Information night on Christmas Island detention centre : Melbourne Indymedia

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

mp3, 3.28MB, 28min39

Sorry - this was supposed to be attached to the main posting:
It's certainly no reflection on the quality of the other speakers to say that Anna Samson's presentation probably made the most impact, if only because even less has found its way into the mainstream media about what has been happening on the island. It was interesting to hear, for example, that the islanders, when told they were being presented with a new recreation centre - which they didn't really want and at a cost of $8million on a scale that would normally meet the needs of a 50,000 strong catchment area (the population of Christmas Island is about 1200) - requested a community hall or at least a squash court. The ethnic background of the vast majority of the Islanders is Chinese or Malay. They were given a large basketball court...
"[According to locals]the US military have ecently visited Christmas Island and people who identified thmselves as from the CIA and from the Department of Homeland Security said they were on Christmas Island "to just tour the facilities to see if the island would be available for logistical support in the event of something the US had to respond to in the Pacific ..."

mp3 1.6mb 13 min.54
"Stating the obvious, only those who have actually been in detentin truly know what it's like. But I believe that any detention, for whatever length of time, actually has an intimidatory and lasting effect on the person who has been detained ..."

mp3, 1.32MB, 11min.2
"Let me start with a personal experience. I think we've probably all had a particular experience that's convinced us that this policy of detaining asylum seekers is fundamentally wrong and inhumane. Mine came in the mid- to late-90s when I was seeing somebody in Maribyrnong ... a man from Syria. I came to him in one of the isolation cells there and he was pacing out the room, which seemed quite odd behaviour. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was trying to convince himself that this cell was of different dimensions from the cell that he was tortured in ..."

mp3 2.2MB, 19min.15
"It is extraordinary to think that in 2007 the Australian Government can seriously be talking about deterrence whilst inflicting indeterminate detention of people who've come here to do nothoing worse than asking to be protected from our enemies ..."

"I think one of the reasons that Christmas Island is being cranked up is the fact that the Australian Government begins to realise that there is this tiny bankrupt Pacific Isleand nation called Nauru which is not necessarily willing to do the Australian Government's dirty work in perpetuity ..."