There are little children who only know life inside detention

A Letter From Lynne Murphy

SOUTH AUSTRALIA, April 21 (IslamOnline.net) – Protestors, who have spend the week end protesting against the inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants at a detention center near Port Augusta in South Australia, went home at the end, thousands of miles away from the very isolated Baxter Immigration Detention Center.

Those poor people that they leave behind in Australia's remote outback are stuck there. They can't see out but have played 'freedom songs' until told to stop. Brutally it seems.

There are little children who only know life inside detention. Some have known nothing except the harsh conditions of an Australian maximum security prison where reporters are not allowed to visit.

People in Australia, in spite of massive governmental obstacles, have built strong friendships with the mostly Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians held in Baxter and the other immigration hell-holes. They report the most abusive conditions faced by the inmates. Conditions denied by the Minister for Immigration, his department and ACM, the international security company who enforce strip searches, isolation and humiliations on all prisoners.

Prisoners, including little children, have been tear-gassed, terrified, deprived of sensory stimulation, denied access to doctors, proper dental treatment, proper psychiatric care, contact with the outside world and thrown for weeks at a time in solitary confinement.

They have been told that they are less than animals.

The only crime these detainees made was to escape persecution and ask for asylum in Australia.

Although the government cannot return these people to their home countries, they will not release them into the community. They have been told by staff that if they do not like the way they are treated, they can always go back where they came from.

‘Blatant Lie’

Police officers remove a protester from the crowd during a protest near the Baxter Detention center in Port Augusta, Australia, Saturday, April 19

The community has been told by the press that asylum seekers live in five star luxury. This is not only a blatant lie but has broken the hearts of asylum seekers and their friends in Australia.

Australia has people in jail for 'illegally' entering Australia by boat. The government says they are 'failed asylum seekers' who should go back to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran...

Australia has been at war with Iraq for nearly a month. Australians were told that this was to liberate Iraq from a brutal tyrant. Yet Iraqis are in prison in Australia and in off-shore malarial island hell-holes because they are not 'real refugees.'

The Minister for Immigration, Mr. Philip Ruddock, says that the mandatory detention is working because boat people don't come to Australia any more. I think they don't come because the Australian Navy was ordered to fire on them and to let them drown. There are suggestions, backed by credible evidence at the SIEVX site, that the Australian government had a hand in at least almost 400 deaths of Iraqi men, women and children at sea. See http://sievx.com/  

The Afghans are no better off. The UN and aid agencies have declared Afghanistan a very unsafe place, neglected and abandoned by the international community. Refugees who have returned are leaving again and people are dying from U.S. bombs, toxicity from U.S. bombs, starvation and outlaws.

A few thousand refugees have been let out of Australian detention. They are mostly allowed to work but have very few of the benefits of Australian residence. They are given temporary protection visas. They expire after three years. Many Afghan and Iraqi refugees are now at the Australian government's pleasure. The government will probably just keep them waiting, not allowed to see their families. Sometimes one family member, maybe the father, is released, while the mother and children are held on an offshore island.

Why? To force them to return to their own countries and to stop others from coming.

People from East Timor were given a similar sort of arrangement when they fled the massacres in their home country. Because East Timor recently gave itself a constitution, the Minister for Immigration has decided after ten years, that it is now safe for the refugees to return. The East Timorese Government has pleaded with Australia to let them stay as East Timor is having trouble caring for the people already there. Australia has refused this plea and the pleas of ordinary Australians. Children who know nothing of East Timor and people who have become valued members of the community are being forced to go back. This is in spite of community and states begging for mercy.

Australians love refugees. They fit in well with the locals, work very hard and their children are people Australia can feel proud to call our own.

This government, like (U.S. President George) Bush's regime, used foul means to take the last elections. Asylum seekers were held responsible for the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Australians were led to believe that the asylum seekers who came in leaky boats were the same as the people who flew planes into buildings, or their own babies into the water. Both lies have of course been found out since then but unfortunately Australia now seems to be under fascist control.

My country used to be seen as a leader in the recognition of human rights. The Aboriginal people would disagree with this view. However the nation did sign the relevant Conventions and treaties, and was seen to at least be trying to do the right thing.

Now I am ashamed to say I am an Australian.

Hope however springs eternal, because there are people out there in the Australian desert. On both sides of the electric fence, permanently cut from each others view by solid walls and the Australian Government. But hopefully all feeling a little stronger and more courageous about facing another day. 

Thanks For Listening,

Lynne

For regular updates on the situation for refugees and asylum seekers in Australia visit: http://www.safecom.org/refugees.htm

http://www.topica.com/lists/safecom/read

See also http://www.baxterwatch.net/