Information night on Christmas Island detention centre
by pc Thursday March 29, 2007 at 01:52 PM

There were few empty seats at RMIT's Kaleide theatre last night when the Refugee Action Collective and the Asylum Seekers Resource centre presented a forum on the new detention centre almost completed on Christmas Island ...

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Speakers at the forum were Sister Brigid Arthur of the Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project, who presented a number of examples of the effects of long-term detention on the mental and moral health of especially young people subjecte to it; Guy Coffey from the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, who developed this theme with special reference to people who had previously been tortured and for whom detention was a re-living of the experience; Anna Samson, who had just returned from a fact-finding trip to Christmas Island and presented photos of the new centre nearing completion and discussed other interesting developments on the island; and Julian Burnside QC, long-standing advocate for refugee and human rights, who had some harsh and perhaps for many people revelatory things to say about the so-called Pacific Solution and the excision of territory from the Migration Zone. In the foyer there was a display of plans of the new centre, including the provision for the detention of children and babies, and a video tour of the site was screened in the theatre before the speakers were introduced. Tony Dewberry of RAC-VIC and Pamela Curr of the ASRC shared the chair, and the forum ended with questions from the floor.
Links:http://www.rac-vic.org
http://www.asrc.org.au
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/02/140942.php

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Anna Samson's address:
by pc Thursday March 29, 2007 at 01:52 PM

audio: MP3 at 3.3 mebibytes

mp3, 3.28MB, 28min39

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