A Visit to Villawood (2001)

At first glance the casual observer might be excused for thinking that this was a stubbornly determined attempt to have a picnic despite the miserable mid-winter Sydney weather.

We are sitting under a painted metal awning, freestanding and built over a room-sized concrete slab. A concrete path leads to it on one side and away from it on the other. Landscaping has stalled and around the concrete is uneven hard-packed mud. Persistent rain plonks into the mud puddles. A small pile of woodchip awaits further plans. Beyond is some patchy grass and further distant again are numbers of tall slim eucalypts. Under the awning are several couples and groups of people seated on plastic chairs at various tables.

But there are no barbeques and this is not a picnic. It is after 10am on Friday 27 July 2001 and we are in the visitors’ ‘room’ at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre.

Patricia Dunn, the NSW Ecumenical Council’s Refugee Field Worker, comes here most weeks, as did Mary Hanoon-Khilla before her. Today she is visiting three Iraqi men and I have come with her. It is less than 24 hours since a man has hung himself here – the first such suicide we are told by media reports. It is eight days since two mass breakouts of a total of 46 men.

The men have been told they have visitors but they are not yet here. “They’re probably still in bed” says Patricia with a grin. “With nothing to do, why would you want to get up on a day like this?”

While we wait I pull my raincoat round me to keep out the overabundance of fresh air and recall the process I have just gone through. The taxi driver, familiar with the routine, pulled up at the entrance gate to Stage Two. The young woman from Australian Corrective Management asked if we were visitors and quickly opened the first of the two bolted mesh gates. We moved into the wire cage between the two high mesh fences topped with razor wire. Rolls of razor wire in the space between the walls of wire. Now we are in a grassed courtyard, with three new-looking little circular plots each planted with a topiary tree and some pink. Impatiens flowers. A brave little showing.

Inside the building we do what Patricia does every time, we produce ID, fill in a form stating who we wish to see, receive a locker key, leave our handbags there and slip the locker key into our coat pockets. Patricia is careful to pocket the phone cards she has been given by people in many congregations who choose this practical way of supporting people in detention. Along with their money gift they put a phone card in the offering plate. As I walk through the security sensor I am reminded of almost an identical process a week earlier when I visited a friend in Belconnen Remand Centre in a suburb of Canberra.

“Would you like me to call your friends again for you?’ asks a smiling man from the next table under the metal awning. Patricia tell him the names and as the man goes towards the guards she tells me that he is Dr Aamer Sultan, a GP back in his country of Iraq. After we have left the Detention Centre Patricia will show me an article from Good Weekend – two of us, Sydney Morning Herald July 7, 2001 -which tells the story of Dr Sultan and his documented evidence of the deteriorating psychological state of fellow detainees. In the article Aamer’s friend Zachary Steel says of him:

Aamer put all the pieces together. One of the things he has done, which nobody else has done, is to document in detail how and why detainees deteriorate so badly. He calls it ‘Immigration Detention Stress Syndrome’ and describes how residential, judicial and administrative factors all converge to undermine the mental state of detainees. It should be obvious, but instant loss of liberty for an indeterminate period and uncertainty about the future, coupled with the ever-present threat of forced repatriation, leads to mounting stress, tension, mental breakdown and behavioural disorders. Inevitably, some detainees, pushed beyond endurance, riot. And of course he’s a victim of the condition he has identified.*

Our Iraqi men arrive, first one, then the other two together. Hugs for Patricia, warm handshakes for me.
They tell us about the extra room searches last night. Yes, they knew of the death of the man. Yes, they knew many of the detainees who had escaped. Why did you choose not to join them? The reply was “No, I would never do that. I came here to be free, but not that way.” Talk moves on to the Mass that did not happen yesterday because the priest did not arrive. One is an ordained deacon and he said with obvious pleasure “Sr Mary asked me to read the Gospel and we sang some songs.” The service for Christians of whatever denomination was held under the awning where we were sitting. Other people visiting or being visited may not have wanted to join in, a point of discomfort. There is a prayer room but it is only available to detainees and staff, not to visitors.

Patricia apologises that she has no olives as we were unsure if we would be given access today. The phone cards are gratefully received as they begin to tell me more. “I was refused refugee status. I have been here for two years and two months.” ” I have not seen my wife and children for over six years.” “I know I came here without applying first. I paid the people smugglers US$8000 because all I could do was to get away.” “Australia cannot send us back to Iraq because the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has said this would probably be a death sentence.” “So we are left here, not knowing what will become of us.”

The youngest man is very quiet. His back is sore and he has not been sleeping well. He looks across the open space to a tall red stand of floodlights, recently arrived.

At the table nearby, the doctor is talking with two children who have joined the group.

A voice over the loudspeaker announces the end of visiting time. What can I say to them? That I will come again? Not easily. That I feel a sense of shame about what is happening in detention centres in Australia? That I will remember to pray for them because now I know their names and can picture their faces? I tell them both these things. Hugs all round. As we move towards our separate paths, ours into neighbourhood Villawood and theirs through two more high wire fences and gates, Patricia asks Dr Sultan if the children, a boy of 11 and his sister of 7, have been here for long. No, he says, they have just arrived from Port Hedland where their parents are both held in prison. Their uncle is at Villawood. He asks if she can arrange for some Arabic speaking children to come and visit them. We were pleased to learn that one of their visitors was a woman from Justice for Children.

As we stand in the courtyard waiting for the taxi back to Chester Hill Railway station I look again at the small circular garden beds and realise the irony of the name of the Impatiens flowers. The patience and faith I had seen in the past hour would have been enough to fill the courtyard with blooms if those qualities were also the names of flowers.

There is plenty of time on the way home to ponder. I fully support the need for a formal process to respond to refugees arriving on our shores. Common sense requires that for health and safety reasons there be firm checks in place. But so much reaction is based on fear and so many people hold strong views without ever having spoken to a refugee.

What about those people waiting in refugee camps for long periods, for years, to be given refugee status? Maybe this is an issue because the total number we accept is so few. Maybe if we increased the number of off-shore refugees then the waiting time would be much less.

What about the criminals who want to hide here?
Every country and culture has a criminal element and some criminals will try to come. Do we punish the vast majority of suffering people because of this?

Should we accept people who have come into our country ‘the wrong way’?
I recall the words of Elizabeth Ferris, from the World Council of Churches, and recently in Canberra to meet with Mr Ruddock. Elizabeth said there are no queues in many countries because there is no Embassy or High Commission in which to join a queue. A recent UNHCR picture shows people in a flimsy boat at sea with the words If they survive they are refugees.

Gillian Hunt
30 July 2001

* Dr Sultan also co-authored a paper which was published in the Medical Journal of Australia: see Psychological disturbances in asylum seekers held in long term detention by Aamer Sultan and Kevin O’Sullivan; MJA (2001; 175: 593-596)