Christmas Island .

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: November 4, 2009

CHRISTMAS ISLAND, Australia — Deep in the jungle on this small island lost in the Indian Ocean, Australia’s new $370 million refugee detention center reaches its full power after its lights come on at dusk. Bracketed by rain forest, steep cliffs and the sea, it rises from the enveloping darkness and becomes visible from the island’s only inhabited corner, about 10 miles away.

The center — opened a few days before Christmas but now nearly full with refugees from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka — has come to symbolize what many call one of Australia’s defining fears: the arrival of boat people from Asia.

All boat people seeking asylum in Australia are first brought here to Christmas Island, just 220 miles south of Indonesia but nearly 1,000 miles from the Australian mainland, and most are now held at enormous cost within the center’s electrified, 13-foot-high razor-wire fences.

But even as boats arrive every few days, advocates for refugees and even the government’s own human rights commission are urging the government to close the place down and sort the asylum-seekers on the mainland. They compare Christmas Island to Guantánamo Bay or describe it as a reincarnation of the many notorious prison islands in Australia’s convict history.

“They put this center way out here on this remote island, and then they built it way, way, way out on the island in the jungle,” said Charlene Thompson, a social worker who counsels asylum-seekers here. She equated the new center to Port Arthur, a 19th-century penal colony in Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost island. “It’s a jail, a high-security jail, and it feels like the asylum-seekers are being treated as criminals.”

According to a recent report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, a government organization, the new center “looks and feels like a prison.” It called the security measures “excessive and inappropriate for accommodating asylum seekers.” Inside the main fence, the report said, each compound is enclosed in a separate fence, and walkways are “enclosed within cagelike structures.”

jackspratt wrote:The NY Times article is almost as full of sh1t as you tex

Asylum seekers in Australia sew lips together in protest at indefinite detainment

At least ten asylum seekers at an Australian detention centre have sewed their lips together in protest at the amount of time their visa applications are taking to be processed.

By Leah Hyslop 12:48PM GMT 23 Nov 2010

The asylum seekers, who are all male, sewed their lips together last week at a remote detention centre on Christmas Island in the Indian ocean.

Though they initially rejected medical assistance, some have now had the stitches removed, and peace is gradually being restored to the centre.

Nearly 200 asylum seekers at the facility engaged in some form of protest last week, mainly to voice their anger against delays in the visa application system, and the rejection of some asylum applications.

This year, an increasingly high number of immigrants attempting to enter the country by boat has pushed the Christmas Island centre beyond its maximum capacity for the first time. It currently houses 2,971 illegal immigrants, around half of the total number of immigration detainees in the entire country.

Last week, an Iraqi detainee facing deportation hanged himself in a Sydney detention centre after his appeals to stay were rejected. Anger at his death is believed to have been a factor in the Christmas Island strike.

Amnesty International charged that a three-year old boy was put in leg restraints and later kept in a suicide-proof cell without windows, toilet or shower for 13 days.

Bandung_Dero wrote:Not as far as your concerned. You and your lot need to concentrate on your own fuc#ed up country and leave us to hows.

If you had any sense of geography you'd know that Christmas Islands coast line is 90% inaccessible from the sea. Those so called onlookers were doing everything in their power to aide the victims. We are a country of some 22 million people and thus do not have any where near the resources of the Worlds Police, for that I apologise!