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
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.

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

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.

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.

Baxter visit convinces Burke of need for royal commission

A visit to any Detention Centre or prison should convince Labor to push for a royal commission into detention...

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.

Mr Burke's visit to Baxter yesterday was his first trip there.

He says even the findings of the Palmer inquiry differed to what he was told by detainees at Baxter.

"Everything that we've said about the royal commission and the need for evidence to be taken publicly was right," he said.

"It was spot on and the contradictions that were presented to me ... just confirmed that and secondly a very clear message that these detention centres should not be in private ownership.

"There should be a clear line of command from the minister, through the department to government-run centres."

He says his visit put a human face to the plight of long-term detainees.

"We believe there are better ways and the 90 per cent of cases and the 90 days that I mentioned is one of those," he said.

"But the other thing that you need is huge cultural change and unless the Government is serious about that then we're not going to get the changes on the ground that we need.

"Perhaps the first to get a removal pending visa should be the Minister."

A nurse who cared for the Australian woman wrongly deported to the Philippines, Vivian Alvarez Solon, says Ms Solon suffered serious convulsions a day before she was declared fit to be flown out of Australia.

Filipino-Australian nurse Mayette Mackintosh has said that she informed Immigration guards of Ms Solon's condition and recommended she not board a plane.

"She just starting to have a spasm and really shaking, you know, having some sort of fit," she said.

"I brought it to the attention to the two Immigration officers. They said that they have to inform the Immigration Department about the condition."

The next day, Dr Peter Wynn examined Ms Solon and declared her fit to fly.

He says he was not told of her seizure or her medical history.

"It does, it worries you a little bit. They're withholding information because it would change your approach, possibly send her to hospital that night for evaluation from the neurological department," he said.

"Other things could have been done if that was evident and that obvious."

Former Supreme Court judge Marcus Einfeld, who is advising Ms Solon, says the Immigration Department was in a rush to prove Ms Solon could fly.

"I think this doctor must have been under an enormous amount of pressure from the department to give a favourable report and that's what he did," he said.

Professor Louise Newman from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists says it is not good enough.

"I think after this case all clinicians will be well advised in their dealings with the department," she said.

"I dare say that if this doctor had been aware that Ms [Solon] would be sent to a hospice for the dying, his decision and concerns would have been even greater."

Ms Solon's legal team is currently trying to secure compensation for her wrongful deportation to the Philippines in 2001.

Well your prisons and institutions have all fallen by the wayside so why not have a Royal Commission into prisons and detention centers? Seen as how the punishment appears to be the same even for an alleged terrorist who can be treated like the worst of the worst criminals, regardless if any case has been made against them in a court of law.

Zealots Reign Unchecked in Immigration - Nothing Has Changed

The Palmer Inquiry has identified a culture of zealotry as underpinning current Immigration Department (DIMIA) policy and practice.

By Just Us 19 July 05

Related:

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.

Psychiatrists dismiss Vanstone's call to limit role

Long-term detainee Peter Qasim is being treated in a psychiatric hospital

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.

Adelaide's Glenside Psychiatric Hospital is treating nine patients from the Baxter immigration detention centre, including Australia's longest serving detainee, Peter Qasim.

Some psychiatrists are worried the men may be sent back to the detention centre, but Senator Vanstone says that is not their concern.

"I would personally have some concern if I thought psychiatrists were doing anything other than treating their patients for the mental health condition they have," she said.

"Of course you'd take into account the advice of a psychiatrists in relation to someone's mental health.

"But once they're well, then the psychiatrist's role finishes."Jon Jureidini, the psychiatrist who admitted Peter Qasim to Glenside Hospital a week ago, rejects Senator Vanstone's comments.

"I think it's very much in a psychiatrist's role to express concerns about things that they think are damaging to their patient's health," he said. "It would be negligent of a psychiatrist not to speak out against things that drive people crazy. "I know that the patients I've seen were driven crazy by being in Baxter. "To send them back there, once they'd recovered, would be to expose them to the same kinds of risks that caused the problem in the first place."

By I Won't Be Nuts For You 18 June 05

Related:

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.

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.

To their shame, and for some of them, to their demise, the citizens then did nothing while their government set up these camps, and rounded up the "undesirables." The Jews, the unionists, independent women, gypsies, gays and other classed as deviants.

How can I sit by while that happens again? How can you?

The private global corporation running the detention centres makes money off of the incarceration of children kidnapped from primary schools, and off of mental patients tortured for months, and off of people who have committed no crime and who are accused of no crime, who are locked up for nothing but fleeing for their lives and seeking asylum here.

I was not too worried about being charged for flying a kite at Baxter, because even if I was locked up for this, I would know what the charge was, and how long the incarceration was for. This is more than those adults and children (including orphans!) detained indefinitely in our concentration camps have.

Why not come and join me next Sunday at the local concentration camp for "undesirable foreigners", Villawood, gathering 10:30am at Villawood Train Station for a march to the privatised detention centre.

FROM THE REFUGEE ACTIVE COALITION NSW:

1) Protest at Villawood detention centre - for the release of all asylum seekers and to condemn the DIMIA raids on schools when they snatched kids and put them into Villawood. Meet at 10.30am Sunday 10 April at Villawood station, and then march to Warraweena Rd entrance of the detention centre. We had already planned for this protest to involve kite-flying. After the famous "Operation Pop Balloons" by the cops at Baxter, why not bring balloons as well as kites for this protest? If you don't have either, just bring yourself, placards, banners, noise-makers, etc.

(2) Rally to support the refugee activists. 9am Tues 12 April at Downing Centre Court, cnr Liverpool and Elizabeth Sts, City

On 1 December 2004, Australian Federal Police and DIMIA officers raided the homes of several refugee activists. They charged four of them with signing false passport statements. Two of the charges have already been dropped as the police realised they had no case. The charges relate to escaped asylum seekers who left Australia rather than spend more time in detention or be deported back to serious danger.

The real crime is what goes on in the detention centres, the insecurity and uncertainty of TPVs and the prospect of deportation. To help refugees is not a crime. ALL the charges should be dropped.

(3) Anti-deportation public meeting, 6-8pm Thursday 21 April, Teachers Federation 23-33 Mary St, Surry Hills

Speakers: Phil Glendenning (Edmund Rice Centre and co-author of recent report, Deported to Danger) Sally McManus (Australian Services Union Executive President) Fashid (Iranian ex-detainee) Ian Rintoul (Refugee Action Coalition)

By Norrie MAy-Welby 6 April 05

Related:

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.

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.

The asylum seeker, known only as "M", was among a group of detainees who staged a 10-day protest on a roof at Baxter late last year.

"M" told the court he took part in the rooftop protest out of desperation after spending more than four years inside detention centres.

He says after the protest he was seen by a psychiatrist who prescribed new medication for his severe depression.

The psychiatrist also told him he may need shock treatment in hospital.

The medication failed but "M" says he has not seen the psychiatrist since.

Lawyers for "M" and another detainee want their clients to be taken out of Baxter and put into psychiatric care in Adelaide's Glenside Psychiatric Hospital.

They say the Commonwealth Government has failed to provide asylum seekers with a duty of care.

The case is continuing.

By Just Us 5 April 05

Ed: This story is indicative of the tactical difference of opinion; in that the person is first tortured then their only option out is to be locked up under threat of being electroshocked for the symptoms of their torture. This in itself is an act of extreme cruelty with permanent effects.

Related:

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.

Once You've Been to Baxter You Can't Sit on the Fence

A story from the Baxter 05 convergence written by the NUS National Environment Officer.

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.

Thursday morning as I heaved my pack onto the bus outside UTS, Sydney, all I was feeling was tired. Although I'd been planning for Baxter for months now, getting posters out from NUS and trying to get new students involved, I felt so unprepared. I'd even forgotten my hat.

Most of the people on my bus, including me, had never been to Baxter before. On the TV screen at the front, as the small towns hurtled past on the 25 hour journey, we watched footage of the last Baxter convergence, in 2003, and the convergence before that at Woomera. Watching footage of the fences being pulled down was so beautiful. Even more beautiful was the fact that there had been no police there to stop it!

When we got to Adelaide and to the Uni, I wished I'd had time before we left to make some placards and banners. I had so many ideas in my head but they weren't much use there now. Marching to Amanda Vandstone's house in the hot sun with only a small group of us on the pavement through suburbia wasn't the start to the full-on weekend I'd expected, but soon we moved to the road and as we walked up the hill the momentum built.

Waiting for us were the Melbourne crew, and our numbers doubled as we started chanting in front of the lines of cops protecting the residence of one of the people responsible for perpetuating some of the worst human rights abuses in Australia.

I made a speech. It was the first time I've made a speech into a megaphone. I had written it at breakfast this morning because I'd learnt some of the scheduled speakers had pulled out. People listened and I hoped they couldn't hear my voice shaking. I wondered if the police behind me were listening too, of if they were tuning out. The media microphones and cameras pointing at me freaked me out a bit. But people afterwards told me it was a good speech, and I was quoted in The Australian which was exciting for my mum (hi mum!).

After we'd had a meeting and decided where to camp, we set the tents up and marched down to the detention centre. The lights around the perimeter fence were so bright they burned the backs of my eyes. A police helicopter flew above us with a spotlight relentlessly searching the ground for any signs of activists on covert missions, or asylum seekers lucky enough to have escaped from the fortified prison. Not that there was any chance of anyone escaping this weekend; there were as many police as protesters there, as we soon learnt.

The white wooden fence posts in front of the barbed wire electric fence were shaking that night as we drummed and sung and chanted and made as much noise as we could, trying to let those imprisoned inside know that we were here, that we were here for them, that we cared, that not all Australians were racist and willing to lock them up in the desert for the "crime" of seeking asylum and fleeing from persecution.

We stayed until exhaustion set in and our throats were sore, then marched back to the tents where I fell into a deep sleep amongst the red desert dust under a full moon and a night speckled with the stars you just can't see in the city, interrupted only by the police helicopter and its intrusive lights. Just over the hill were the asylum seekers in the hell-hole of Baxter. I didn't know if they were sleeping or awake, but I hoped they knew I was thinking of them as I fell asleep.

Saturday morning, and another 3.5 km march down to the detention centre. We wanted to walk around the whole perimeter of the centre and we carried balloons to fly over the centre so the detainees could see them. They can only see up, not outwards. Only sky. And hopefully, our coloured balloons gave them hope.

The police didn't want us to march around the perimeter. We knocked down the first fence and kept going. I was wishing I hadn't worn thongs as I found myself at the front and staring at the heavy police boots. We chanted so the detainees could hear us and to keep our own spirits up. AZadi - freeDOM - AZadi - freeDOM echoed from all of us to the beat of the drums we carried.

My own drum was just an empty water container tied over my shoulder by a scarf. It was soon lost in the police scuffle as they charged on us, marching in blue and khaki lines into our linked arms. It was scary. I was scared. It felt like a war zone. A line of us, a line of them. We began to retreat. Then the horses charged, at a trot. A row of white horses. A woman fell over and the horses kept going. She could have died. People were screaming and crying. The media just kept taking footage. My blue thong was lost in the crush but a reporter went closer to the cops than i could have, and handed it back to me. Thankyou. Small acts of kindness in a crazy situation.

We moved back and along to the front gates. Some had been arrested, some hurt, but most of us were fine. Singing and dancing and drumming and chanting outside the gates again, stopping the normal flow of the centre's regularity. Regulated torture. Rules for breaking people down. Dehumanising them. Numbers not names. We stayed until mid afternoon then headed back in the heat to the tents.

Saturday evening a small group of us headed down to the centre again bearing kites. A woman had been arrested last year for flying one but the charges had been dropped. We had made beautiful ones and hoped we could get them over the fence so the detainees could see them. The sun was setting over the desert and it was incredibly beautiful. I wished the people behind the bars could see this and be here with us now. We take our freedom for granted in Australia.

The police soon appeared when they realised we were coming with kites. One woman was flying a kite by herself when a line of about eight police marched towards her in formation. 'Run' we screamed, but she didn't. She walked towards them as if to ask what was going on, and they grabbed her. She was arrested. Some kites were seized. We headed back, only to find the rest of the camp marching towards us on the road. They'd heard we needed support and so came down. If only they'd been there half an hour before!

They continued down to the gates to hold a vigil that night. I went back to the tents to sleep. Apparantly at the gates someone got drunk and naked and played guitar to the police. Of course, that's the bit the media showed. I wish people would think about the consequences of their actions before they act; and that applies just as much to activists as it does to Amanda Vandstone and John Howard. At the camp that night we heard news from some of those at the vigil that they could hear the detainees shouting and chanting back to them through the fence.

Easter morning I woke up to the singing of one of the Aboriginal elders, the custodians of the land. I thought of all the Australians that would be going to church this morning. Teaching their 2.5 kids about the Christian values of compassion and loving thy neighbour (unless they arrive on a boat and are not white). Jesus was a middle Eastern man persecuted for his beliefs about social justice. Would he be given asylum in John Howard's Australia?

We held one last march to the detention centre that morning. Rosie and I held the banner we wanted to fly as a kite, held up with tens of helium balloons. It read Freedom; close Baxter, and then freedom written in four different languages. I wasn't very excited about the prospect of being arrested for flying a kite, but at least today I wasn't wearing thongs. Before we really knew what was happening, police lunged and burst the balloons holding up our kite-banner.

I let the string go so it could fly into the sky but it was too late; the balloons were burst and in shreds on the ground. Bright red balloons. Like kids toys. I kicked myself inside for not letting go sooner so it could have flown up above us all, a sign of hope made by Sydney Uni students. Instead, we marched on to the gates.

We amassed at the fence and made as much noise as we could. We flew kites. The police charged through the fence and over the pipeline to confiscate the kites. We kept one and I helped someone put it back together. He flew it as he was running from the police. A few hundred metres down the line, we heard shouting and saw police and police horses hurrying there. Apparantly someone tried to climb the fence.

The cops went crazy, punching one of my friends in the face, jaw and stomach; and throwing another one into a saltbush where her face was badly scratched. They held another one of my friends down over a barbed wire fence. Some more were arrested. It was horrible.

Fighting with police is not why we came. Sure, it got us media, but it was all about the violence. Most of the media were not on our side. I heard the channel 9 (or channel 7 maybe?) cameraman talking to some of the high school activists. People are tortured in there, they go crazy and they end up killing themselves, one girl was telling him. "So what?" he replied. "People top themselves all the time".

I didn't realise I was shaking until I was nearly halfway back to the campsite with my friends from Newcastle. The weekend had been so full-on. I was exhausted, emotionally and physically. Packing up all my gear was excruciatingly hard in the heat. My lips were sunburnt and starting to swell. I lost my sleeping bag and my sleeping mat in my confusion and heatstroke. I just wanted to sleep. But all my friends were around, from all over the country, and as usual, they made me feel better.

In Port Augusta we held a rally in solidarity with the local indigenous community who have experienced a lot of racism and vicious attacks. It made me think about Lake Cowal, where I spent last Easter. At that time I was with a lot of the same crew from Sydney Uni who came to Baxter, only they were in first year then and I was one of the editors of our student paper.

Now the first years are in second year and have become amazing organisers in the refugee campaign, in newly established anti-racism collective, and of course still in the environment movement. Lake Cowal is still under threat from Canadian company Barrick Gold who want to mine the sacred ephemeral lake using cyanide leaching. Asylum seekers are still treated disgustly.

But things are changing, I can tell. Every convergence, every protest, every progressive media article, every person questioning the government. We will change things for the better.

"The world shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage".

By Anna Rose 29 March 05

Related:

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.

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?

The Australian Greens say the woman had a holiday visa and was wrongly detained after visiting her boyfriend, who was working at a Victorian fruit farm.

The Greens have called for an inquiry into the case, saying it follows the wrongful detention of mentally ill Australian woman Cornelia Rau.

But the Immigration Department's Vince McMahon has told a Senate estimates committee the woman did not have a working visa and aroused the suspicion of officials.

"Some of the answers to the questions that were asked were regarded as not forthcoming," he said.

"The officer reached the conclusion the woman in question had intentions to work and with the electronic travel authority there are no work rights.

"He took the decision to cancel the visa and then to detain the person."

The department says woman has since been released, and her visa reinstated.

By Another Raw Deal 16 February 05

Related:

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.