Amanda Vanstone twists the truth on Baxter Fires

Certain inmates set a series of fires in the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia, causing $2 million dollars worth of damage and destroying the personal possessions of many asylum seekers/refugees.

Now Pamela Curr reveals the truth behind the fires with the Government deliberately mixing criminal deportees with asylum seekers to impart blame and poison the debate on the claims of asylum seekers.

Four fires were lit on Saturday causing one person to be hospitalised and five others to be treated for smoke inhalation. 34 bedrooms were destroyed along with many treasured personal possessions such as family photos, and 58 people were required to be evacuated from the centre.

The Advertiser said Senator Vanstone was appalled detainees had deliberately started the fires and had left taxpayers with a multimillion-dollar bill. "(It) was reckless and seriously endangered the lives of detainees and the Baxter staff," she said.

The ABC reported that four men were being questioned over the fires, with an Immigration department (DIMIA) spokesman saying they were people who have overstayed their visas or had their visas cancelled on bad character grounds.

Pamela Curr continues the story:

Since DIMIA have gone silent, we have collected the following information and reports from witnesses. The facts are

* No Asylum Seeker was involved in lighting the fires.
* Asylum seekers suffered loss of personal possessions and effects.
* One man, an artist with pictures in readiness for an exhibition in Port Augusta lost his entire collection.
* Some Chinese men lost their dearest possessions-photos of their families.

FACT: Three criminal deportees were involved in lighting the fires.

This highlights an ongoing problem at Baxter where men transferred from the prison system and awaiting deportation are placed throughout the asylum seeker compounds.

There is no good reason to do this when there are nine compounds at Baxter, a number of which remain unoccupied. Asylum seekers have always expressed concern and fear that ex-prisoners were placed in their compounds because they saw this as DIMIA attempting to confuse the Australian people by mixing asylum seekers and ex-prisoners to present asylum seekers as criminals.

While some ex-prisoners present few problems, others are angry and violent after many years in the prison system and frighten asylum seekers who have fled violence in their own countries. Asylum seekers report being afraid to come out of their rooms when ex-prisoners are on the rampage. They say that the ex-prisoners bait the guards poisoning the atmosphere for everyone.

These are two different groups with very different needs. DIMIA should immediately separate them. They have the space and facilities available and should do so without delay.

PAMELA CURR

More mishandling of Immigration Matters by the Department of Immigration, and the responsible Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone. She has proven herself incompetent, lacking in responsibility, and failed to reform a racist and derogatory culture in her department established by her predecessor, Phillip Ruddock.

Where is John Howard's ministerial Code of Responsibility that he introduced in 1996? I haven't heard it mentioned at all the last few years.

By Takver posted 21 November 05

Statement of the Villawood Hunger Strikers
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Detention policy: Change Your Mind
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Australian held in Baxter detention centre
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Submission to Senate: Inquiry into Mental Health 2005
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Rau ordeal a raw deal
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Australian held in Baxter detention centre
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Detainees urged to abandon rooftop protest!
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Advocates warn of detention centre riot risk
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Howard has increased the Risk of terrorism

Repost from Anarchist Age Number 667

"The Prime Minister vindicated by the arrest of terror suspects in Melbourne and Sydney" hardly. Those Australians who doubted the PM's sincerity when they questioned the timing of his release of information into the public arena that Australia faced the prospect of an imminent terrorist outrage, have egg on their faces, I doubt it. I distinctly remember how John Howard, his brow furrowed, told Australians that he didn't want people who threw their children overboard in this country. Four years later, it's commonly accepted that no refugee threw their children overboard and the great majority of asylum seekers involved in that incident now live in Australia.

VINDICATED

I distinctly remember the PM telling the world that Australia couldn't wait for the UN to make up its mind about whether Iraq should be invaded, because the Baath Party, led by Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction at their disposal. Nearly 3 years later, those elusive weapons have still not materialised.

Whether the terror suspects that have been arrested and charged were involved in something as innocent as a discussion group or whether they were, as he has been extensively reported in the media on the verge of committing a terrorist outrage, is a matter for public conjecture. It's up to the courts, not the PM, the Victorian and NSW Premiers, their Chief Police Commissioners or the media to decide these men's innocence or guilt. [It's not even up to the courts when the courts have to do as the parliament say i.e. draconian laws.]

Currently, both the view that these men were arrested by the thought police for they were thinking or the community has been saved from a terrorist outrage by a group of potential suicide murders, is legitimate. [No both views are not legitimate mate, this is rubbish because these people are being used as scapegoats to bolster support for the Coalition of the Killing's resource wars in the Middle East, otherwise the law would never have been made DRACONIAN.] If the judiciary is able to hold its nerve, despite the current political and media barrage to convict these men before they have faced their accusers in court, the community will find out the outcome in due course. [No not really because Draconian laws means that the outcome, my friend, is bent, all you are getting is the DRACONIAN OUTCOME.]

Unfortunately, the next group of people who are arrested under the new batch of terrorist and sedition laws won't be so lucky. [You mean it gets worse?] They will be able to be secretly detained and interrogated with minimal judicial intervention and no media scrutiny. They can have what few rights and liberty they enjoy stripped away from them, their lives and the lives of their families and communities destroyed, because some faceless bureaucrat in ASIO believes they pose a potential threat to the community. [Well actually it can't get much worse than solitary confinement for anyone because that in itself without any other mistreatment is torture.]

The removal of rights and privileges, checks and balances that have existed for generations will not make the community safer as John Howard keeps telling us, but will create a climate of angry disillusionment and isolation among sections of the Australian community that will increase, not decrease, the possibility of a home grown terrorist outrage.

POLITICAL AUTHORITY

Irrespective of the state of perpetual fear that the Howard government is fostering in the community, irrespective of the draconian authoritarian legislation that is being pushed through Parliament, irrespective of the total capitulation of the Federal Opposition, ultimate political authority rests in the hands of the people, not the government of the day or the State. The Federal government can pass whatever legislation it likes, whether it is able to enforce that legislation is a different matter.

Governments normally rule through community consensus, not by force. Those that resort to force, sow the seed of rebellion among the people they rule. Whether the Howard government is able to implement its legislative agenda is not determined by its ability to push its legislation through Parliament, but whether it can convince people that the curtailment of their rights, privileges and freedoms is in their best interests. Governments that stop listening to the people they rule, who believe they know what is best for them, create a culture of dissatisfaction and resistance within the communities they rule.

A government's legitimacy is determined by the cultural consensus it is able to create within the community for its political program. Once a significant minority rejects a government's legitimacy, its ability to impose its political program on them by exercising the monopoly on force governments enjoy, is compromised. It seems the Howard government has bitten off more than it can chew; the resistance to Howard's ideological wet dream is not just limited to a disenfranchised minority, it is extending into his own party room.

The instability that is being created by his four pronged attack on the Australian people by the passage of his Industrial Relations (Destruction), anti-terrorist (Dissent), Welfare to Work (Slavery) and media ownership laws, will escalate as the Howard government tries to implement its legislative agenda by threatening to bankrupt and imprison those that oppose these laws.

Whether the corporate sector and his political supporters have the nerve and stomach to wield the big stick that he is threatening to use and put the significant gains they have made over the past 20 under threat, or whether they sacrifice Howard on the altar or economic and political expediency, is another matter.

HOW CONVENIENT!

How convenient, on the very day the Howard government introduced its Industrial 'Destruction' legislation into Parliament, the Prime Minister breathlessly tells the Australian people that he has just received information that the country faces an imminent terrorist outrage. Ho hum, I wonder if the people who passed on the information that ASIO has passed onto the Prime Minister, has come from the very same people that told the Prime Minister that Australia had to invade Iraq because the Baath Party has 'weapons of mass destruction' at their disposal.

John Howard hasn't much of a reputation when it comes to telling the truth. When you consider his core and non core promises, the children overboard fiasco and his never never a GST saga, any sane rational person isn't going to take much notice of the boy who has learned to call wolf whenever he doesn't want people to pay close attention to what he is doing. If we faced a potential terrorist outrage, you'd think he'd do something about it, instead of recalling the Senate.

First, he is responsible for creating the conditions that have increased Australia's risk of becoming a terrorist target, then he uses that potential risk to divert the public's attention from legislation that will wipe away from the gains made through over 100 years of community and workplace struggle. Talk about Machiavellian; Machiavelli was an amateur when compared to our beloved Prime Minister.

Howard may think he can fool most of the people most of the time, but there is no way he is going to fool all of us all the time. There are terrorists living in Australia, they wear suits, appear on television during the evening news and use the spectre of terrorism to bolster their political position. They push legislation through Parliament that does more damage than any terrorist outrage could ever do. The Industrial 'Destruction' legislation that is being lobbed into Parliament by the Prime Minister with the adroitness of an SAS soldier throwing a hand grenade into a bunker, will eventually maim and kill thousands of Australians.

Yes Virginia, politicians do exist who will use all the means at their disposal to deflect the fourth estate's attention from the main parliamentary game. Fortunately for the country, there are an increasing number of Australians who have learnt to ignore the boy who's called wolf once too often, and have their eyes firmly on the only game in town the Industrial 'Destruction' legislation - that has been introduced into Parliament by a government that has deserted its constituents in favour of corporate Australia.

Read more at: Anarchistmedia.org

By Joseph Toscano posted 10 November 05

Evidence that Howard was complicit in CIA, false flag, call to arms, Bali bombings

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Statement of the Villawood Hunger Strikers

Posted at the request of the Chinese hunger strikers in Villawood, on strike since 19 October

Statement:

(translated from Chinese)

We are six hunger strikers from Villawood Immigration Detention Centre (VIDC) in Sydney, Australia. In order to protest against the compulsory detention policy and mental and physical impairment caused by the long-term detention in VIDC, during which many people have suffered from long-term insomnia, dysphoria, and even mental breakdown, six of us detainees started the hunger strike on 19th October, 2005.

Six of us all came from the mainland China, among us five people are seeking refugee status while another person is asking for family reunion.

We were persecuted by the communist regime in our own country where people lost their fundamental freedom, human rights, democratic rights and rule of law. We were forced to flee from China to come to Australia where people enjoy their fundamental freedom, human rights, democratic rights and rule of law.

Like newly born babies, we are seeking protection here in a democracy. But due to the inadequacy of the detention policy in Australia, we were forced to lose our freedom again and may, at any moment, be deported back to China and face severe persecution again.

Our hearts are bleeding

Is it that hard for us to live as a normal human being? Is it that hard for us to be treated like the staying Chinese after the Tiananmen Square Massacre?

Has the communist regime in China returned us the fundamental rights of freedom, human rights and democratic rights? Has the rule of law become dominant in China now?

Has the Chinese Communist Party stopped persecution against political dissidents, "underground churches" and Falun Gong?

All the above questions explain themselves, and certainly do not need our explanations.

Hereby we solemnly declared that we request the Australian Government to provide us the refugee status, family reunion and humanitarian refuge. It is also the aspirations of all the detainees at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, Sydney.

Australian people, we need your help!

From six hunger strikers in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, Sydney 30th October, 2005

Villawood detainees go on hunger strike

A refugee advocacy group says up to 200 detainees at the Villawood Detention Centre, in Sydney, have begun a hunger strike to draw attention to their situation ahead of the federal election.

By Chinese hunger strikers in Villawood posted 2 November 05

Related:

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A federal Coalition MP has called for the release of all asylum seekers being held in immigration detention centres.

Australian held in Baxter detention centre
It has been revealed an Australian resident has been locked up in Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for the past four months. Authorities had been unable to establish her identity since she was found wandering in far north Queensland last September.

Did Cornelia Rau have a mental illness?
CORNELIA Rau returned to psychiatric care in Adelaide, just days after being released into the community, appears to be very suspicious indeed!

Submission to Senate: Inquiry into Mental Health 2005
We appreciate that the urgent issues of Human Rights and other abuses including institutionalisation and the use of force, and the lack of progress on Burdekin are being examined by the Committee.

Govt defends decision to detain Korean woman?
The Immigration Department says there was no unlawful detention in the case of a Korean woman recently held at South Australia's Baxter detention centre?

Rau ordeal a raw deal
Ms Rau spent time in a Queensland prison and a hospital before being handed to immigration authorities who kept her in detention for another four months.

Australian held in Baxter detention centre
It has been revealed an Australian resident has been locked up in Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for the past four months. Authorities had been unable to establish her identity since she was found wandering in far north Queensland last September.

Lawyers want Baxter detainee released for treatment !
Lawyers acting for a hunger-striking detainee inside South Australia's Baxter detention centre have asked the Federal Court to order a psychiatric assessment for the man, saying he needs to be in mental health care, not detention.

Baxter protesters 'being denied water, sleep'?
One of the three Iranian men has been on the roof of the gymnasium since Sunday last week, with two others joining him on Tuesday.

Detainees urged to abandon rooftop protest!
Kathy Verran from Rural Australians for Refugees, says one of the men has since come down and has been taken into the management unit. solitary confinement for Xmas?

Advocates warn of detention centre riot risk
A prominent refugee advocate warns South Australia's Baxter Detention Centre is on the brink of a major riot. A protest involving about 25 male detainees broke out at the centre on Tuesday, over a new system which is delaying the process of dispensing medication to detainees.

Advocates warn of detention centre riot risk
A prominent refugee advocate warns South Australia's Baxter Detention Centre is on the brink of a major riot. A protest involving about 25 male detainees broke out at the centre on Tuesday, over a new system which is delaying the process of dispensing medication to detainees.

Villawood detainees go on hunger strike
A refugee advocacy group says up to 200 detainees at the Villawood Detention Centre, in Sydney, have begun a hunger strike to draw attention to their situation ahead of the federal election.

Afghan children lose High Court battle against detention
Lawyers have lost their constitutional challenge to the detention of four children at a South Australian immigration centre. Four siblings from Afghanistan, aged between seven and 15, have been in detention since they arrived in Australia in 2001.

Democrats to keep up pressure over asylum seekers
The Australian Democrats will maintain their pressure on the next federal government over Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, if the party can retain its strength in the Senate.

Don't rock the Boat Howard!
PRIME Minister John Howard today denied the children overboard affair had swayed the 2001 election? Mr Howard has spent the week defending himself against claims he had been informed that nobody in Defence believed children had been thrown overboard by asylum seekers.

Baxter detainee continues hunger strike
A detainee at the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia has been on a hunger strike for a week. Sri Lankan Zeldon Daggie, 23, says he has been detained since arriving in Australia four years ago.

Senior cleric damns Baxter as 'disgraceful'
A senior world religious figure has called on the Federal Government to scrap its mandatory detention policy after visiting the Baxter detention centre in South Australia's north.

Australia's "GITMO" System
Australia's "GITMO" System In June 2002 on the PM program on ABC radio, PHILIP RUDDOCK is quoted as saying: "Well, let me just say, detention centres are not prisons. They are administrative detention.

Detention centre media ban criticised
The Howard Government has been criticised in a report by media freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders for stopping journalists covering the conditions in refugee detention centres.

Hundreds attempt self-harm in detention

More than half of the 900 self-harm incidents over three years occurred in the Baxter detention centre.

Nearly 900 immigration detainees have tried to harm themselves in the past three years, Immigration Department figures reveal.

The figures show there have been 878 attempts at self-harm and half of those attempts occurred at the Baxter detention centre in South Australia.

The details have been provided in response to a freedom of information request made by Sydney academic and author Denise Leith.

Dr Leith says the figures are appalling.

"These are people who have sought from us asylum," she said.

"These are people who probably are in pain or have been traumatized."

The head of Psychological Medicine at Adelaide's Women's and Children's Hospital, Jon Jureidini, has assessed detainees at Baxter.

"After people have been in detention for extended periods of time, almost all people that I've come across have harmed themselves in some way."

By Injustice posted 21 September 05

Related:

Justice for Vivian Alvarez Solon
The Refugee Action Collective organised Melbourne's contribution to a National Day of Action to demand compensation for Vivian Alvarez Solon and an end to forced deportations...

Lawyer contradicts Vanstone over detained kids' case
The lawyer for two Sydney school children held for four months in immigration detention has disputed the version of their experience given by the Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone.

Is Cornelia Rau running for her life?
Wrongfully detained woman Cornelia Rau has travelled to Melbourne, in breach of a South Australian mental health order.

Baxter visit convinces Burke of need for royal commission
AUSTRALIA/CUBA Federal Labor's new immigration spokesman Tony Burke says after visiting the Baxter detention centre he is now more convinced then ever of the need for a royal commission into immigration detention.

Gov't Failure Card: Community
The controversial plan was yesterday raised by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who suggested a national ID card to prevent unlawful detention similar to that suffered by Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez.

Some people want to remain anonymous
The federal attorney-general has suggested that two women wrongfully detained by the Immigration Department could have avoided being locked up if they had cooperated more with authorities.

'Anna's nightmare' in detention's living hell
Australia: IN his whitewashed report on the detention scandals, government employee Mick Palmer refers to Cornelia Rau's four months in Baxter detention centre as "Anna's journey".

Detention policy: Change Your Mind
It would not be wrong to answer in the affirmative. Another reason is that our political system is adjusting to the highly publicised breaches of human rights via individual cases such as Peter Qasim, Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon.

Psychiatrists dismiss Vanstone's call to limit role
Psychiatrists treating mentally-ill Baxter detainees have rejected the Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone's call for them to restrict their role to the immediate care of patients.

HREOC's deadline on child detainees passes
"We detainees request from human Australian to release us from Nauru cage" Years of waiting took their toll on asylum seekers. There are still two men there! They are suffering. (April 2006).

Tampering with Asylum
HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT THAT AUSTRALIA'S recent policies on asylum seekers are wrong, but don't quite have the statistics to back up your views?

Baxter,'akin to the time in Nazi Germany'
I went to Baxter this Easter just past, and became more aware that this time is akin to the time in Nazi Germany when the concentration camps were being set up.

Asylum seeker denied medical help, court hears
An Iranian asylum seeker was denied access to psychiatric help, despite slashing himself several times inside South Australia's Baxter detention centre, the Federal Court in Adelaide has heard.

Once You've Been to Baxter You Can't Sit on the Fence
I spent this Easter in the desert. I spent this Easter protesting at Baxter detention centre to draw the world's attention to the injustice of Australia's racist and inhumane mandatory detention system and treatment of asylum seekers.

Detention Centres, Solitary Confinement
On Friday night the NSW Council for Civil Liberties awarded Sydney solicitor John Marsden honorary life membership. Julian Burnside was invited to make the speech in Marsden's honour. In the course of his speech, Burnside referred to the unregulated use of solitary confinement in Australia's immigration detention centres, criticising it as inhumane and also as unlawful.

MP urges asylum seekers' release
A federal Coalition MP has called for the release of all asylum seekers being held in immigration detention centres.

Australian held in Baxter detention centre
It has been revealed an Australian resident has been locked up in Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for the past four months. Authorities had been unable to establish her identity since she was found wandering in far north Queensland last September.

Did Cornelia Rau have a mental illness?
CORNELIA Rau returned to psychiatric care in Adelaide, just days after being released into the community, appears to be very suspicious indeed!

Submission to Senate: Inquiry into Mental Health 2005
We appreciate that the urgent issues of Human Rights and other abuses including institutionalisation and the use of force, and the lack of progress on Burdekin are being examined by the Committee.

Govt defends decision to detain Korean woman?
The Immigration Department says there was no unlawful detention in the case of a Korean woman recently held at South Australia's Baxter detention centre?

Rau ordeal a raw deal
Ms Rau spent time in a Queensland prison and a hospital before being handed to immigration authorities who kept her in detention for another four months.

Australian held in Baxter detention centre
It has been revealed an Australian resident has been locked up in Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for the past four months. Authorities had been unable to establish her identity since she was found wandering in far north Queensland last September.

Lawyers want Baxter detainee released for treatment !
Lawyers acting for a hunger-striking detainee inside South Australia's Baxter detention centre have asked the Federal Court to order a psychiatric assessment for the man, saying he needs to be in mental health care, not detention.

Baxter protesters 'being denied water, sleep'?
One of the three Iranian men has been on the roof of the gymnasium since Sunday last week, with two others joining him on Tuesday.

Detainees urged to abandon rooftop protest!
Kathy Verran from Rural Australians for Refugees, says one of the men has since come down and has been taken into the management unit. solitary confinement for Xmas?

Advocates warn of detention centre riot risk
A prominent refugee advocate warns South Australia's Baxter Detention Centre is on the brink of a major riot. A protest involving about 25 male detainees broke out at the centre on Tuesday, over a new system which is delaying the process of dispensing medication to detainees.

Advocates warn of detention centre riot risk
A prominent refugee advocate warns South Australia's Baxter Detention Centre is on the brink of a major riot. A protest involving about 25 male detainees broke out at the centre on Tuesday, over a new system which is delaying the process of dispensing medication to detainees.

Villawood detainees go on hunger strike
A refugee advocacy group says up to 200 detainees at the Villawood Detention Centre, in Sydney, have begun a hunger strike to draw attention to their situation ahead of the federal election.

Afghan children lose High Court battle against detention
Lawyers have lost their constitutional challenge to the detention of four children at a South Australian immigration centre. Four siblings from Afghanistan, aged between seven and 15, have been in detention since they arrived in Australia in 2001.

Democrats to keep up pressure over asylum seekers
The Australian Democrats will maintain their pressure on the next federal government over Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, if the party can retain its strength in the Senate.

Don't rock the Boat Howard!
PRIME Minister John Howard today denied the children overboard affair had swayed the 2001 election? Mr Howard has spent the week defending himself against claims he had been informed that nobody in Defence believed children had been thrown overboard by asylum seekers.

Baxter detainee continues hunger strike
A detainee at the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia has been on a hunger strike for a week. Sri Lankan Zeldon Daggie, 23, says he has been detained since arriving in Australia four years ago.

Senior cleric damns Baxter as 'disgraceful'
A senior world religious figure has called on the Federal Government to scrap its mandatory detention policy after visiting the Baxter detention centre in South Australia's north.

Australia's "GITMO" System
Australia's "GITMO" System In June 2002 on the PM program on ABC radio, PHILIP RUDDOCK is quoted as saying: "Well, let me just say, detention centres are not prisons. They are administrative detention.

Detention centre media ban criticised
The Howard Government has been criticised in a report by media freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders for stopping journalists covering the conditions in refugee detention centres.

ACT flags Canberra site for SIEV-X memorial

The ACT Government says Canberra would be an appropriate location for a memorial to remember hundreds of asylum seekers who drowned when their boat the SIEV-X sank four years ago.

More than 350 asylum seekers were killed when the overcrowded Indonesian fishing vessel sank en route to Australia.

A group of artists and writers is pushing for a national memorial on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says Australians should recognise the tragedy but it is for the Federal Government to consider first.

"This is a national Commonwealth issue, it's not an ACT specific or ACT Government issue," he said.

"At this stage I haven't given serious consideration to whether the ACT Government should step in if the Commonwealth Government is resistant to working with this particular group."

Five years since Australia’s SIEV X tragedy: the official cover-up continues

Five years after Australia’s worst maritime disaster, in which 353 asylum seekers, including 150 children, drowned, not one of the fundamental questions raised by the terrible tragedy has been answered.

In the early afternoon of October 19, 2001, the boat’s passengers, fleeing mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan, perished in international waters between Indonesia and Australia. They were travelling in a hopelessly overcrowded refugee boat, which sank while trying to reach the Australian territorial outpost of Christmas Island. The area was under heavy surveillance by the Australian air force and navy under the Howard government’s “Operation Relex”, launched to detect and repulse “Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels” (SIEVs).

A number of questions arise:

1. Why were the detailed intelligence reports about the boat’s departure from Indonesia, in an obviously unseaworthy condition, apparently ignored?

2. Why did the navy not intercept this boat, like every other refugee boat sailing from Indonesia to Christmas Island at the time?

3. Why did Howard government ministers and the military lie about what they knew and when? What has the government been trying to conceal?

If a jumbo jet or cruise liner carrying almost 400 individuals had disappeared in the Indian Ocean at the same location it is inconceivable that no search and rescue operation would have been mounted. Imagine the resources that would have been deployed had the passengers been British or American tourists! When lone yachtsmen have gone missing far away from the Australian coast, multi-million dollar rescue operations have, correctly, been carried out. But not in this case. And even more strikingly, no-one in official circles has been held to account. No official inquiry, even a coronial inquest, has been conducted into how and why these people died.

At the very least, it appears that the lives of the 397 stateless and penniless refugees aboard the SIEV 8 (later dubbed the SIEV X, or “unknown” SIEV) were considered to be of little value.

More ominously, their deaths served a definite political agenda. Soon after the catastrophe became known to the public, then immigration minister Philip Ruddock made the following chilling comment on SBS TV. This “may have an upside,” he declared, “in the sense that some people may see the dangers inherent in it”. In other words, the tragedy could prove to be just what the government needed to discourage other asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia.

More: The election of November 2001

By In Solidarity 3 September 05

Related:

Detention policy: Change Your Mind
THE long and agonising refugee policy retreat has begun, but Australia has been damage irreparably over the politics and morality of asylum-seeker policy and no resolution of this conflict is in sight.

Psychiatrists dismiss Vanstone's call to limit role
Psychiatrists treating mentally-ill Baxter detainees have rejected the Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone's call for them to restrict their role to the immediate care of patients.

HREOC's deadline on child detainees passes
"We detainees request from human Australian to release us from Nauru cage" Years of waiting took their toll on asylum seekers. There are still two men there! They are suffering. (April 2006).

Tampering with Asylum
HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT THAT AUSTRALIA'S recent policies on asylum seekers are wrong, but don't quite have the statistics to back up your views?

Baxter,'akin to the time in Nazi Germany'
I went to Baxter this Easter just past, and became more aware that this time is akin to the time in Nazi Germany when the concentration camps were being set up.

Asylum seeker denied medical help, court hears
An Iranian asylum seeker was denied access to psychiatric help, despite slashing himself several times inside South Australia's Baxter detention centre, the Federal Court in Adelaide has heard.

Once You've Been to Baxter You Can't Sit on the Fence
I spent this Easter in the desert. I spent this Easter protesting at Baxter detention centre to draw the world's attention to the injustice of Australia's racist and inhumane mandatory detention system and treatment of asylum seekers.

Detention Centres, Solitary Confinement
On Friday night the NSW Council for Civil Liberties awarded Sydney solicitor John Marsden honorary life membership. Julian Burnside was invited to make the speech in Marsden's honour. In the course of his speech, Burnside referred to the unregulated use of solitary confinement in Australia's immigration detention centres, criticising it as inhumane and also as unlawful.

MP urges asylum seekers' release
A federal Coalition MP has called for the release of all asylum seekers being held in immigration detention centres.

Rau ordeal a raw deal
Ms Rau spent time in a Queensland prison and a hospital before being handed to immigration authorities who kept her in detention for another four months.

Australian held in Baxter detention centre
It has been revealed an Australian resident has been locked up in Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for the past four months. Authorities had been unable to establish her identity since she was found wandering in far north Queensland last September.

Lawyers want Baxter detainee released for treatment !
Lawyers acting for a hunger-striking detainee inside South Australia's Baxter detention centre have asked the Federal Court to order a psychiatric assessment for the man, saying he needs to be in mental health care, not detention.

Baxter protesters 'being denied water, sleep'?
One of the three Iranian men has been on the roof of the gymnasium since Sunday last week, with two others joining him on Tuesday.

Detainees urged to abandon rooftop protest!
Kathy Verran from Rural Australians for Refugees, says one of the men has since come down and has been taken into the management unit. [solitary confinement for Xmas?]

Advocates warn of detention centre riot risk
A prominent refugee advocate warns South Australia's Baxter Detention Centre is on the brink of a major riot. A protest involving about 25 male detainees broke out at the centre on Tuesday, over a new system which is delaying the process of dispensing medication to detainees.

Villawood detainees go on hunger strike
A refugee advocacy group says up to 200 detainees at the Villawood Detention Centre, in Sydney, have begun a hunger strike to draw attention to their situation ahead of the federal election.

Afghan children lose High Court battle against detention
Lawyers have lost their constitutional challenge to the detention of four children at a South Australian immigration centre. Four siblings from Afghanistan, aged between seven and 15, have been in detention since they arrived in Australia in 2001.

Australia's "GITMO" System
Australia's "GITMO" System In June 2002 on the PM program on ABC radio, PHILIP RUDDOCK is quoted as saying: "Well, let me just say, detention centres are not prisons. They are administrative detention.

Senior cleric damns Baxter as 'disgraceful'
A senior world religious figure has called on the Federal Government to scrap its mandatory detention policy after visiting the Baxter detention centre in South Australia's north.

Detention centre media ban criticised
The Howard Government has been criticised in a report by media freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders for stopping journalists covering the conditions in refugee detention centres.

Baxter detainee continues hunger strike
A detainee at the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia has been on a hunger strike for a week. Sri Lankan Zeldon Daggie, 23, says he has been detained since arriving in Australia four years ago.

Democrats to keep up pressure over asylum seekers
The Australian Democrats will maintain their pressure on the next federal government over Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, if the party can retain its strength in the Senate.

Don't rock the Boat Howard!
PRIME Minister John Howard today denied the children overboard affair had swayed the 2001 election? Mr Howard has spent the week defending himself against claims he had been informed that nobody in Defence believed children had been thrown overboard by asylum seekers.

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years

England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

Despite government attempts to reduce it, England and Wales have a prison population rate of 142 per 100,000, which remains higher than France, Germany, Italy and Greece.

There are 76,000 people in jails in England and Wales, and this does not include immigration detainees. Last week Amnesty International estimated that 25,000 asylum seekers were locked up last year in the UK.

There are around 1,300 prisoners in Northern Ireland and 6,700 in Scotland.

The analysis, by the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) suggests authorities around the world are sending their citizens to jail at an ever increasing rate.

As before, the United States, China and Russia are responsible for half the world's 9 million prisoners.

But whereas in Russia the prison population has fallen from more than 1 million in 1999 to 763,000 now, the total has risen in the US - by far the world's biggest jailer - from 1.86 million in 1999 to more than 2 million. There is also an upward trend in China where there are more than 1.5 million people in jail, a prison population rate of 118 per 100,000 of the population.

Rob Allen, director of the ICPS, said: "Given the high cost and disputed efficacy of imprisonment, the data should prompt policymakers in every country to consider what they can do to limit the size of their prison population. Excessive use of prison does nothing to improve public safety."

Geoff Dobson, deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Does this country really want to be seen to imprison far more of our population than our neighbours, France and Germany, and does this help to make ours a safer society than theirs?"

The study, conducted at King's College London, shows a rise in the prison populations of 73% of those countries analysed. This applied to 64% of countries in Africa, 79% of those in the Americas, 83% in Asia, 69% in Europe and 69% in Oceania.

Of particular interest were Brazil, where the rise in the prison population was 70%, Japan, where the figure rose by 40%, and Mexico, where the increase was 37%.

The largest rise in Europe occurred in Holland, where the jail population has leapt over five years from 14,000 to 20,000, an increase of 42%. The authorities there have reacted to public calls for tougher sentences.

The changing situation in Russia is in part attributable to the work of Yuri Kalinin, the deputy minister of justice and former director general of the Russian prison service, who has made a big impact on the country's penal policy.

The biggest drop has been in the remand population. In 1996, it stood at 300,000 but that figure had fallen to 150,000 at the start of the year.

Roy Walmsley, honorary consultant to the United Nations and an ICPS associate, said: "We sought to draw attention to the huge world prison population and the vast differences in different parts of the world and in different countries. The question of how effective prisons are should be a matter of great public debate. It is to be hoped that countries with a high prison population will look at their neighbours, who imprison many fewer of their people and ask if their society is necessarily safer as a result."

Two months ago Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, called for "greater sense" in sentencing to improve public confidence and make the criminal justice system more effective. He said detention should be primarily reserved for the most serious offences, particularly violent and dangerous offenders.

But many politicians and some within the criminal justice system hold to the philosophy first espoused by Michael Howard, that "prison works"

Earlier this year Paul Kernaghan, chief constable of Hampshire, urged judges to send more offenders to prison for the protection of the public.

By Eric Allison and Hugh Muir posted 29 June 05

Not With Our Money

Today, millions of people living in the U.S. find themselves on the front lines of a deadly "war on crime" with no end in sight. Since 1970, the number of men and women behind bars grew by nearly 600% to a staggering two million. The bulk of the newly incarcerated are not serial killers or drug kingpins, but young people of color from urban neighborhoods who have been convicted of non-violent drug offenses, and increasingly, immigrants whose only crime is being undocumented.

Politicians tell us that prison expansion will help us "win" the war on crime, but research and the lived experience of victims, offenders, families and communities suggest that over-incarceration has actually weakened the social fabric of crime-ridden communities. Thirty years of "tough-on-crime" policies have left American more fearful, more alienated, and more racially divided, yet the U.S. government touts the "success" of American criminal justice around the world.

This section will provide you with general facts about the prison industrial complex, the private prison industry and the corporations that finance it, organizing efforts to abolish the industry once and for all, and resources to assist you in your activism.

Related:

CPS drops prosecution over death in custody
UK: The family of Roger Sylvester, who died after being restrained by police officers, yesterday expressed their disappointment at a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Prisoner's cell death
UK: A prisoner was found hanged in his cell last week, the Home Office said, fuelling criticism over the soaring number of suicides in custody.

Plans for five new 'superprisons'
Recent figures show a total of 75,550 prisoners were held in 139 jails in England and Wales, nudging up the previous record of April 2004 by just six inmates.

Prison has lost its way - report
UK: Bristol prison is suffering wide-ranging problems because of inconsistent management, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Row over acupuncture for prisoners
UK: The Home Office has responded to criticism over prison inmates who are being offered acupuncture on the NHS in order to relieve stress.

Number of prisoners sent back to jail trebles
UK: The number of prisoners being sent back to jail after release has nearly trebled in the past five years, according to a report published today.

Top judge says crowded prisons cannot break cycle of crime
UK: Reoffending rates after a prison sentence are at an "unacceptably high level" and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop prisoners reoffending should shock the public, England's top judge, [Ruling Class] Lord Woolf, said last week.

All the World's a Prison: History
No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

Decade after inspector left in disgust, report tells of filth
UK: Dirty, mice-infested cells, high levels of self-harm, and widespread bullying over drugs and medications were just some of the damning findings of a report into conditions at Holloway, Britain's largest women's prison.

Most women 'should not be jailed'
Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales. Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

Youth 'murdered for officers' pleasure'
UK: An Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist after they were placed in the same cell as part of a game to fulfil the "perverted pleasure" of prison officers, a public inquiry heard on Friday.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases
The use of segregation [solitary confinement] of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

Inquest blames jail for overdose death
UK: An inquest jury returned a verdict itemising a catalogue of faults at Styal prison in Cheshire, concluding that the prison's "failure of duty of care" contributed to the death of Sarah Campbell, 18, who took an overdose of tablets on the first day of her three-year sentence.

Put in the way of self-harm in a place intended to protect others
UK: Sarah Campbell, 18, spent the last hours of her life in the segregation unit of Styal prison, Cheshire. "The seg", as those places are referred to, used to be known as "the block", short for punishment block. [ Seg is a bullshit word for Punishment, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Human Rights Abuse and that is State Terror.]

Britain 'sliding into police state'
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs [false flag police chiefs] said yesterday.

UK solitary confinement
UK: Segregation units are prisons within prisons - the places where the most unchecked brutality is meted out to prisoners. In recent years conditions in high security segregation units have deteriorated, and the use of long-term segregation as a control mechanism has increased.

Inquiry must root out prison racists
UK: It is difficult to imagine a more brutal murder than that of Zahid Mubarek. The 19-year-old was clubbed to death by his cellmate at Feltham Young Offender Institution in the early hours of 21 March 2000. He was due to be released just a few hours later.

Prison suicides soar as jails hire 'babysitters'
UK: Prison officers are being taken off suicide watch and replaced by unqualified 'babysitters' because the system is overwhelmed by an epidemic of self-harm.

Plan to sell off juvenile jails as job lot
UK: The government is to put out to tender all its dedicated juvenile jails that hold children under 18 in a departure in Whitehall's privatisation programme.

Failure to sack 'racist' prison staff condemned
UK: Two prison officers suspended for racism are still on full pay three years after a stash of Nazi memorabilia, neo-fascist literature and Ku Klux Klan-inspired 'nigger-hunting licences' was found in a police raid on their home.

Report slams 'unjust' jailing of women on remand
UK: Six out of 10 women sent to jail while they await trial are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence, a report published today reveals. Introducing the report, Lady Kennedy QC calls for a complete review of the use of remand and bail for women saying it is "inhumane and unjust".

Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
UK: More prisoners took their own lives in English jails in August than in any other month since records began, prison reformers said today.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
But now Holloway prison in north London - where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was hanged in 1955 - has been earmarked for closure, along with several other women's prisons, which have been hit by a spate of suicides.

How detox and self-help brought suicide jail back from the brink
UK: Six suicides in 12 months made Styal jail notorious and the Prisons Ombudsman criticised the prison and its staff for serious failures. But things are changing.

Belmarsh detainees consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim detainees released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has told the Guardian his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

Suicides and unrest have soared, admits Home Office
UK:The already overcrowded prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned yesterday.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures.