New blaze as bill reaches $8 million
AAP
31dec02
THE damage bill from deliberately lit fires at Australian immigration
centres has climbed to more than $8 million after an overnight blaze at
South Australia's Woomera facility.
The fire at Woomera destroyed two accommodation blocks, five toilet blocks
and two mess halls, the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and
Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) said.
The fire, which took more than four hours to contain and caused an
estimated $3.4 million damage, appeared to be deliberately lit, the South
Australian Country Fire Service (CFS) said.
The blaze followed deliberately lit fires in recent days at the Port
Hedland detention centre in Western Australia and at the new Baxter centre
at Port Augusta in South Australia. Together these two incidents caused
more than $5 million damage.
The government has branded the fires an appalling waste of taxpayers' money
but Prime Minister John Howard said they would not change government policy
on detaining asylum seekers.
"I don't accept there is a crisis," Mr Howard told ABC radio. "There is a
lot of unrest from people who are I guess protesting against judgments that
they are not entitled to stay in this country.
"That is something that we are not going to allow to alter our policy."
Thirty-seven buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged by the blaze at
Woomera but firefighters stopped it spreading to a medical facility inside
the centre.
"When fire crews arrived late last night many of the buildings were fully
ablaze and certainly there was nothing that could be done to save them,"
CFS spokesman Matthew Bowman said.
Two accommodation blocks housing all 121 detainees at the remote SA
facility were left unusable, forcing the evacuation of detainees to other
accommodation blocks at the site, the Department of Immigration and
Multicultural Affairs (DIMIA) said.
No-one was injured.
Asylum seekers also lit fires at Woomera on Sunday but they had caused
minimal damage, DIMIA said.
Federal police are investigating the fires but refugee advocates said they
were inevitable given the long periods of detention that asylum seekers
were subject to while their claims were being processed.
"It's not surprising (there have been fires)," Woomera Lawyers Group member
Paul Boylan said.
"It would just be total frustration at the bleakness of the future for
these people who have been unfairly dealt with.
"And it (the despair) is infectious."
Refugee advocate Marion Le said the fires were copycat actions by a small
number of desperate people rather than an orchestrated campaign.
She said many at Woomera were seriously psychiatrically disturbed and those
dealing with them had warned that there would be problems.
Australian Greens member Pamela Curr said the fires were a "healthier" form
of protest than the hunger strikes that took place almost a year ago.
"This is a real turn because previously the way in which they protested was
to harm themselves," she said.
"This is a much healthier protest because now they're acting against the
oppressor."
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5771885%255E661,00
.html
