RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: OZschwitz gulag: Statist Violence at Christmas Island's Concentration Camp  Sat Mar 26, 2011 5:32 am | |
| As the smoke clears after the detention centre riots, the government is still not asking the big questions, writes David Marr.
Now we are shooting them. Tear-gas, batons and water cannon were used years ago when unrest swept detention centres. But a fresh line was crossed on March 13 and crossed again a few nights later when Australian Federal Police at Christmas Island's North West Point detention centre fired on asylum seekers. Then the place was torched.
The riots mark the failure of another great Kevin Rudd initiative: to process all boat-people on this remote island. Logistical miracles are required to keep it operating. Distance makes everything so difficult. It costs a fortune: five times as much to process refugees out there as on the mainland. The Ombudsman, Allan Asher, declared in February this year: "The current scale of the operation on Christmas Island is not sustainable".
On North West Point men with nothing to do but wait were sleeping in classrooms, in storerooms, in visiting areas and in big airconditioned tents pitched in low security Aqua and Lilac compounds. Though the government had been warned repeatedly that tents could only be a temporary solution and would exacerbate tensions in the centre, hundreds of men had been living cheek by jowl in them for a year. They stank.
Last November frustrated detainees sewed their lips together, began hunger strikes and demonstrated week after week demanding action on their visa claims. Many had been waiting eight or nine months for their first interview. Hundreds had been given refugee status but were waiting for ASIO security clearances. A handful had been rejected.
Promises were made that new systems would speed outcomes. They didn't. Separated from their families, increasingly anxious, frequently irrational, the men went on waiting. It rained ceaselessly. Aqua and Lilac turned into a tropical swamp.
The breakout: Friday, March 11.
Serco had a new boss on the island: Wendy Sinclair with a background in prison administration in Britain. Detainees woke to find the centre locked down: the roller doors between the various compounds had been closed. Tempers flared.
A few detainees pushed over the outer fence of Aqua and Lilac and about 70 more - mainly Iraqis and Iranians - followed them out of the camp heading for the only town on the island, 15 kilometres away. Some bananas were stolen from a farm. The escapees went to the beach, prayed at the mosque and hung around the airport.
Next day another 100 men followed them out of the camp as police reinforcements and extra Serco guards arrived on the island. Television crews were also on the way. The islanders were upset about the breakout but it was peaceful: there appear to be no reports of violence or threats of violence towards them. Most of the detainees then drifted back to North West Point.
The first shooting:
Sunday, March 13.
In the afternoon Serco assembled staff - including kitchen hands and office staff - for a show of force at North West Point. Also present were staff from the Immigration Department and more than 80 officers of the AFP's operational response group. The plan was to seize the ringleaders and hold them in the high security Red compound.
Red had almost never been used in the history of the centre. The provocative decision to bring it into operation was apparently taken in Canberra by the Immigration Department. About a dozen men were seized but the compound was then stormed by hundreds of angry detainees. Serco and Immigration staff tried to shelter inside Red's "secure nodes" but the electric doors didn't work. The staff were scared but unhurt.
A decision was taken at this point - apparently by the police alone - to disperse the detainees with tear-gas and beanbag shot. These bundles of shot are designed to stun but the US Department of Justice warns they can also kill. As the shooting began, Serco staff made calls on their mobile phones: "You won't f---ing believe this. They're shooting them. There's tear-gas."
A young man called Amir was felled by shot and his leg was later broken in a melee that continued for some hours until staff and police withdrew from the compounds.
The AFP knows all about facing hostile crowds in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. The beanbag shot they have had for about a decade has only ever been used out there, never at home. Par for the course in the Pacific, it is something new for crowd control in Australia.
Next day the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, sent his Council for Immigration Services and Status Resolution - Paris Aristotle, former Air Marshal Ray Funnell and Professor Nicholas Procter - to the island. They began negotiations with the detainees on Tuesday. It appeared all but a small group were mollified and prepared to accept fresh assurances that reforms to the system already in train would yield faster visa outcomes.
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