Subject: AUT: PROFITS AND RACISM  - Prisoners of the global enclosures make a break for it.
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 07:02:03 +1000


PROFITS AND RACISM  - Prisoners of the global enclosures make a break for it.

AUSTRALIA -Friday, June 9 2000.   Within less than 48 hours, over 750
asylum-seekers had broken out of three remote refugee prisons in Australia,
experiencing freedom for the first time in over 6 months.  The vast majority of
the asylum seekers are from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Minister for Immigration, Philip Ruddock, told reporters that the escapees
had the choice of returning to detention or face charges which could see them
disqualified for visas under migration laws which require that applicants to be
of "good character".   Con Sciacca, from the Opposition Labor Party and Shadow
Minister for Immigration, said that the escapees would not be getting any
sympathy from the public.

All three refugee prisons are in remote, desert locations where nightly
temperatures regularly reach freezing.  At least 10 people have been taken to
hospital having collapsed from exhaustion, cold and a lack of food.  Since
Thursday, many of the escapees have been returned to their respective prison
camps, but many remain free, if without any support, including food and
shelter.  Each of the prison camps is located hundreds of kilometres from major
cities.

The siting of the refugee prisons in remote locations has an economic and
political basis.  It has made access to legal aid, community support and media
scrutiny almost impossible to sustain.  Since 1994, a series of laws have also
restricted access to legal information, including communications from the
Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

Moreover, the convergence of a restructuring of rural economies and the
explicit peddling of xenophobic explanations for rising unemployment and
declining incomes by all major parties (Labor, National, Liberal, Green and
Democrats) in the last decade -- a tactic which prompted the subsequent rise of
the openly racist One Nation in 1996 which targeted migrants and indigenous
'welfare bludgers' as the cause of rural misery -- has resulted in the
political isolation of asylum seekers.

No political party in Australia is prepared to defend the right of asylum
seekers to justice, including freedom from arbitrary and lengthy imprisonment.
The refugee prisons highlight the racist exceptions to the rule of law in
Australia, including the singular exception to the principle that someone be
charged and tried before a court before being imprisoned.  This 'external'
exclusion from the rule of law adheres to the same racist logic as that of the
'internal' mandatory sentencing regime for petty property crimes, currently
practiced in two Australian states, Western Australia and the Northern
Territory, whose indisputable target is indigenous peoples.

****

On Thursday, over a hundred people tore down the barbed wire fencing at the
Woomera prison camp and headed for the middle of the nearby town to stage a
protest against poor conditions, overcrowding, refusals to provide access to
telephones and newspapers and the slow processing of visa applications.  During
the rest of the day, another three escapes were mounted bringing the total
numbers to around 600.  They joined others in the centre of the town chanting
'We want freedom!'  They have been held in the Woomera prison camp for over 6
months.

On Friday morning, after having endured cold, without food since Wednesday, and
with the only available water from a bore well, the group -- made up of men,
women and several children -- approached the local church to ask for asylum and
humanitarian aid.  A church staffer told them to remain where they were and
refused to allow them to sleep inside the church during the night or to give
them any food.

After negotiations with a representative from the Department of Immigration,
over half of the escapees from Woomera returned to the detention centre with
assurances that applications for asylum would be processed faster and that the
protesters would not be disadvantaged by having undertaken the action.

Under half of the escapees have refused to return to the prison insisting that
they did not trust the Department of Immigration to stick to any agreement.

By Friday morning, approximately 120 people broke out of the Curtin detention
centre and began walking toward the nearest town of Derby, which is 50
kilometres away.  Police set up roadblocks in the path of escapees heading for
Derby, and by nightfall had forced a return to the detention centre.

Late Friday, reports appeared that several more had escaped from another
detention centre, Port Hedland in Western Australia, by scaling the barbed wire
perimeter fencing.


Incarceration industries make money from xenophobia

Businesses in nearby towns tend to see the refugee prisons as a source of
revenue, if not exactly jobs, since the collapse of mining and other local
industries.  Moreover, with rural towns providing some of the most significant
support for racist organisations like One Nation, the building of refugee
prisons near those remote towns has been welcomed both politically and
economically.  A number of shire councils and rural commerce bodies have
lobbied the Federal Government to open a refugee prison near their towns.  The
head of the Christmas Island Chamber of Commerce has been lobbying the Federal
and State Government to establish a permanent detention centre there citing
dwindling revenues from the Christmas Island Casino.  Kambalda, a town in the
Western Australian goldfields, has made representations to the Federal
Government to build a permanent detention centre there in the hope of creating
a new industry after a series of mine closures.

The automatic imprisonment of all onshore asylum seekers since 1994 has seen
the construction of a number of new refugee prisons around Australia in rural
areas.  It has also meant that whilst the refugee prisons are welcomed, local
burghers remain unconcerned about the treatment and health of the asylum
seekers.  Derby Shire President, Mr McCumstie, shrugged off reporters'
questions on the availability of water by saying that there was plenty of water
still lying around from the recent wet season.  He claimed that people were
happy to have the refugee prison nearby because it boosted local businesses.
It is widely believed that the town's 'economy' depends on the refugee prison
for its viability after the rocket base -- on the site of which the prison
camps was recently built -- was closed down.

Mr McCumstie  went on to add, "There's been no outward antagonism toward them
at all, but that could change if they start to affect the day-to-day activities
of people in the towns."  Riot police from the Australian Protective Services
cordoned off the town centre, thereby restricting access to local stores for
residents, and have actively discouraged them from contact with the protesters.
Local authorities also suggested to locals that they keep their children away
from school whilst the protesters were in town.

The running of all refugee prisons in Australia have been contracted to
Australian Correctional Management, a subsidiary of the US incarceration giant
Wackenhut Corp, which is also contracted to deport.  In addition, ACM manages
30 prisons worldwide, including a number of prisons in NSW, Queensland and
Victoria.

Whilst the Government routinely draws attention to the monetary gains from
'people-smugglers -- generally, poor Indonesian fishers who can receive up to
20 years imprisonment even if no money has changed hands -- there is never any
mention of the millions of taxpayers' money that is delivered over to the
migration prohibition industries to keep out and incarcerate around 4,000
people per annum.  The illegalisation of asylum seekers is the basis for an
industry in Australia upon which at least one megacorporation makes a lot of
profits.  The Prime Minister, John Howard, recently announced an additional
$240m for the detection, deterrence and interdiction of asylum seekers who
arrive without papers.

Recent changes to the law & the creation of reserves of cheap labour.

Under laws introduced in 1992, anyone who makes an onshore application for
asylum and is without papers is subject to automatic imprisonment.  No court is
able to review the length or merit of that detention.  The so-called 'mandatory
and non-reviewable detention' regime was first introduced by the Labor
Government with the support of the Liberal and National parties.  Australia's
is the only western government that practices a system of automatic and
non-reviewable incarceration.  It also receives and grants fewer applications
for asylum, both on and offshore, than any other western country.

This is the only instance in Australian law which dictates imprisonment without
trial, where such imprisonment is automatic, where no Australian court can
review the decision to imprison or the duration of such confinement, and where
people who are imprisoned have committed no crime or been charged with any.  In
the words of the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Migration (JSC),
"Immigration detention is an administrative sanction, that is, the deprivation
of liberty other than as the result of a conviction for an offence."

According to Amnesty International, "The government's refusal to give asylum
seekers a fair chance to challenge in court why they remain behind barbed wire
for months or even years-a right granted to convicted felons-makes immigration
detainees second class prisoners although they have committed no crime ...
Making laws to declare automatic detention legal does not make the
arbitrariness of it acceptable."

The imprisonment of asylum seekers is not confined to the purpose-built refugee
prisons.  The JSC noted, "If individual circumstances warrant, detention can be
provided in prisons or, for short periods, pending transfer, police cells or
remand centres."  Such measures-as well as chemical and physical restraints and
isolation-are routinely used in order to remove people defined as
'trouble-makers'.  Sedation is common practice during deportation

The Australian Government recently froze all on- and offshore applications for
asylum.  This means that all applicants for asylum are treated and defined as
illegal.  It also decided, with the support of the Labor Party, that all
successful onshore asylum applicants could only be granted a 3-year visa, would
not be eligible for welfare or medicare, and could not bring family members to
Australia.  This extended the policy of the previous Labor Government which
denied newly-arrived and legal migrants access to medicare and welfare services
for 6 months -- a policy that the current Liberal-National Government extended
to the first 2 years of stay.

Through such policies, the Australian State actively creates the basis for a
pool of workers prepared to do any work for as little pay as possible, liable
to sweatshopping in manufacture, dangerous work in building, and
below-subsistence work in agriculture.  Just as 'mandatory and non-reviewable'
imprisonment mirrors 'mandatory sentencing', so too this strategy of ensuring
an impoverished and inescapable segment of the labour market is mirrored by the
operation of the so-called Community Development Employment Programme in
indigenous communities.  The CDEP, introduced in 1974 by the Liberal-National
Government after the near-total collapse of indigenous employment with the
introduction of Equal Pay laws, guarantees the continuing existence of racism
as the principal instrument of labour market segmentation, informalisation and
the obstacles to unionisation.

Global enclosures

It was not until the last decade that people began to move in some numbers from
Africa, Asia, and Latin America to Europe, North America and Australia.  Even
so, at least three-quarters of such movements occur between the poor countries,
and are held in check by a vast system of co-operation between states -- and
between states and the UN High Commission for Refugees -- to exclude asylum
seekers from the wealthier countries which are the principal donors to UNHCR
activities.  Ever since 1997, the UNHCR has endorsed forced deportations, from
Tanzania to Rwanda; to ex-Yugoslavia from around the world; from Australia to
Kosova; from Australia to East Timor.

Over the last decade, all Western countries have drastically changed their laws
relating to refugees and migration, most notably the European Union's Schengen
Agreement and 1996 legislation in the US.  Severe visa restrictions, as well as
outright bans, have been placed on "refugee generating countries".  Western
governments have effectively transformed the character of the UNHCR into the
body responsible for ensuring the so-called "right to remain"-i.e., into an
administrator and overseer of refugee camps inside or close to the borders of
countries people have taken flight from in order to stop them becoming refugees
in Western countries.  In addition, the proliferation of "safe third county"
laws have worked to confine asylum seekers to border camps and poorer
countries.

The so-called misery created by 'globalisation' could not take effect if it
were not for the system of enclosures that maintain a supply of undocumented
and illegalised workers who are susceptible to hyper-exploitation.  In other
words, without this system of global enclosures which makes the flight from
poverty and devastation illegal, there would be no meaning to the phrase
'foreigners who take our jobs'.  In this way, corporations make use of richer
states and the latters' dominance of the UNHCR to create cheap labour reserves,
the bottom rung of a world labour market which provides the precise measure to
the conduct of the race to the bottom.

A.M
<rcollins-AT-netlink.com.au>

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