The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper
of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday,
January 30th, 2002. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills.
Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795.
CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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"Woomera is a hell hole"
Hunger strikes by inmates are underway at all Australia's refugee
centres as "The Guardian" goes to press. In their desperation to bring
the their plight to the attention of the public, some are not only on
hunger strike but have sewn their lips together. They are protesting
against their intolerable treatment under the Howard Government's
inhumane refugee mandatory sentencing regime. The growing dissent and
defiance by refugees criminalised by the Government's policy came amid a
clampdown on media coverage of detention centres and against protests by
refugee rights groups.
by Marcus Browning
Adding to the pressure on the Government, doctors and medical
specialists have come together to give a united voice to their concerns
over conditions in the detention centres.
In addition, the Government's key advisor on multiculturalism has
resigned in disgust and one of the country's founding policy makers on
ethnic affairs and multiculturalism, Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, has
fired a volley of condemnation at Prime Minister John Howard and his
Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock.
Last weekend four protestors, including a 12-year-old girl, were
arrested at the Port Hedland detention centre in Western Australia. The
police had ordered the protestors back from the fence, and when the four
refused to go they were taken into custody. The three adults will appear
in court on "unlawful assembly" charges.
At the Woomera centre in South Australia an ABC journalist was arrested
as private security guards and the state police ordered the media out of
a compound 500 metres from the camp's razor wire fences.
It was clearly an attempt to sever all outside contact with detainees
that isn't sanctioned, censored and controlled by detention centre and
government authorities.
Detainees at Port Hedland, the Maribyrnong centre in Victoria and the
Curtin Centre in Western Australia have joined in solidarity with the
Woomera hunger strike.
A statement from strikers passed to journalists at Woomera said, "Now
more than 370 have refused to eat. Woomera is a hell hole, refugees are
treated as animals."
The alliance of doctors and specialists includes the Australian Medical
Association and the 12 specialist colleges.
Doctors who are allowed into the centres to treat inmates are bound by
confidentiality agreements that they are forced to sign, as a condition
of entry, with the private company that runs all Australia's refugee
detention facilities under contract to the Government, Australasian
Correctional Management.
The alliance is already seeking advice on the legal status of the
confidentiality agreements. "The medical colleges are not radical bodies
but we're very concerned about this situation", said Jim Hyde, the
director of health policy at the Royal Australasian College of
Physicians.
"We believe we should have access to detention centres; these are very
traumatised, vulnerable sections of the population."
The Committee of Presidents of Medical Colleges said there was strong
evidence internationally of the highly destructive effect on children
incarcerated in the manner that they are in Australia.
"Ruddock will be judged harshly by history", says the man who has been
advising Australian Governments on immigration and ethnic affairs for
more than 30 years.
Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, a major contributor to the development and
articulation of multiculturalism in Australia, last week made a hard
critical assessment of the Howard Government's treatment of asylum
seekers.
Professor Zubrzycki's statement-which followed the
resignation-in-protest of the chairman of the Council for Multicultural
Australia, Neville Roach-was cutting and unambiguous. "Moving and
arguing against public opinion; this is political leadership and it is
not being shown by Ruddock and Howard", he said. "Rather, they glance
backwards at public opinion polls.
"I sympathise with Neville Roach's frustration about the Government's
treatment of refugees which is inconsistent with the policy of
inclusiveness and ideals of multiculturalism."
He said the Government's punitive treatment of asylum seekers had
created an "exclusionist Australia, fearful of Islam and Middle Eastern
ethnicities and indifferent to human suffering."
A Time To Act
On February 12, at 12.30pm, outside Parliament House Canberra, there
will be a protest, organised by the Canberra Refugee Action Committee.
As part of the lead up to this action, Anne Coombs and Susan Varga of
Rural Australians for Refugees, issued the following statement, "A Time
To Act":
It is usually left to later generations to define the seminal moments in
a nation's history. While in the midst of unfolding events people do not
necessarily recognise their significance. Did the citizens of Germany,
watching the establishment of the first concentration camps in 1933,
have any inkling of what was to come?
A nation's pathway to ignominy does not begin on the lip of an abyss. It
begins with small steps, small steps which most people hardly heed, but
which set a direction and tone that later becomes irresistible.
The failure of most Australians to understand the moral and social
ramifications of the Government's asylum seeker policy puts us well and
truly on the pathway to the abyss-where the majority come to accept,
indeed applaud, a class of people being treated as lesser beings.
Many Australians who are rejecting of Muslim refugees would consider
themselves to be Christian, but they are no longer worthy of the name
because they have forgotten the basic tenet, "Do unto others as you
would have other do unto you".
The deteriorating situation in the detention camps and the growing
pressure on the Government makes it incumbent on us to act, and act now.
Federal Parliament resumes on Tuesday, February 12, and it is an
opportune time for all of us to gather and try to turn this country away
from the abyss. Even if you have never been to such a rally before, we
ask you to bring your friends, your colleagues, your children. We know
that it is a work day, and some of you have far to come, but please do
everything you can to make the time to come.
Email: refugees [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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