee to assess conditions in Woomera detention centre and make recommendations (not one journalist has asked how can a committee appointed by Ruddock be independent).
The government is determined to undermine support for the hunger strikers by any means possible, just as it did last September, when defence minister Peter Reith declared that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard in an attempt to coerce the navy to rescue them and bring them to Australia. There was no evidence produced, and months later anonymous navy sources explained that the incident had ever happened.
Ruddock asserted that lip sewing is not part of "Australian culture". Ziyad, a refugee from Iraq recently released from Woomera, told Green Left Weekly: "Someone asked me, is it common in your country to sew up your lips? I told them it's not common anywhere. It's the desperate action of people who have had no response from the immigration department or detention guards to their requests for information about their cases."
Ruddock began a more vicious strategy on January 22, alleging that some parents had forced their children to sew their lips together. South Australia's human services minister Dean Brown described it as "barbaric". Five unaccompanied children were removed from Woomera on January 24, to be put into foster care. Another 35 remain in detention.
The January 24 Sydney Morning Herald reported that child abuse monitoring was taking place "because of the possibility of parents coercing [children] into the hunger strike". Some may be forcibly removed from their parents.
There is no evidence that parents have coerced their children. On the contrary, parents have pleaded with young people not to take part. Jalil and Aziz told reporters they would welcome a police investigation into the government's claims of "barbaric" treatment of children by detainees. They have challenged the government to allow the media and independent observers inside the camp.
"When I came to Australia, I didn't know that Philip Ruddock was our enemy", said Aziz. "I prefer the Taliban who only kill people. Here they torture you. And our children are spending the best years of their lives locked up as prisoners."
On January 24, Ruddock offered to resume processing applications, but without a commitment to a specific time frame the hunger strikers have decided to continue their protest. The protest has broadened beyond the issue of visas to the demand for an end to mandatory detention. Solidarity hunger strikes have spread to Maribyrnong detention centre in Victoria and reportedly to Curtin and Port Hedland detention centres in northern WA.
There is a growing unease within the Australian community at the policy of mandatory detention. This has forced Prime Minister John Howard to shift his stance. Never before has Howard admitted that detention of asylum seekers was regrettable, but on January 25 he told Channel Nine's Today Show, "Nobody likes the present situation. We don't like having to detain people but there is no alternative if we are to keep control of the flow of people into this country."
There are alternatives to detention, and some groups have begun putting those forward more forcefully as the hunger strike has proceeded. Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) on January 23 urged the government to close the detention camps.
"It's time Australians woke up — these places are not the benign migrant hostels of the 1950s. They are concentration camps, where people are stripped not only of their freedom, but their dignity. The distressing events at Woomera are proof of the failure of the present system", RAR's Anne Coombs said.
"What we are witnessing are people at the end of their tether, driven to desperate action by the appalling circumstances of their indefinite incarceration. But there are alternatives. There are people in rural towns across Australia who are willing to take in people and care for them while their applications to stay in Australia are assessed. We want to turn Australia's culture of fear into a culture of welcome."
On January 25, 10 leading welfare agencies, including the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Centacare and St Vincent de Paul, blamed mandatory detention for causing unnecessary suffering. "Woomera should be closed. We are highly concerned that there will be deaths soon in this ... facility." They offered to provide housing and support to people released from Woomera.
The resignation of Neville Roach, a top government adviser for the last six years, in protest at the government's treatment of asylum seekers has had significant ripple effects. Roach was the chairperson of the Council for Multicultural Australia and the Business Advisory Panel on migration. He accused the government of giving "comfort to the prejudiced side of human nature".
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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