immigration

Christmas Island: detainees on hunger strike

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16 January: Family groups have joined a hunger strike on Christmas Island as protests spread to three separate compounds.The hunger strike began last week in the single adult male compound at north-west point, where some detainees also sewed their lips together.

A second hunger strike began at the Aqua family compound on Tuesday, according to detainees at the centre. The detainees have put up a banner bearing the word “freedom”. It is not clear whether children are also involved in the protest.

A third group are also protesting in the Lilac facility, which houses men and women. The protesters there staged a sit-in protest and wrote a letter to the Department of Immigration complaining about their treatment and expressing their fears of being sent to Nauru.

The protest was initially sparked by the separation of some asylum seekers from family members. Continue reading →

WA, Vic: escapes from immigration detention

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29 December: Two Vietnamese detainees escaped from the Yongah Hills Immigration Detention Centre in Northam, 90 kilometres east of Perth, on Friday night.

One person was recaptured within 24 hours, but the other man remains on the run.

Four months ago, five men escaped from the same facility, sparking a search that lasted several days.

In November, two Vietnamese men escaped from the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre in Melbourne’s west

 

Melbourne: politicians’ offices vandalised

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Indymedia, 30 August: The current border policies of the ruling elite are cruel, oppressive, revanchist. Last night we vandalised the offices of Simon Crean, Anna Burke, and Andrew Robb; they are complicit.

The politicians and bosses have driven wedges between us, trying to convince us there is an enemy in people from across the sea. The real enemy, of course, is those who seek to rule us. Our sisters and brothers, the ‘boat people’, have been asking for our solidarity for years. They have petitioned, protested, hunger-striked, self-harmed and suicided. But help has not come. The only rational response left is to riot.

We are privileged citizens in occupied land and we stand to benefit from this racist approach. But this won’t do. We don’t accept this reality and we never will. It doesn’t matter who we are. What matters is that we resist. That we show resistance is possible. It’s the right – the only – way to act in such terrible times. In doing so we hope to inspire others to break the spell of passivity, together we can turn the world upside down. Continue reading →

PNG: Protests on Manus Island

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2 September: Landowners on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation from the Australian government or they will shut off water to the asylum seeker detention centre.

Local MP and vice minister for trade Ron Knight told AAP the landowners are demanding kina 231,000 ($A108,000) in compensation for use of a dump site near Lombrum naval base, where Australia is currently housing about 500 asylum seekers.

The groups also want kina 21,000 (A$9700) per month for continued use of the dump as well as another kina 60,000 (A$28,000) per month to cover anchorage and waste management of Australian Navy ships.

The landowners on the weekend blocked the dump and a gravel pit being used by the Australian government and say they will shut down water if their demands are not met by Tuesday.

“That is the next step,” Mr Knight told AAP. “This isn’t going to be a protest. It’s going to be a very, very quiet guerilla war.” Continue reading →

Nauru: charges dropped over 2012 riot

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26 August: Nauru’s Director of Public Prosecutions has dropped its case against 10 asylum seekers charged with staging a riot at the centre in 2012, that caused more than $A25,000 damage.

The asylum seekers were charged with rioting after an incident at the Australian-run processing and detention centre on Nauru last September.

Two Australian-based lawyers, Simon Kenny and Sam Norton, had been providing representation free of charge for five of the defendants.

“It’s an excellent result for those defendants,” Mr Kenny told . “This means for many of them are able to go on with the process of applying for refugee status.”

Mr Kenny said he believed the case collapsed after witnesses were cross-examined. “We took the view…that the evidence that had been led from witnesses was not looking like it was going to support the case against our clients”, he said.

Melbourne: Man doused himself with petrol in act of protest in foyer of Immigration building

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5 August: A man has been taken into custody after dousing himself with petrol in the foyer of a CBD building.

The man, who was in the foyer of the Casselden Place building, which houses the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Australian Tax Office, had been speaking with police negotiators before he was arrested about 5.40pm today.

It is believed he was protesting a government department within the building at the corner of Lonsdale and Spring streets.

Witness Andrew Marshall said he saw a translator frantically trying to calm the man, just before a CriticalIRT officer raised his weapon.

Man doused in petrol

Continue reading →

Nauru: no charges yet over riot because identity papers were destroyed

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July 23: Nauru’s resident magistrate says the asylum seekers being held over a mass riot at the country’s detention centre have not yet been charged because their identity papers were destroyed by fire.

Most of the Australian-run centre was burnt to the ground on Friday night, at an estimated cost of $60 million.

Magistrate Peter Law says 152 asylum seekers have been been detained and will start facing court tomorrow. He says he has given police more time to prepare charges because it has been difficult to establish the identity of those involved. “I understand their identity papers were destroyed during the course of the fire,” he said.

The riot began on Friday as a peaceful protest over the slow processing of claims.

But a security guard who does not want to be named says protesters took over the centre, gained access to a kitchen, and armed themselves with knives and steel bars. Buildings were burned to the ground, including accommodation blocks, the health centre and the dining room. Continue reading →

Nauru: riots destroy detention centre

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July 21: About 125 people who sought asylum in Australia were in police custody on the Pacific island nation of Nauru after a riot ended with fire destroying most of the Australian-run detention centre there, an official said on Sunday.

The blaze on Friday evening destroyed all the accommodation blocks, medical facilities and offices and caused damage worth an estimated A$60m, the immigration department said. Only the dining and recreation buildings survived. A spokeswoman for the Nauruan government said police were stood down at 5am on Saturday. She said only 10 asylum seekers had not had any involvement in the riots.

The remaining 420 asylum seekers had been transferred to tents at a second detention camp under construction on another part of the tiny atoll, which is home to fewer than 10,000 people, the spokeswoman said. The Nauruan Parliament passed new legislation on Friday night allowing police to hold people without charge for up to seven days. The ringleaders face property damage, destruction of property and riotous behaviour charges, which carry penalties of one to seven years. Continue reading →

Australia: Detention Logs

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Detention Logs is an independent site that publishes documents and data about Australian detention centres. The first wave of data is a searchable database of 7632 reported incidents across immigration detention facilities from October 2009 to May 2011, as recorded by the private contractors running the detention centres. These events range from self-harms, assaults and escapes to electric fence failures, complaints and aborted deportations.
Across that time, there were 77 escapes, along with four incidents recorded as ‘escape – mass breakout‘ and 56 recorded as ‘escape – attempted’.
There were 98 demonstrations within detention centres, as well as hundreds of records relating to hunger strikes – labeled as ‘Voluntary Starvation’. There were also hundreds of incidents of disturbance and damage.

See The Everyday Violence In Our Detention Centres, New Matilda

Sydney: Jail terms for asylum seekers involved in 2011 riot at the Villawood detention centre

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June 28: Four asylum seekers who took part in a violent uprising which caused $9 million in damage to the Villawood detention centre have been jailed for their parts in the 2011 riots.

Serco’s detention centre staff were pelted with roof tiles and threatened with uprooted soccer goalposts as detainees repeatedly chanted “freedom’’ during the wild protests, the Supreme Court heard today.

Several asylum seekers were also heard shouting: “F… Australia, f… immigration, f… Serco”.

Justice Robert Hulme this morning said he accepted the men’s behaviour was born out of “frustration and despair” at being held in the centre, but that didn’t excuse “mob violence”.

“Nobody can question that there is a right to protest, but the use of violence is completely unacceptable,” he said.

The four men, Mohammed Naim Amiri, Taleb Feili, Majid Parhizar and Ali Haidari, were found guilty of rioting during a trial earlier this year in which 12 Iraqi and Afghani asylum seekers were initially accused of the crime.

Justice Hulme today sentenced them to spend a minimum of between 14 and 22 months behind bars, although with time already served the first will be eligible for release in October. Continue reading →