CHRISTMAS ISLAND: WHEN ASYLUM SEEKERS SPEND THEIR AUSTRALIAN HOLIDAYS

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 

Everywhere you go 

Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again 

With candy canes and silver lanes aglow "

It's only November, but, as the song says, everywhere you go Christmas decorations are starting to be hung.

Have you decided how to spend your Christmas Holidays? At home with your family or abroad with the person you love?

If you ask the same question to asylum seekers in Australia, many of them will give you the followng answer: I will spend my time in Australia in Christmas Island detention centre. However, this island, apart from the name, has nothing to do with Christmas, especially for migrants and asylum seekers.

One of the largest detention centres is located on Christmas Island, a small island near to Indonesia but under the Australian jurisdiction. The centre, built between 2006 and 2007, host around 1,200 asylum seekers. The video shows when the centre was under costruction.

This place, where men, women and children (many of them unaccompanied) are hosted, is simply a prison, where aslylum seekers have to stay for a long time: approximately one year, or even more.

Nothing is missing in this Guantanamo Bay-style resort for migrnats: "energised" electric fence, motion detector, metal chain-link fence, cameras and intercoms protected by grill. What could you ask for more?

The Australian Government is not afraid to call these structures "detention centres", because it regards asylum seekers who arrive by boat as criminals. In doing so, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Government not only violate several international treaties, but also the Australian Law, more precisely the 1958 Migration Act.

                                    

In March the Australian Human Rights Commision decided to launch an inquiry about the situation and the well-being of the children detained in the centre. After getting information from the Immigration Department, the Commission decided to spend a week on Christmas Island and to visit the centre. During the visit the members of the Commission spoke with the children, who described the centre as "hell".

"The children are actually identifying themselves by their numbers, not by their names, which is shocking in itself", Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Commission, affirmed. Many of the drawings show the children behind bars, like in a prison: "This is a very typical picture when they are asking for freedom", she said.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words; let me show you three thousand words that explain why the situation of detention centres in Australia is critical. Christmas Island is only an example.

IT IS NECESSARY TO CHANGE COURSE!!!

AUSTRALIAN POLICIES ON IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM: THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T HOLD WATER

Whether you watched the video carefully, or you missed few words while watching, you have certainly understood its main message: any person who arrives by sea and without a visa in the Australian territory will be sent back and there will be no possibility for her to make Australia home.

This controversial video, released by the Government in April, has sparked a lot of criticism; criticism that continue still today towards the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and especially towards the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison. Someone could object that General Campbell, Commander of the Sovereign Borders Operation, in the video, explicitly affirms that the aim of the Government is to contrast the smuggling of migrants and the smugglers, who ask a lot of money in exchange for false hopes. Maybe General Campbell forgets that, when the Australian military forces intercept a smuggler with his boat, they don't send back only a criminal: they send back dozens, if not hundreds of people in need.


The video, indeed, is only a further evidence of the fact that the Australian policies on immigration and asylum are aimed at deterrence and punishment, rather than the reception of migrants and asylum seekers. In the best case (best sounds like a cruel euphemism), if a migrant is able to reach the Australian coasts and ask for asylum, he can experience a long stay in a detention centre. It is not surprising that many Australian legal scholars and many NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, accuse the honourable Morrison and his Government of breaching the UN Conventions, on Status of Refugees (1951) and on the Rights of the Child (1989).


A country born because someone immigrated from another country to Australia, a country that has always regarded the migrants as a resource, a country that has always been considered a destination for new opportunities refuses to help human beings fleeing from a dramatic situation. This is a paradox, isn't it?