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Vol. 79/No. 44 December 7, 2015
Australia: Protests hit refugee’s death,
detention center abuse
BY RON POULSEN
SYDNEY — Chanting “Refugees, yes; racism, no; detention centers have
got to go!” 100 people rallied outside the Department of Immigration and
Border Protection here Nov. 13, protesting the death of escaped detainee
Fazel Chegeni on Christmas Island a week earlier. The Refugee Action
Coalition organized the protest, which demanded Canberra close all its
offshore detention centers. Demonstrations were held in London;
Auckland, New Zealand; and elsewhere.
Protesters held large photographs of Chegeni as well as others who have
died in Australia’s immigration prisons.
Chegeni, a Kurdish Iranian refugee in his 30s, climbed over a high
razor-wire fence Nov. 7 to escape the detention compound. He was found
dead at the foot of a cliff the next day.
Chegeni was originally detained after fleeing Iran and arriving in
Australia by boat four years ago. He was granted refugee status, but
after getting in a fight with a fellow detainee he was jailed for six
months for assault.
“For a refugee, this amounts to a life sentence,” advocate Pamela Curr
told ABC News the day of the rally. Denied residency in Australia and
unable to return to their original country for fear they will be
persecuted, people like Chegeni “will see out their days inside the
migration detention system in Australia.”
Protests led by Iranian detainees erupted on Christmas Island at news of
his death. Then, in what the media called a “riot,” some prisoners armed
with makeshift weapons cut fences, set fires and barricaded themselves
in a building.
Two planeloads of riot police and extra security guards were flown in
from Perth, 1,600 miles away. They “restored order” with tear gas and
rubber bullets, several prisoners reported by phone. Detainees not
involved in the protest were put in cages and denied food, water and
toilet facilities for more than 24 hours.
The remote Christmas Island facility has become the “punishment center
of the Australian detention system,” said Ian Rintoul, speaking for the
Refugee Action Coalition. “It is designed to force people to become
compliant.”
“The violence these people experienced at the hands of Australian staff,
the ongoing verbal abuse, the isolation and a campaign of racist
denigration run by a few core Serco staff members have driven these men
to an act of resistance that was their only means of responding,” Jane
Healy from Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney wrote after visiting the
prison for three days in September. Excerpts of the report were read at
the rally.
Serco is the private security firm contracted to run 11 of the
government’s immigration detention facilities around the country.
There are currently 285 prisoners on Christmas Island. Under a new
section of the Migration Act, any noncitizen who has prison or even
rehab sentences totaling more than 12 months automatically has their
visa revoked.
These prisoners are dubbed “501s,” a reference to the new law, which
gives the Immigration Minister power to deport them if he decides they
have “character” issues. They have no right to legal appeal.
The new legislation has also netted a number of New Zealand citizens,
many Maori, and many of whom grew up in Australia and whose families
live here. Forty out of 200 have been transported to Christmas Island
where government officials hope to force them to “voluntarily” return to
New Zealand.
Since 1992, successive Labor and Liberal governments have enforced
mandatory detention of asylum seekers arriving by boat. This bipartisan
border policy has been progressively tightened and offshore detention
centers opened on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea and Nauru. There are
now 1,500 detainees being held indefinitely on Manus and Nauru.
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