Vol. 79/No. 44      December 7, 2015

 

Australia: Protests hit refugee’s death,
detention center abuse

 

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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