Australia: Refugees stage detention centre demonstrations after boat disaster

[Hannah Bell]

The terrible deaths of more than 30 Iraqi, Iranian, and Kurdish refugees last Wednesday off Australia’s Christmas Island has escalated tensions within the Labor government’s repressive “mandatory detention” asylum seeker system.

Refugees in one of three detention centres located on Christmas Island staged multiple demonstrations on Friday, desperately appealing for international assistance and accusing Australian authorities of responsibility for the boat’s sinking.

Early Friday afternoon, about 50 refugees detained at the Phosphate Hill facility scaled internal fences to gather inside the perimeter, where they appealed to nearby journalists.

Several security guards hired by the detention centre’s private operator, British transnational company Serco, faced off against the refugees to prevent them escaping.

(Note: BTW, Serco is one of the companies involved in the UK's equivalent of ed deform. They're a multi-tasking corp: prisons, immigrant detention centers, & schools -- lots of synergy there.

They're a spin-off of America's RCA.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/refu-d20.shtml