"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!!!
What a paradoxical name for such a place!!! We should always put ourselves in their shoes! what if we were forced to escape from our country for serious reasons like civil wars or famine?
ReplyDelete"The children are actually identifying themselves by their numbers, not by their names, which is shocking in itself".
ReplyDeleteHistory repeats itself.
I really enjoyed reading your articles. The topic you chose is interesting and dramatic by itself, but so there are thousand of other cases world-wide. Passing over the sensibilization approach, I was more concentrated on the way of saying the things and of presenting them (cause this makes an article to be unique) which I found really nice. I liked a lot the sarcasm, the irony, the methaphors, the exagerating elements, the structure, the introduction. :D
ReplyDeleteThe pictures of the children are really impressive. Probably they explain very well the situation that refugees and asylum seekers live in that place.
ReplyDeleteThey are prisoners. Perhaps as they were before they decided to escape from their own country. Is this protection? Is this asylum?