Report and Reflections on Baxter Detention Centre Visits

Early 2003
by Jane Keogh, Refugee Action Committee, Canberra

In 2002, upset by the stories I was hearing about our detention centres and by the government lies and cruelty over the Tampa and SIEV X, I began communicating with people in Curtin and Woomera detention centres. When Baxter opened, some of my new friends were sent there, and I became involved in organising a project to send parcels to all detainees over the Christmas period. By the end of the year, I knew I had to visit Baxter myself, and offer in person both apology and friendship to people I saw as victims of Australia’s inhumanity to those whose only crime was to come to Australia and ask for help and safety from persecution.

I made seven visits of approximately two hours each over my three days at Baxter, plus an extra visit just to process the gifts and supplies I had brought for different people.

Getting In

It was quite daunting each time to get in – six electronically controlled doors to go through, full escort, metal clip wrist band you can’t take off, invisible ink stamp that is checked again when it glows under a special light as you leave, empty pockets, locker for belongings, making full written details of 3 ID items scrutinized letter by letter each time. (I was tempted to make a mistake on the middle letter of my driver’s license on the eight visits just to prove how scrupulous they were in checking!) You have to fill out long forms again for any items you want to bring in with you. These go through X-rays, as at airports, and some items are taken out for extra scrutiny.

I was quite impressed at the way they looked so carefully at the clear plastic bag of peaches and grapes I took in one day. My imagination was going wild conjuring up all the things you could actually smuggle in inside a grape or peach! Unfortunately one of the recipients of my grapes was with Red Cross when the property was given out (the day after I left it) and so by the third day in the heat the fruit had gone off.

I took in a 6 cm tube of Clearasil Pimple Cream one day because someone had asked me for some the previous day. It was rejected because it had traces of ethanol in it – alcohol! I smilingly suggested that surely they can’t get drunk on that much alcohol but they said it was just regulations! Likewise the sorbolene-based hand cream had another prohibited ingredient! I asked for a copy of the list they looked up to check against the listed ingredients in each face cream tube I took in, but they told me they couldn’t give me one. I learned later that some ingredients are banned even in minute doses because they can be used to make a fire. Even so, the vision of someone making a fire with a small tube of Clearasil pimple cream is a bit much to imagine.

To visit, you have to wear closed in shoes, and the only thing you are allowed to take in is a pen. If you want paper once you are there, they will give you a sheet.

On average it took half an hour to get in, from the time you pressed the buzzer and gave your name and business at the first gate. Your details are already on their computers, because you have to complete forms, apply to visit and receive permission at least three days in advance. (In reality you need to apply weeks ahead to be sure of getting the approvals in time.) Sometimes you are left standing for ages in the sun, in the wire cage between the first and second electronically controlled gates. I kept wondering what would happen if there was a fire while we were in there. Twice we were nearly an hour in the sun at the first door because they had “a situation” inside! Once in the visiting room you waited another 15-20 minutes until the people you were visiting got there. They have to go through eight doors, I believe, and they are brought in a van – not allowed to do the two minute walk!

Twenty eight detainees and a maximum of thirteen visitors are allowed at any time in the visitors’ centre and each visitor can ask to see a maximum of four people. There are about 235 people in detention at present, so there are times when some must miss out on visitors who come a long way. Applying for a visit is a long process, entailing special forms to be submitted and approved at least seventy two hours in advance, with always the possibility that the visit will be cancelled for some reason when you arrive. If there is a problem with one or two people inside, it is not uncommon for all detainees to suffer the consequences and miss things like visits. At the time of writing there are a group of people there deprived of phone, visitors, newspapers, TV, and left in a small compound with little room for exercise. What was their crime? A woman in the family compound told me it seemed to be a pattern that newcomers were put in this compound now for a while before being transferred to another compound.

“I don’t know why but I think it is to show what will happen to them if they do not do what ACM want. ACM show they can do anything to you.”

Two things I noticed about the interactions between the visitors and the guards each day. First, everyone without exception was very friendly to the guards. No-one ever complained about the long waits, the scrupulous scrutiny or the endless paperwork. Second, the guards were very friendly to the visitors. There was quite a lot of chatter and humour on the journeys in and out. The detainees told us that certainly those particular guards were fair in their dealings with them, unlike some others who seem to delight in taunting and degrading the detainees, particularly any that have been labelled “troublemakers” because “they have made a complaint some time”. The names of the various guards and their records of fairness or injustice and violence, emotional as well as physical, are now becoming known and recorded by various refugee supporters so in the future it is not impossible there can be some action taken either in Australian or international courts to redress the injustices. The government is obviously aware of the possibly of future legal action because in its deal package for those who will go home “voluntarily” there is a clause they must sign guaranteeing not to pursue action for “trauma and torture ” damage experienced in Australia. If they don’t sign this they do not receive the $2000 incentive to assist their return.

The Visit

The visiting room is as big as a classroom, and has tables, chairs, tea making facilities and an impressive looking drink machine. Unfortunately, neither you nor the detainees are allowed to use this machine or to have any coins with you! It is probably there because all five star hotels have such things! There is a grassed area with a large children’s play station. There are cameras watching you all the time, inside and outside, and a guard sits and watches you from behind a glass partition while you are visiting. Some people sit alone with their visitors but others join up together, as detainees can chat also with their friends from other compounds. A few times I was part of some simple improvised hand movement games with older children and adults around a table, and it was good to hear and be part of the laughter.

Coming to the visitors’ centre is the only chance detainees get to see people from compounds other than their own. People are eager to see their friends from inside as well as outside during the visits. Otherwise, an occasional short visit to another compound has to be applied for in writing, and there are body searches before and after. Likewise for visits to the Gym.

Every visit, there were both tears and laughter at different times. One man told me:

“You see us all here looking happy and being cheerful with our visitors. We are grateful that visitors come. Some come a long way and we try to show our best face. But everyone here is sad inside their hearts. They have heavy problems and they cry inside and cannot sleep. They have big question to ask themselves- do I stay here with this heavy bullet to my heart or do I go home and meet other kind of bullet to my heart?”

In some instances people in the visiting room seem to mostly try for a light and easier time where problems can be forgotten and they can find things to laugh about. However usually even then the worries or the practical needs intervene. Some need to talk over their case and ask for help in getting something ready for their lawyer, or often “how can I get to contact my lawyer?” is the question. They told me staff are not allowed to help people find a lawyer and one person told the story of someone with very little English asking a guard how he could find a lawyer and being presented with a huge phone book.

I saw one visitor helping a couple prepare their story for their legal appeal. They had lost their first appeal because their lawyer had not lodged it within the twenty eight days. Another story I heard was that one family had lost an appeal because the government argued that the Christian religious church group they had converted to “did not exist”! Their lawyer said he could not find any evidence for them, and offered no proof for their case. Apparently the Australian visitors helping him found it took them five minutes and one Google search to bring up one thousand references to this group on the internet!

Sometimes people were a bit emotional on the way out – particularly a large family from Sydney, who were visiting an elderly sister and aunts inside who they know will probably be sent back to Afghanistan soon, and others of us when it came to our last visit. It is so far away, and most people cannot afford either the money or the time to visit often. The two detainees of this family are the last of their family to be in Afghanistan – the rest have all been living in Australia as citizens for years, but these three have been rejected four times, possibly because of their ages. The family is prepared to sponsor them at no cost to the government, but still they cannot come.

Partings were often far from easy. Most moving for me was the sight, one day, of a young Australian married couple in their thirties and an attractive couple about the same age, the woman pregnant, standing close in a circle arms around each other – heads bowed for a few minute as if in silent prayer – then turning and walking their separate ways with no words spoken.

So many of those who are rejected as “not genuine refugees” have either not been able to afford a lawyer, or have not really been able to prepare their case, having only limited phone access to a lawyer, or not being able to explain well because of language difficulties. Some by chance or the intervention of supporters get good lawyers working pro bono. It is rare for most detainees to ever see their lawyer – most have an occasional phone conversation. For a $5 fee, detainees can send their lawyers a fax inside office hours. It is a myth that the government provides lawyers for appeals. Many detainees are trying to make money to pay their lawyers’ fees, working for one dollar an hour with available work rostered out among those who want it.

A word about “not genuine refugees”. There are some people in detention who will not qualify for refugee status. Yet there is no doubt they have been persecuted and are at risk of their lives if they are returned. A young man in Nauru writes of many years of narrow escapes from death. He gives details of the commanders’ names and places and details of killings. It seems he does not qualify, not because they do not believe him but because the reason he was persecuted was simply that in standing up for human rights he lost favour with his own group that was becoming more extremist. This apparently does not fit the narrow definition of those who qualify for refugee status. Who is to save this boy? Other families had members killed by unending war and children killed from preventable disease and fled to save the lives of their children. Yet these are clearly case of “economic refugees” and so do not qualify! When Mr Ruddock speaks so disparagingly of these “not genuine refugees” these are the people he speaks of. We may not be obliged legally to give them asylum but surely we do a grave injustice in labelling them as “illegals” and treating them, children and adults alike as criminals? And what is legal is not to be confused with what is the humane and moral response. It may be legal to send them back to watch their children die but it is scarcely human.

Some Stories

Here, to protect identities, I have generalized some of the stories I heard on my visit and in letters.

One young twenty-four-year-old girl I met was the only practicing Christian member of her family. In this she was breaking the law. Some Christians told me about losing their jobs and spending time in prison. If one person is a Christian, it not uncommon for other members of his family to be persecuted also. I have heard of Iranians who have returned “voluntarily” and faced rejection by their families and were forced to flee again and now are making their way to Pakistan to fight over scarce resources to stay alive. One person told me:

“If my family do not denounce me for being Christian they also be persecuted. So I have to leave.”

To hear their stories, it is hard to understand how they could have been judged to be not genuine refugees. Religious persecution in Iran is a matter of public record. Government activities against Christians in Iran would fit the dictionary and historical definitions of persecution in most countries. It was experienced enough as persecution by so many that they risked their lives to escape. Yet in Australia our government has decided that what these people have experienced is “harassment” and not persecution and so their claims for asylum are rejected. Their stories of religious persecution are all similar and heart rending. Religious persecution is covered in the UN definition or who is a refugee and the question must be asked: Why is religious persecution so much less accepted than other types of persecution? If we don’t give asylum to Mandeans, Christians and other minority religious groups do we leave them with any option but to endure continued persecution?

The stories of persecution of Mandeans have been verified internationally and yet they have fallen on deaf ears of the Minister, Phillip Ruddock, who criticized these asylum seekers for “sitting on their hands, refusing to go back,” and was trying to do a deal to force or trade-bribe Iran to take back those who will not go voluntarily. (To February 2003 Iran, Syria and Afghanistan will only take back those who sign up voluntarily. Syria will take some Iraqis, but will only give a three month visa.) Ruddock has just now announced he has done a deal with Iran to forcibly return people to this extremely vicious regime. Looking at the fine print there seems to be no timeline accepted and so only a vague arrangement. Given other techniques the government has used to frighten people into returning the question has to be asked: ” Has Iran agreed definitely to take anyone back?” or is it rather that Iran has agreed for the government to say this in such a vague unbinding way to help the government put more fear into Iranians and make them go voluntarily? This may have worked with some but the Iranians I talked to have waved it aside, telling me:

“This is just bluff. We are not fools. We know the government does not want us and tries to scare us with lies.”

What exactly has the government promised the Iranian government in return for their co-operation?

The stories of Moslem Iranians and Iraqis usually centre around some individual persecution by governments whose lack of respect for human rights is well documented. Iran is particularly harsh, and they even have “hanging trucks” – mobile trucks which move from place to place and hang people in public from the back of the truck. Recently, a teenager was condemned to hang for getting drunk a third time. If you cross someone in authority, you can pay a heavy price because you have no recourse to a legal system or a just hearing. If you are of a minority group like the Kurds, or the Hazaras from Afghanistan, you may never have had any citizen rights: never been allowed to buy a house or land, or to hold certain jobs, or to have your children educated. If you belong to the wrong political party, you could be imprisoned without trial, and hanged or shot. We have all heard Howard’s vivid descriptions of the acid baths and eye gouging carried out by Sadam. Yet he wants to send people back to this? Is there any limit to the government’s hypocrisy?

As I write there are people in Baxter who are grieving deeply and inconsolably for family members they have just heard through the Red Cross, have been killed. Of the three I know of, one had his family killed by the Taliban, one by recent US bombing to target the Taliban and the third by member of the current ruling parties under whose leadership the country is supposed to be “safe”. And at the same time as these people receive the news of family deaths DIMIA officials still apply pressure on them to return home. They have been told that if the don’t return voluntarily to Afghanistan they will deport them forcibly because their country is safe so they are not genuine refugees. I myself know from following on the internet how extremely dangerous it is in most parts of Afghanistan and I wonder how any government can justify lying to people who have no access to the real truth. With war on Iraq promised by the governments of USA and Australia I guess there is a need to pretend that the last one waged left the people better off. The evidence is mounting day by day that after the US bombing comes chaos and continued persecution.

A recent letter from a young man in Nauru is an example of the trauma many experience:

” If I go home still the same. My father was good commander and he made the bad thing of trying to open a school and have all children a pair of clothes and have the people not treated aggressively. So for this they accuse my father of trying to lead people against Islamic way. This not so. Yet they say this and for this kill my father’s friends and try many times kill my father. Still same now in Afghanistan. Still killing and ambush. Still same accuse you if you speak the human rights. All my life I have hide and run, fear for my father and my life. Why now I treated like criminal? I seventeen now. Not right for me seventeen and be lock up and treat bad.”

One young Hazara Afghani wrote me his story. Born into a Northern Alliance family, but not believing in the strict fundamentalism within the Hizb-e-islami and the brutal Mr Hekmatyar, his family struggled to prevent the brutality and aggression against the people. He wrote two pages of details about ambushes, the killings of family members and friends, his father’s narrow escape from being killed and subsequent “house arrest”, the torture and persecution of his family, and moving from one part of the country to another. Then escape to a neighbouring country, a fresh start and then further persecution because his father again stood up to human rights. Some of the extremists they had fled from came after them, and again they were persecuted in an attempt to make them tell what they did not know – where their father was! Finally, the family split up, and the young man and his mother moved to a new place where they hoped to escape their troubles. But even there they were not free, and this young man became the object of suspicion again:

“We changed and rent our home somewhere else but I couldn’t move freely I always moved and walked silently and took care of my self and they were following to kill me and my mother observed that I should escape.”

So after years of hiding and narrowly escaping death this young man now finds himself in detention, told he is not a “genuine refugee” because his country is “safe” now. Yet it was not even the Taliban who persecuted this particular family, but rather some of the groups who are now ruling or fighting over the ruling of his country.

Some people are afraid to return home believing they will be killed or imprisoned. The prisons in these countries can be death sentences in themselves. In Iraq, for example, you will not have access to clean water, and the food given would be minimal. If you are lucky, you may find some way to bribe someone to get water in to you occasionally. You can be picked up and tortured just for being a Kurd. And if you are hanged afterwards, your family will be called in to collect your body – but they will be forbidden to give you a proper burial or to tell anyone what has happened, under threat that they might suffer the same fate.

Your child might have been one of the over 30,000 plus children in Iraq who have died of malnutrition or preventable illness since the imposed trade embargo. (UNHCR and Amnesty bot estimate over a million children have died.) In Afghanistan, you may have been imprisoned or lashed for not wearing your head dress and even now, with the new “safe” regime women are daily being imprisoned in some areas for such offences. In February under the “safe” regime legal punishments still include stoning for adulterers, cable TV has just been outlawed, the chief justice is trying to ban co-education and in the western province men have been banned from teaching female students. You may live in the countryside and face possible death each day from one of the ten million land mines dotting the area – and at least one member of your family will have lost a limb or his life from a land mine. The new government put in place by the UN is no match for the warlords still fighting for control over many areas of Afghanistan. Al Quaeda and Taliban surround villages and continue their killing sprees in most parts of the country. The US is still dropping its bombs. In spite of government protestations there is actually no such thing as safety in today’s Afghanistan.

Children and others relate tales of imprisonment and torture, and of seeing family members killed, just for speaking out in opposition to the government. Some had tried to create better conditions. Some found themselves daily paying exorbitant bribes just to keep a roof over their heads. I also know some of the ways and costs of getting water to someone in an Iraqi prison. (No, Sadam has not freed everyone from prison; his political enemies or those of the persecuted minorities are still languishing).

Some of those in detention have experienced deep trauma for years before getting to our “five star hotels” hidden away from sight. Many have been on the run, in hiding, afraid of betrayal and unable to trust.

One young Kurdish man I know had escaped from capture and torture at 17 years of age. The government hanged this thirty year old cousin, a father of two young children, accusing him of spying, and then phoned the family to come and pick up his body. And then they started to harass and torture my friend and his brothers. The physical scars he bears are acid burns on his body and broken bones in his face and the psychological scars of seeing family killed, separation from loved ones, and a life time of harassment and denial of human rights are just as real. This friend is now out of detention and carries every day and night the extra burden of uncertainty about his future and whether he will be returned to face his torturers again in the future.

The Australian practice of giving only temporary visas to proven genuine refugees flies in the face of all the evidence and experience of medical knowledge of the effects of trauma. People can not deal with and move on from their trauma until they feel safe and no-one can feel safe with the real threat of deportation back to the place of their persecution hanging over them. After his escape from captivity my friend lived in hiding in the wilderness for eight months, living only on fish and on rabbits he caught with a sling shot. He made fire with stones, and used the bark of trees to wash his body and clean his teeth. Yet he speaks of this time as the most worry free time of his life – the only time he was not hassled regularly by the government for being a member of a persecuted minority group. Friends here in Australia helped raise money to send back and get his father and brothers released from prison and they now live in hiding away from the cities but still not free to work or live as citizens. His mother made a rare phone call to him just this week for the specific purpose of passing on her last messages and advice and love to him before the war comes and claims their lives. She reported hearing US planes flying in their area over the past week and she knows that the last time there was US bombing their area was not spared and may lives were lost.

Some of the families have been victims of persecution for generations, and escaped here to try to find some life for their children apart from being pawns in the armies of foreign powers. A Palestinian family, who had lived without rights in Syria for many years, finally risked their lives to make the trip on a leaky boat to Australia. They wanted a life for their children. They were afraid for their son, a very gifted sensitive child, self-taught for lack of schooling in recent years. Imagine the parents’ horror at the thought of him being conscripted into the army and brainwashed into violence at a very early age. If they return this is his certain fate. As Palestinians, they have no rights as citizens, no birth certificate or papers from Syria, but they are good enough to be conscripted to be in the front lines, fighting for causes they do not believe in and against people just like themselves. This family could be returned to Syria where they all face four years in prison for leaving the country illegally. In this prison people are confined to airless cells less than 2m x 2m and are taken out, lined up against a wall and hosed down for their weekly wash. The father would gladly suffer this if it would save his children, but now he faces this and still his children are not saved. He is scared; scared he cannot endure it and scared for his family.

Another professional man in his late thirties breaks down, gasps for breath, and cannot continue with the visit at the thought of what happened to him before he escaped to Australia, and what might even now be happening to his wife and children still back home. He was politically involved, working against the regime, first from inside his country and then from outside. Even outside his country his government found him and threatened his family. He believes they may be imprisoned, maybe tortured, like he was for over two months, if his government knows he is in Australia. For this reason he did not tell his whole story when he first arrived, unsure of the interpreter and even of our government officials after a lifetime of not being able to trust anyone. Finally he has come to trust his lawyers but the time period for his appeal has now passed and he may have lost any chance of asylum. The government of his country has long held his family’s welfare as ransom, and escape was the only alternative to cooperation with a cruel and unjust regime. But how can he prove his case? Those who have been known to be politically active are usually the first ones given refugee status under international human rights conventions. If such persons are sent back home or sent to a country that will deport them back home they face certain imprisonment, torture and death. But the Australian government has chosen not to believe him, and government amendments to our law cut him out of further appeals processes. What now can happen to him? Must he stay forever in detention, his health failing and his suicidal tendencies and attempts growing? Do we leave him forever to sleepless nights of despair and anguish? His friends and I have sat with him in visits and long phone calls when images of past and future torture come into his mind. We could not possibly doubt the reality of his experience.

As I listened to the stories of so many in detention, and heard the anguish and indecision about whether they could endure any more of this Australian torture, or whether they could face again the persecution back home, my whole being was filled with outrage that my own country, Australia, could close its heart and mind to these fellow human beings. Our leaders are guilty of crimes against humanity in their deliberate policy of hiding these people away and depersonalizing them so ordinary Australians see them only as “queue jumpers” or “illegals” – in spite of the fact there are no queues in their home countries, and it is quite legal (under the international convention that Australia not only signed but was instrumental in drawing up in the 1950s) for persecuted people to seek safety and asylum in another country. In fifty years we have moved from being a world leader in promoting human rights to being the world leader in denying the most desperate people these same rights.

The Issue of Medical Help

The lack of appropriate medical help is seen by detainees as a particularly cruel injustice. Many suffer from Post Traumatic S tress Disorder which affects both body and mind. Panadol, “drink water,” and maybe wait for next week to see the doctor is the usual prescription. One person told me:

“They tell you when you are sick. If you say you are sick they tell you you are not.”

One woman told me of the worry she felt when she was pregnant because of her lack of trust in the medical treatment and advice she received. She had serious back pain for weeks early in the pregnancy, and worried herself sick thinking something was wrong. She had to wait three weeks for the pain to go. This is her second pregnancy in detention. The first time she lost the baby close to three months. She thinks now that her problems resulted from the anaesthetic given her by the dentist and by the stress of her court appeal. It is very scary for people when they are ill or pregnant not being able to get good advice from a doctor or have access to information about what is and is not safe practice during pregnancy.

Tooth ache is a particularly common problem; sometimes the pain comes as part of trauma symptoms. The remedy once you actually get to a dentist is to have the tooth taken out, and there are a few detainees who have lost several teeth this way and still have the pain. Many others have teeth taken out, because by the time they finally get to the dentist, it is too late to fix them. It is the same with eye problems and one detainee told me he had asked to have his eyes attended to and had been told the government has no money for such things but if you have money yourself you can get it done.

A detainee’s medical condition often has to get very serious before any help arrives. One night earlier in the year, a friend of mine was on the phone to a compound. The guard was just handing her over to a detainee we both communicate with, when there was an emergency and she heard it all in the background. Calls for a stretcher, an ambulance, frantic activity and an abrupt hang-up with the words “X cannot come to the phone just now his wife is very ill”. Later I heard the story. She had severe pain over several days, and in spite of great worry, a much distended stomach and acute pain she was still being told to take panadol and water. It had got too much for our friend so one day he exploded, partly in frustration and partly thinking he had to do something drastic to get help. He screamed and shouted, demanding attention for her. This resulted in him being forcibly restrained by guards who started to take him to the isolation wing. He saw it would do no good for his wife and, in fact, would prevent him being with her in her pain, so he stopped and calmed down and escaped isolation. She received no help, and two days later she collapsed unconscious and had to be taken to hospital, where she was kept for days for treatment. Some months later she still suffers and has been back to hospital for a short stay. She has been told she needs an operation but that the government cannot take on the expense of such surgery.

I also know of two different men who have had broken limbs left untreated for weeks before finally being attended to.

Another young friend of mine has been vomiting blood for nearly a year now and is surviving on a diet of small amounts of ice-cream and jelly. He has been told he had an ulcer and he is given stematil. He was given some other drug but he does not know what it is and is wary about taking it. He worried he might have cancer and is angry there are so few doctors to go around all the people in Baxter who are ill. Where else in Australia or in the civilized world would someone go so long with these symptoms, no improvement and no-one to help him understand what he has or why it isn’t getting better. Post Traumatic Stress disorder carries with it many severe physical symptoms that do not have an organic base. The only cure is the end to the trauma. How can we allow a young man to continue to vomit blood and be unable to eat properly for a year and no-one properly diagnoses his condition or provides the explanation and support for his moving to health. There is scarcely one person in detention who has not been seriously affected by his or her treatment. How many will carry life-long illness caused by time and treatment in Australian detention centres?

Some of the incidences of violence we hear about in detention are about pain and suffering that is not attended to. A young man told me on the phone about his frustration on account of his toothache. He had severe pain one day and there was no-one he could go to for help. The only thing he had been given was panadol and this proved useless. “Three hundred and thirty people here and no-one to go to get help.” he said. He told me he knew he had to do something bad so he could get attention so he threw a chair through a window and was carted off to isolation for some hours. In his years in detention he had never given trouble to the guards before but he had learnt how the system has to be played. When he was let out of “management” he was given stronger pain relief. He said to me:

“I say to guard ever I or other in this compound in pain again and not get help I throw everything and break everything and give you much trouble”.

I expressed some surprise that this tactic might work but he was very sure and told me of how some people resort to self harm just because it is the only way to get attention when they are desperate.

One of the most poignant moments I experienced was when a three year old curly haired child who could barely speak, interrupted my conversation with his father with the words:

“guards take my mummy”

His mother has suffered severe psychological disturbance and has not spoken for months. She had to go to hospital at one time in her pregnancy, and was very stressed to have up to eight guards in her room with her, watching her every move. She could not even change her clothes or go to the toilet in privacy. Then, for some reason, while she and her family were walking along with four guards, another four guards arrived and they were taken by force: her husband was handcuffed while guards picked her up by both legs and arms. All this in front of the children. I believe the story was widely reported in the press, but I had not heard it before and, because of the father’s limited English, I was not able to piece it all together even though he tried to tell it all to me. It is all a cause of great distress to him. His wife will not eat any food that comes from the guards now, and he is trying to get money to buy things from the canteen for her. She will not leave her room; she stayed there with her four-month-old baby while her husband and two toddlers were visiting with me. He would like her to be on medication, but she won’t take it from the staff. She would take it from him, he says, but the rules do not allow this – and so she continues to live in this disturbed state, and her husband and children try to cope each day. To make matters worse the DIMIA manager seems to make anyone who has talked to the media the object of his own special attention.

The sadness and anguish of parents who are separated from their children is quite distressing to witness. One man’s wife and very young children were allowed out into the community on bridging visas, but he had to stay. His lawyer was not allowed to be with him as the children were escorted away, so there was no-one to help calm and reassure him. He cried uncontrollably, and the next day he was physically bowed down and in great distress. I talked with him, assuring him his family was in good hands, and a few of the other detainees offered to try to help him get some work in the kitchen to help take his mind off his suffering. He knows it is best for his children. People who know him well tell me what a gentle good man he is. Unfortunately their efforts to get him some work did not succeed but he has support both inside and outside detention and is coping with his grief better some days than others.

During my visit I heard that two children were currently in isolation. As a teacher this was particularly distressing to me, as no child should ever be shut away like this. I hope it is not true. We know from many studies how much damage this can do. As I went to sleep after my visits one day, I found myself wondering about them, and what they could have done to deserve this fate. I heard that in “management” – where people are put if they are considered to be troublemakers – the air-conditioning has been turned on at night and turned off during the day. I wondered if the same thing happens for these children.

As I update this report, the news of Fatima, a refugee on Christmas Island, is known. Her extreme high blood pressure was not treated and she eventually died in a mainland hospital. Her husband and children were brought there to be with her. The only person the family know in Australia rushed to the hospital to be with her friend in his grief. She was refused permission to speak with him. He was not even allowed to come to the door of the room to see her. And so he grieved, with eight enemy guards standing around him, and not one friendly face. And then, before the burial, he and his family were returned to Christmas Island. Finally they made the long long journey home to a village which may or may not be still standing and to no house or means of survival available to them. Who could believe such inhumanity in a time of crisis? Who can believe that this is Australia?

The Single Men’s Compounds

My main reason for visiting Baxter was to see several young single men with whom I had been communicating for the past few months. The largest number of asylum seekers is young single men aged between eighteen and thirty. One mother told me, “Many families try to send their young boys away so they are not in the front line in fighting. If all cannot afford to come the young boys are sent.” To me, the young men seem most abandoned and vulnerable. Families have each other, and also have more visitors. Until you are eighteen you can attend classes and have a go on the school computer at least for short times, and you can also join in the sporting activities. Turning eighteen seems a sentence to endless boredom with nothing to do all day. There are people in detention who have spent three years like this. They are denied opportunities to study or to work, to play competitive sport, to watch TV – except for some poor reception ABC TV in the common room – to visit friends in other compounds except occasionally, to record music, to have any choice of food, to enjoy female company. And they have no end date for this sentence or anything to hope for. Many do not know whether their family is alive or dead, and most are still suffering the grief of having seen family members killed. Some watched family members die in the SIEV X shipwreck. One man has a wife and children in Sydney, but has not seen them for over two years now. He asks why he cannot be put in detention in Villawood and occasionally see his children.

The management of a detention centre can be a deciding factor in how policies are carried out. The same rules can be applied with or without humanity. Unfortunately when the name of the management was mentioned with or by anyone I met from Baxter there was not one good word said in relation to current management. Many spoke of their fears, of feeling intimidated. People in power can give others the impression they have even more power than is real and I think it is for this reason that some attributed perceived threats against them by management as instrumental in adversely affecting their chances with the tribunal and courts. I question whether this type of power exists but nevertheless the impression can be given that it does and people can live under a cloud of felt intimidation. No-one wanted to have their names linked with a complaint or story they had to tell me about management because they said anyone who speaks to the media or makes a complaint can be particularly targeted. History will no doubt record the truth of these perceptions. It is one of the greatest injustices of our detentions system that there is no process for addressing grievances. I asked whether there was an ombudsman and the group I was with laughed:

“Yes, they told me there is one. He was here last week doing training sessions with ACM guards. You think we are fools? Ombudsman is a joke. When we go to ombudsman he just tells he does not believe us. What can we do? “

Some guards seem to make it their business to try to aggravate the men. Recently I read the words of a young man who told how he cried and could not eat for two days for the shame and humiliation of being forced outside, handcuffed and made to sit in the hot sun for hours, and of being strip searched in front of others. An Australian friend shared with me a letter she received from a young man deeply affected by the humiliations imposed at the minister’s orders after the fires. His words sum up the feelings expressed by many of the men I have communicated with:

“I have faced a lot of bad things in detention. I never ever used hand cuffs in my whole life. When they put me in hand cuffs and sit me under the hot sun I cried, I can’t control myself, after that strip search in front of two officers. It is a very shameful thing for me; I cannot eat for two days. I thought about those two things (handcuffs and strip search) they have not any respect. I don’t know why they treat us so bad; maybe we are not human because we are not white. “

During my visit I was not allowed to see any of my friends from the single men’s compounds. They were still being punished because of the fires, although the majority of them were more victims than anything and had suffered from smoke inhalation. A few had lost their possessions, including photos. Not one of the men I talked to or write to was in favour of the fires, but all were understanding of how some in their position might find themselves doing something desperate. Many have been in detention for three or four years now. Many are disturbed from their torture and persecution. One of my regular letter writing friends has been waiting since July for a response from his last appeal, and all this time has heard no word about it. They have nothing to do but worry, and become more and more depressed and hopeless. They have nothing to lose, either. The miracle to me is that so many retain their sanity and their concern for others. Of course there are all the petty jealousies and arguments that come when people live closely together, and some retain distrust of other groups or are always fearful that some other detainees might either be spying for the guards of worse still will send back information about them to Sadam or other oppressive governments. Yet there exists a real spirit of mutual care among many detainees, and gratitude for any support. I have found all those I communicate with slow to make their needs known until they know you well. You ask them what you can send them and it is a long time before they give you any answer. What they really want of course, we can’t give them – their freedom.

Christmas and the end of Eid are often a time of heightened loneliness for those who have lost family, and it is the same in detention. Then to make matters worse, there came the article in the Telegraph saying they were living in “five star” accommodation. Many were quite distressed by this article, and started asking the guards for the things they were supposed to have. Then came the first fires, which started in rooms the detainees have no access to – they were most certainly started as a result of electrical faults in the air-conditioning, which was known to spark in the high winds they so often have at Baxter. The media and people like Darryl Williams, who should know better, came out with condemnation well before here was any enquiry or proof.

“They blame us and tell lies whatever we do. It makes no difference if we are good or bad”

. . . the detainees say. Not only were they condemned without proof, but the non-violent protest carried out in White 1 compound was met with violence and tear gas. Those whose eyes were badly affected and who suffered other symptoms were denied access to medication the next day. With treatment like this, what is surprising is not that a few people lit fires, but that the huge majority did not resort to violence and managed to stay calm.

People from other compounds told me how the single men had been treated after New Year. They had been denied phone calls or any contact with people outside their own compound. The beds, mattresses, chairs and mirrors have been removed from their rooms. The furniture in the recreation room and their common washing machine has been taken away. Many suffer sleeping disorders and various illnesses from their trauma, and further sleep deprivation is nothing but torture. One person told me five years in prison for arson would be better than five years in Baxter under Greg Wallis’ and Philip Ruddock’s regime.

At a recent meeting of compound delegates with ACM and DIMIA people, delegates asked for an end to this cruelty. They were told that these conditions were in place at the direct order of the Minister. One of the women asked why the insect screens had been removed from one of the family compounds, and she was told that it was because all the compounds were to be the same. Another delegate asked why guards were deliberately harassing detainees. An example given was the continual questioning of persons who were sitting smoking, asking how the cigarettes were lit. Since lighters similar to those in cars are provided in the walls, the question is nothing but harassment. The prisoners believe there is a deliberate campaign to incite already stressed and anxious people to protest and give the guards the excuse to respond with violence. The Minister seems determined to make life as harsh as he can get away with, in an effort to wear down spirits, and have the men make the choice to return home voluntarily even though they face persecution in their home countries. This is proving somewhat successful, and every week now more are leaving for Iran or Afghanistan, Pakistan or Syria.

A particularly cruel and degrading practice, especially in use since the fires, is the strip searching. This has been practiced in some camps over the past two years, even on boys of fifteen and sixteen years. They are grabbed by two guards and forced to bend over, to part their cheeks, and go through a process of presenting every part of their body for inspection. The cameras are there too. The detainees were too embarrassed to bring this subject up with me, but one explained when asked, and told me the reason for this is “humiliation”.

The single men in White Compound have become the particular target of a campaign of degradation and punishment since the fires. I head some stories about this while I was in Baxter, but have heard more since I returned and the men have been allowed to write. Their letters tell of extreme depression – they are being worn down by the sheer intensity of the punishment. And yet, the fires were not started in this compound, and none of the men did any violence to property or guards. Why, I asked, are they targeted? They told me it is because of the peaceful protest they made after the fires, when they were told they would have all their “privileges” taken away and would be forcibly deported if they did not go peacefully.

When every person was presented with a letter on New Year’s Eve saying they were to pack and be ready to be deported, some – who had been asking to go for some time – used this to demonstrate their position. A group packed their bags and lined up outside the office. Many others joined them. They sat peacefully in their compound area and, they told me:

“We sang, like at the football, ‘We Want Freedom’. We did not do violence. We were in our own compound, a place where we are allowed to be. But about fifty guards came in riot gear and sprayed tear gas into our faces. We could not sleep, our eyes were so hurting. The next day we asked for some medication for our eyes but they said no. Since then they punish us. They take our mattresses, everything except four walls they take. We cannot sit quiet without them come up to us to demand something or try make us angry. We cannot play billiards; we have no newspapers, no phone, no visits, no cricket ball. My family in Iran is sick and they worry about me and I cannot phone them, tell them I am OK.”

Another wrote to his friend:

“One day was very bad. On 4th January early in the morning crowd of guards came in riot gear again and dragged the men out of their beds, some had no clothes on and were not allowed to dress. Then they had to sit outside for hours like this. This very shame for us.”

Over a month after the fires the men in White Compound and fourteen other men, isolated and put in a new compound, were still subject to this extreme punishment. And yet they are innocent of lighting fires or of any violence or damage. One man responded to a staff member recently, saying “I am not an animal” – the staff member replied, “You are lower than an animal”. Another detainee responded to a taunt with the words “F*** off”. For this he was put in isolation for days.

The detainees are giving their friends the names of these guards now, and I hear some refugee groups have begun to compile records, building up profiles of various guards and differentiating those who seem to treat people with respect and those who seem to go out of their way to taunt and goad and degrade people. The number of letters now being saved, some for publication in books, and others kept to be part of such records as the national Library archives, is growing every day. One refugee group is making its goal for 2003 the international prosecution of the Howard Government for crimes against humanity. With the large number of in-depth reports published by Human Rights bodies who have had access to the camps and have interviewed countless detainees I think there will be plenty of evidence not only of cruelty and violence to innocent men, women and children but also evidence that the government knew exactly what was happening, and was responsible for it. There are many witnesses to the fact that the punishments of the innocent after the fires were carried out expressly “at the Minister’s orders”. I wonder how the Minister and his supporters and those working in the centres who carry out verbal and emotional abuse will face their grandchildren when the stories come out in years to come, either in the courts or in film and history books. History will judge people like Ruddock and Howard as short-sighted leaders who put their own political advantage above human dignity and rights.

Detainees’ Comments

I was able to say hello and exchange good wishes with a total of forty three people over the three days of my visit, to have in depth conversations with thirteen of them, and to hear parts of the stories of fourteen others. And I have letters, from both before and after my visit, from several of the single men whom I was not allowed to see and from other asylum seeker friends in Woomera and Nauru detention camps. Several people including children communicate with me regularly on the phone. After the single men had no access to phones for over four weeks the queue for phones lasted over two days.

At the end of the second day I received a call from a twenty-one year old whom I knew slightly from one letter exchanged before this. He said he had been waiting by the phone for the whole two days to ring me because I was the only person in the world outside Baxter he knew and could phone. He was so excited to speak to me that he cried and he claimed me as his mother and my mother as his grandmother. His first question every time he phones now is “and how is my grandmother?” He lost his father and brothers to the Taliban and after a reported bout of US bombing in his home town area while he was in detention in Curtin he never heard from his mother and seven year old sister again. They had been phoning him regularly since he arrived in Australia. “Maybe they not dead”, he says, “maybe they had to leave in a hurry and could not take papers with them so they lose my address.”

The children told me they were bored; they had been in detention too long; they were scared to go back to their homelands where they had seen members of their families killed or persecuted; they liked having visitors; they wished they could go to school outside the detention centre; they wished they could go on excursions; they wanted to be able to use the school computers in the holidays. Some told me that this past Christmas was their third in detention.

A few people just over eighteen were very upset not to have access to education any more. They want to learn. “What do you want to learn?” I asked one young man. “Anything”, he said “just so I have something in my head except worry and sick” . They were literally bored sick.

“Night becomes day and day becomes night; there is no difference.”

One young girl said it was like her world was pulled from under her when and they came to her and told her she could no longer have access to any part of the school or books or the school program. It is not so much that they miss the education- they miss having something to do all day. Their comments about this reminded me of an innocently brilliant comment I read, made by a child detainee in another Detention Centre, Nauru I think it was:

“There is school OK we have every day. But there is no facilities for education.”

Actually the high level of education many detainee children brought with them to Australia was impressive to me, a teacher. Many families have obviously put a high value on education and their children are keen students and would manage very well alongside Australian students their own age. And this in spite of the late start for their English and the paucity of the education they are have received in detention over the last few years. I believe their coming integration into Port Augusta schools will be an eye-opener to many in the local community. This is a small break in the deliberate policy of the government to “depersonalise” refugees so Australians will not see them as ordinary human people with hopes and cares. The labels of “potential terrorists” and “illegals” will not stand up once people meet and know them as persons.

Two different young men described to me how they had watched their parents lose hope and minds in detention. One young man described the stages he saw people go through:

“You see them come in. For three months they are OK. They smile. They move around quickly. They want to do things – maybe they learn English, or go to the gym. Then they slow down, and their eyes no longer smile. After six months you begin to see the black under their eyes, and they are getting sick, and they get angry with nothing, and they talk and want to change things. After one year they have lost hope. They do not want to do anything. They are depressed. By two years they are very desperate. They do not care any more what happens to them; they do not care any more if people write to them or help them; they are sorry they came, and death in their own country is better than slow death here. Their heart is already dead, so why not all of them. But still they are scared and they keep asking in their heart ‘why?’ They cannot believe their life is really gone.”

A letter From a detainee

The following letter, sent to a supporter from a young man in detention, illustrates more effectively than I could the feelings of so many of those in detention. I have changed any identifying details for privacy reasons.

Hello, I’m Ali, 24 years old, single, from *****.

How are you, I hope you are well, more than ever thank you so much for your kindness and goodness. I’m also very grateful to Canberra the Refugee Action Group. You make me very surprise, it is the greatest favour.

Regretfully, we really are missing the best days of lifetime for nothing in this wrong place. We have been affected by psychological problems. I wish, I would have been sunken in the sea, but never arrived to this land.

I have no idea with what hope, I can continue to live, anymore. After two years of detention for who has been charged with arriving to Australia as a refugee, of course, I love Australian people who are thinking like you.

I hate this life full of objection and oppression.

I’m also not agree with damage [fire] and violence.
But these people are harassed from Government.
They are too tired and hopeless.
I’m so sorry that I make you nervous with these words.
I give thanks to you and [R.A.C.] for everything again [parcels]God bless you.

Yours sincerely
(signed)

Other Innocent Victims of this Inhumanity

The Australian people I met going in and out of Baxter each day are also victims of the insanity of Australian concentration camps. Every day I work with and hear from many ordinary people, old and young, who write to or phone detainees or work with those out on temporary visas. We might be in a minority, those of us who worry and try to help refugees, but we are hundreds of thousands in number – lawyers, artists, public servants, teachers, nurses, doctors, grandparents, cricketers, even a few politicians. We are all “bleeding hearts” and we are suffering because of this inhumanity.

This issue has deeply divided Australia and I don’t think our politicians and everyday Australia have any idea of how deeply this unbelievable cruelty has touched our lives. We are in grief. Many of us sadly may never feel the same about Australia again.

Many people I meet just don’t believe what is happening. Others shrug it off and say, “We can’t help everyone!” As Robert Manne pointed out, you cannot help every bashed and raped woman in Australia either but his does not give you excuse to refuse to help the one who happens to come to your door one night in the midst of her distress.

We are about 40th in the world in the numbers of asylum seekers we take (worked out on a per capita basis) and in 2001 we took 1600 less than the quota of 12000 the government set itself. In the eighties we managed to take 20,000 a year and to process them with kindness. And we also make it so hard for people to prove their cases. One man I know is so desperate to prove one point of his case that he has contacted a friend in a neighbouring country to his own asking him to travel secretly to his country and try to bribe someone in a specific office to give him a copy of a document. How extreme! “Yes,” he says,

“but they do not believe me here. How I prove it? I want this much to have my family live is safe place not be in prison and persecuted or killed. Trouble maybe I have not money enough for bribe.”

Yet even if we can’t take these people, why do we have to treat them so cruelly? Is there any moral standard in the civilized world that could justify the treatment we mete out to innocent men, women and children in our detention centres? Why aren’t more Australians objecting?

Parting Reflections

As I left Baxter on the last day of my visit, I had one immediate wish. I just wanted to forget all I had heard and seen. I wanted to block it out of my mind and heart. I wanted to block out the faces, and the images of suffering now and suffering to come for the friends I have in Baxter. I wanted to go to sleep, and wake up four years ago before all this happened. I wanted my old loved Australia back. I wanted to be part again of a country I could be proud of. I felt a great anger at Philip Ruddock, John Howard and Greg Wallis. I felt anger at Simon Crean and the Labor Party for not providing an alternative that would make any real difference to my friends in detention. I have scanned Labor policy so carefully but I can find not one single thing that will make an iota of difference to any of my friends in detention or out now on temporary Protection Visas. I felt anger at those in DIMIA and ACM who collaborate day by day with this cruel torture of fellow human beings. I felt ashamed of being Australian.

When I was born fifty seven years ago, my father was fighting the Japanese. Years later, I read and watched all the stories and films about Australians in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. I could never understand how people could be so cruel and sadistic. Thinking about Baxter, it is these images that come to me – of Australian soldiers being put out in the sun all day, weak and exhausted; of the brutality of some guards; of some being made an example of and put in cages in isolation; of the lack of medical help; of Japanese soldiers using their power to belittle and goad defenceless prisoners, and even of the occasional kindness or mercy. To me, Baxter is a modern day version of this. The torture may be more sophisticated, the food may be better, but the breaking of spirits is still the intent and outcome. Yet the victims this time are not soldiers – they are persecuted men, women and children, desperate people who risked their lives to escape and who came to Australia for help.

Shame, Australia, Shame!

Jane Keogh
February, 2003

Some minor details and place names in this report have been changed to protect identities