No Guantanamo in Australia

indonesia / philippines / australia | repression / prisoners | press release Sunday July 08, 2007 20:33 by MACG - Anarkismo macg1984 at yahoo dot com dot au

The social mass movement must act

The working class movement, the social mass movement, the political organisations must not allow this abomination to be used. We have to stop construction of this soul-destroying dungeon in the Indian Ocean, beyond reach even of the capitalists’ own laws.

A concentration camp on the quiet

Have you heard there is currently a Guantanamo-style detention complex under construction in Australia? If so, you’re one of the few who have. It is scheduled to be complete by the middle of the year, at a cost of $364 million of our money. It is located on Christmas Island, 2.400 km from Perth, 360 km from Jakarta and almost 2000 km from Darwin. The area around the complex has high cliffs, blocking access to the sea, to prevent any attempt at escape.

Please sir, may I leave the room?

Security features are inhuman and extreme. There are multi-layered electric fences and movement detectors. There are hundreds of cameras, under eaves, on roofs, in every room and microphones behind heavy metal grilles. It has CCTV linked to a Remote Control Room, so that detainees can be watched all the time, even from Canberra. Detainees will wear electronic ID tags or cards, identifying them to the central control system wherever they are. Doors to rooms are electric and centrally controlled and detainees must punch Request To Exit buttons. Once admitted, a detainee need never leave even if gravely ill, since the medical facilities even include an operating theatre. And, of course, there are the solitary confinement units.

Who will fill this dungeon?

The Government says that this is an immigration detention centre constructed as “a deterrent”. Official figures, though, show only 153 “unauthorised entrants” have arrived in Australia by boat since 2001. There is more than enough room at hellholes like Baxter to hold that many, so the question arises – who is the Christmas Island detention centre really being designed to hold? The island is very far from the mainland and there are no lawyers there. Refugee advocates and lawyers will have not access unless the Government permits it. Ominously, last November, US officials inspected the complex, flown in by chartered plane from Singapore.

Close all detention centres

We do not know for whom this is being constructed, but we do know it is no place for a human being. Baxter is a place of the disintegration of human dignity, but this high-tech hell centre takes the concept even further. It is the logical culmination of the practice of detention.

The working class movement, the social mass movement, the political organisations must not allow this abomination to be used. We have to stop construction of this soul-destroying dungeon in the Indian Ocean, beyond reach even of the capitalists’ own laws. The time to act is now, to stop this centre and to close them all.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND DETENTION CENTRE - WHERE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM

Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group

* This article appearred in the issue No 2 – June-July 2007 – of “The Anvil”, newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG)