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Update #1 December 2001
Dear Spare Roomers
We’ve had our first success. Our friend Grace
housed two refugees for three weeks! It was a happy household with a
lot of cooking and other chaos. The Hotham Mission has since found
them a flat in Ferny Creek.
They are delightful young men in their mid 20’s, Sri Lankan, very
personable and good English speakers.
I am worried about their isolation. If you could
invite them to dinner, take them out or phone or help them, you’d find it
rewarding. They are extremely intelligent and likeable, and they
could tell you some of the extraordinary stories of detention they and
others have experienced.
If you write or email “Spare Rooms for Refugees” and
give your phone number, I can get the young men to phone you and establish
contact. They would appreciate it I know.
Steve Bracks needs your help. Please write
letters to the newspapers to support his stance on refugees. He wants
to end the so-called Pacific “solution”, to claim the greater share of
refugees for Victoria and to build refugee centres not detention
centres in Victoria to assist refugees. Please phone or fax the
Premier’s Department (Tel. 9651 5111/Fax. 9651 5054) to give him your
praise. If we don’t his initiative will die.
While you’re at it, phone the Labor Party or drop a
line to Simon Crean. You may not like the Labor Party, but the truth
is that while Labor vacillates, Philip Ruddock does all he can to wreck the
U.N. convention that we are signatory to. Small protest groups will
never have the power of a genuine opposition.
The Labor Party must change its disastrous view and
become an opposition once more. Steve Bracks is testing the waters of
public opinion and in the Herald-Sun he’s getting a basting for it.
Please write a letter to the Herald-Sun supporting him, it might
counter-balance the abuse he’s getting there.
Most of us wouldn’t read Andrew Bolt but if you have a
chance to read his “Tall Tale Chorus” (13 Dec., page 19), you’ll know what
I mean. He’s not only unattractive, he’s influential with Herald-Sun
readers and is rarely challenged on his facts. His attitudes sit
there unchecked. If you want to lobby, lobby that paper and
also the ethnic press.
Visits.
If you’re anxious to help, visit Maribyrnong Detention Centre: 54
Hampstead Rd Maribyrnong 3032. It’s easy, the detainees really need
your visits. It shows Australian Correctional Management that we have
eyes and ears and as Australians we won’t abandon these people and we’ll
protest when they injure them.
To visit, take photo ID and other ID with your address
on it, a single passport is all I used. Ask to see particular
detainees.
Email us for names of detainees (we decided to take individual
names off the net just in case).
These people will be brought out to meet you, they
will tell you of other names you might try to speak with. You might
take food or toiletries - nothing in metal or foil containers. The
visiting hours are 2.30 – 4.30 p.m. and 7.00 – 9.00 p.m.
The phone number to check any of these things or even
to speak to a detainee is
9318 1999. There is a bus almost to the door. A No. 57 tram
from Elizabeth Street will also get you there. Please visit if you
want to get a sense of how ACM works, it’s most enlightening.
Training sessions for Spare Rooms for Refugees’
supporters will be available at the end of January/February. The
social workers assisting asylum seekers virtually insist that we need these
classes if we are to house refugees. I am arranging to conduct them
from my house and I’ll supply lunch.
To ask about classes or volunteering ring Kon
Karapangiotidus at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre on 9687 2134.
They have a lot of valuable avenues for volunteers too. They’ll send
you information if you ask for it.
Spare Rooms for Refugees is working with a group, who
are writing a submission to the Human Rights Inquiry regarding the
detention of children. If you would like to assist phone Jonathan
Liberman on 9531 2479.
We now have a team of pro bono lawyers but what we
need are some pro bono accountants and actuaries. Do you know
anyone in any of the big accounting companies? We need a group of
people who can crunch the figures on DIMA’s website and make sense of
them. We know that the economics of the Pacific Solution are
ludicrous.
This should not be a very big task, the Government’s
figures are sketchy and disguised. A watch on them is really
fundamental to assist us to change the attitudes of people who are not
susceptible to any moral argument. If you know a finance person who
could help, please ring us at Spare Rooms or me, Kate Durham on
9819 6931.
Some “barbeque” facts, I’ve been asked for, may help you in
discussions you have with friends:
1.
I’ve only recently learned that every detainee gets a bill of
$147.50 a day for the privilege of their detention. Regardless of
whether they turn out to be refugees or not, this bill is used to harass
people – “Go home now, before your bill explodes” etc. Some have
bills in excess of $300,000 and the Department knows well they can’t pay
but still the demands keep coming, along with threats of more
detention. The bill will be used to repel people, even refugees who
have lived here for years. If they ever leave Australia they will not
be re-admitted as they have a Federal debt. Please tell your friends
about this, it’s a scandal.
2.
Australia comes in at 32nd out of the 71 countries
resettling refugees. The “resettling” is mostly done by countries
like Pakistan and Indonesia who have to deal with millions.
3.
There are only eight countries, Australia is one of them, who
insist on a quota for refugees. Most do not even count their
refugees.
4.
Woomera detention centre is, like all of our centres, worse than
jail. I’d argue Woomera is a concentration camp of cruelty and
humiliation. It has two working toilets for 800 people, and four
showers. No hot water until after midnight. Detainees are not
allowed to cut their own toe nails, a nurse will do it. She cuts one
person’s nails a day – no more. Women have to queue up to get a
tampon. No air-conditioning; not fly screens. Woomera is 6
hours into the desert from Adelaide, it gets to 45 degrees during the day
and is swarming with flies. No wonder the inmates are driven to
protest.
All the centres have solitary confinement
provisions; confining children for days is not uncommon, people are
routinely handcuffed. So-called “toilet privileges” are denied in
some cells (even in Melbourne).
5.
Australia, along with Greece, Turkey, Albania and Poland, put
asylum seekers into detention. In Britain and the US there are some
restrictions, but asylum seekers work and move about in the community.
6.
The Taliban is the product of camps. These “students” were
brought up as orphans in camps in Pakistan. They had no mothers and
no education, aside from what they got from a few koranic teachers.
7.
The few thousand refugees we receive would barely be noticed
within our general immigration programme. Last year we accepted
92,000 migrants (not refugees)! In the late 70’s we accepted as many
as 20,000 per year. Australia has not and will not collapse under the
weight of these people.
Please let’s rid ourselves of camps, they promote
disease, mental illness and insecurity. People who are not criminals
must not be placed in them. People must achieve more than two year
visas and the Government must not separate husbands from wives or children.
You can help right now by writing to some refugees in
detention. They must feel utterly abandonned and
forgotten. They would love to hear from an Australian who cares about
them. If you do write to some, ask them for the names of some of
their friends in detention, and have your friends write to them.
That’s all for now, but I’d like to state that Spare
Rooms for Refugees supports asylum seekers, not illegals. We
do not necessarily disapprove of people who break the law by housing
escaped asylum seekers, but we cannot be seen to support them. Spare
Rooms for Refugees acts within the law, however much we may dislike those
laws.
Kate Durham.
Spare Rooms for Refugees
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