Pacific Solution 2.0 begins

On September 13, Pete and I tried to run away to Mandorah for the night, mainly to sleep, and hang out without doing any political organising. We've been there a few times before, have, in fact, blogged about it. You take the ferry across to the cox peninsula, and there within stumbling distance of  the jetty, is the daggy Mandorah pub.

It's a large, mainly outdoor affair, simple concrete floors and a tin roof - feels a bit like a big converted garage, open to the elements on three sides. The meals blackboard proudly proclaims it  the "no hot chips pub", and the guys who run it learn your name and offer free tea and coffee.

It's right on the beach, looking back over the water towards Darwin. We tried to ignore the sinister-looking navy ships slightly blocking the view (we learned on the TV later they were returning from multilateral war games).

It had been a busy few weeks - apart from me not being very healthy, this is what we'd been up to: Darwin refugee advocates condemn Pacific Solution . We spent the afternoon quite indulgently enjoying having a TV(a novelty that soon bored us), and I did some laps in the pool with blue and yellow peeling paint, feeling somehow like I was back in time at a holiday resort from an earlier era.

As we had dinner back at the bar, enjoying the sunset, I thought that I was finally relaxing, after a few months that have been rather anxious, for reasons I won't go into.

And then Labor's rotten, cruel new policy to send asylum seekers to Nauru intruded into our holiday, as we heard the first planeload of  refugees was likely to leave for the island gulag that night.

The media calls came until almost 11pm, then started again at 6:30am.

We could have turned our phones off, theoretically. But how can we when our own government prepares to send some of the most vulnerable people on the planet far away from our support, from legal support, from adequate health facilities...  When men, women and children in detention in Darwin can't  eat or sleep, so anxious are they as they wait to hear if they'll be among those left to languish on Nauru - for up to five years, according to the government.

This is already a failed policy: it hasn't stopped the boats - more asylum seekers have arrived on our shores since the legislation was passed then there is capacity to accommodate at Nauru or  Manus. It hasn't stopped deaths at sea- just days after the legislation passed, around 100 people died as their boat sunk after leaving Indonesia.

All the policy will do is destroy the mental health of refugees, whip up xenophobia and confirm what many around the world already know to be true: the Australian government is racist, cruel and has no respect for human rights.

With heavy hearts we pulled ourself back across the water, to Darwin and all that awaited us there. For now, it seemed, the asylum seekers detained in Darwin had escaped being sent to Nauru, but it's highly likely they will be among those transferred over following weeks.

It reminded me of the line to a song, "We who believe in freedom cannot rest ... until it comes."

Like a friend said recently, I hope Labor & Coalition MPs responsible for this new level of cruelty policy will cause are also not sleeping well at night.

Protest calls for end to mandatory detention

In the wake of self-harm and protest by refugees, people of Darwin gathered to show their support for a more humane refugee solution.

Twenty people rallied outside the offices of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship on October 26 to call for and end to mandatory detention and oppose the proposed new detention centre at Wickham Point.

The proposed Wickham Point detention centre would house up to 1500 asylum seekers for processing. The site was previously earmarked for housing for workers in the gas industry. This was stopped when the level of mosquito and midge infestation was deemed too high for human habitation.

On September 3, Michael Bowden from the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support And Advocacy Network (DASSAN) described the proposal as "inhumane and amoral."

In the past week, several Rohingyan and Burmese refugees have staged rooftop protests and hunger strikes. Most of these people have been found to be legitimate refugees but have waited for ASIO security clearances for up to two years.

The rally at DIAC was organised by DASSAN and featured Doctor Peter Morris from the NT branch of the Australian Medical Association.

Morris said that the AMA believed that mandatory detention of asylum seekers had profound mental health consequences and should be replaced with a community-based scheme.

Picnic for refugees

More than 100 people attended a picnic outside Darwin Airport Lodge in solidarity with the refugees inside as part of Darwin’s Families for Families day on September 25.

The Darwin Airport Lodge is where most refugees who are in families, women or unattended minors are kept for processing. Some 150 were inside a year ago.

The picnic included entertainment from bands and a poet. Refugees could watch the entertainment and cheered every time more people arrived.

Greens Senator Sarah Hansen-Young spoke at the event, saying it was a “terrible shame” that so many people were languishing in detention.

Hansen-Young was in Darwin for the Senate inquiry into immigration detention that started the next day.

Detention centre security staff had advised picnic attendees to make no direct contact with the refugees, but solidarity infected to shout “welcome” and “we want freedom”.

A cake was brought to celebrate the first birthday of a girl born in detention at Villawood detention centre - her birthday was that day.   

More pics at https://picasaweb.google.com/101988074510922297223/RefugeePicnicSeptember252011?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Refugees on hunger strike make public appeal

The following statement was released on July 22 by refugees, mainly Hazaras from Afghanistan, locked up in the Scherger detention centre in north Queensland. 67 refugees were on hunger strike at that stage. I am reprinting this from www.greenleft.org.au. I'm not sure if the hunger strike continues, but the message is important.

On a more Darwin-related note, last week Hazara refugees locked up in the detention centre on the Stuart Highway also staged a hunger strike, and rooftop protest, in an attempt to draw attention to their lengthy imprisonment and related suffering.

The detention centre is on my way to work. Each morning I would see if they were still up there, and sometimes (not often enough!) a few of us would drop by on our way home, have a shouted conversation through the fence, over the noise of the traffic. It was so hot that week, and there was no shade on the roof. They stayed up there for four days.

Here is a photo I took one day while visiting:


And here is the statement from Scherger:

In the Name of Merciful God,

This hunger strike is a response to the continued pressure exercised by the Australian Immigration Department on us.

The participants in this hunger strike have been denied protection and robbed of their liberty for periods of time extending to over a year, even up to 20 months.

This punitive action and arbitrary jailing, has destroyed our physical and mental health.

Our families — including our children — living outside detention and overseas have suffered additionally from the terror of the Taliban, and the tyrannies of other dictators and regimes.

Daily sadness and additional trauma that we are exposed to remains unknown to certain officers and Immigration Merit Review members.

These members are neglecting our claims, the reasons for our claims, the arguments that we have supplied, and the documents available to them. They have consequently failed to reach a comprehensive humane and just decision.

We are locked in a “no man’s land”, inside a military base where average people and the media have no access to us.

Our friends and relatives cannot reach us and we have to accept the blame of officials, and the suggestion that “you are not looking after your case”.

Our treatment in this way is very hideous and painful. They are melting us in a bureaucratic oven, and pushing us through cracks in the law. All the while, money-makers are making their money and we have to suffer indefinitely and infinite trauma.

We have to suffer for such a long time, because you want to send messages to the opportunistic smugglers. You have punished us more than enough and the smugglers will have received your messages. Be happy.