Vol. 74/No. 37      October 4, 2010

Their main banner declared, "We are homeless, defenceless and we seek protection." One of the men told reporters, "I want to go out to talk with you, all of the population of Australia. I need your help."

The following day 82 of the protesters were transferred to the Curtin detention center near Derby in Western Australia's far north.

The Afghani action erupted a couple days after a two-day protest by some 120 Indonesians, held in a different part of the Darwin immigration prison. Widely reported as "rioting," the protest involved most of those detained for crewing boats that have brought several thousand asylum seekers to Australian territory over the last year. Television coverage showed a fire on the grounds of the immigration jail and about a dozen men on a roof brandishing long poles. The inmates eventually agreed to end their action.

Both groups of detainees have been held for as long as 10 months waiting for their cases to be processed. An emergency rally of 40 was held September 3 by the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney to support the protests.

Since 2008 some 150 boats carrying asylum seekers, mainly from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, have been detained under the Royal Australian Navy’s Operation Resolute. The refugees often pay thousands of dollars to “people smugglers” based in Indonesia to make the dangerous journey in small vessels. Fishermen are generally hired to crew the boats for a few hundred dollars each.

As of September 10 there were a total of 4,903 people held in custody by the Australian Department of Immigration, 37 percent more than the official capacity of its detention centers. The largest immigration jail is on Christmas Island, south of Java in the Indian Ocean, where more than 2,400 are held, nearly 1,000 in tents.

There are now more than 200 Indonesian fishermen in immigration detention in Australia, facing trial under "people smuggling" laws. Conviction for crewing a boat with five or more refugees carries a penalty of up to 20 years in jail and a A$220,000 fine (A$1=US 95 cents). The minimum sentence for first-time offenders is five years in jail.

Operation Resolute also targets “illegal fishing” in the waters between Australia and Indonesia.

Indonesian fishermen have also been hit by a massive oil spill in the Timor Sea last year that has devastated fishing grounds. At the same time the Indonesian government has cut fuel subsidies. Some 90 percent of Indonesia’s 15 million fishermen live below the country’s poverty line.

The protests by the two groups of prisoners took place shortly after a federal election campaign in which both major capitalist parties vied to be the toughest on “border protection” and the “people smuggling” of asylum seekers.

During her campaign, current prime minister Julia Gillard proposed setting up a new regional immigration jail in East Timor. But with opposition from the government of East Timor, the Gillard government announced September 17 that it would instead double the capacity of the detention center in Curtin and establish a new immigration jail near Weipa in the remote far north of Queensland.
 
 
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