Villawood detainees 'isolated, desperate'

20 Sep 2010, 8:28 pm   -   Source: SBS, Shalailah Medhora and Bill Code
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The rooftop protest by a group of Tamils at Villawood detention centre shows how desperate and isolated the detainees are, the Greens and refugee advocates have told SBS.

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The rooftop protest by a group of Tamils at Villawood detention centre shows how desperate and isolated the detainees are, the Greens and refugee advocates have told SBS.

A group of between five and nine suspected asylum seekers spent the day on the rooftop of the facility, with reports suggesting they threatened to jump.

The protest comes after a Fijian national who was due for deportation, died at the detention centre this morning.

Both the Greens and Refugee Action Coalition say the Fijian national committed suicide.

Allegations abounded that Villawood staff had been warned the man was suicidal after being told he was to be deported.

Immigration Department spokesman Sandi Logan told reporters he understsands "that there, certainly, is some history behind this client.", although an earlier spokesman for the Department said it was too early to comment on the cause of the man's death, and says a coronial inquest has been launched.

Greens Senator-elect, Lee Rhiannon told SBS the rooftop protest is "tragic" and shows the detainees are "isolated" and "troubled" by their continued detainment.

Speaking from the scene, Ms Rhiannon says she saw nine Tamil detainees on the roof of the detention centre unfurl banners and call for negotiations with the Australian government.

The Greens Senator-elect says the point of the protest was to ask the Australian government to recognise them as genuine refugees.

Ms Rhiannon says they had already been recognised as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but were forced to go through the asylum process from scratch once arriving in Australia.

She told SBS the detainees staging the protest were "worried for their future" and "feared deportation" back to Sri Lanka.

Refugee advocate Sarah Nathan, also at the scene in Villawood, told SBS the men were upset over the death of the Fijian man, and were worried they would also be deported.

"Tamils who have previously deported have been tortured by Sri Lanka," Ms Nathan says.

Refugee Action Coalition head, Ian Rintoul, agrees.

"The other Tamils are very distressed; there's a lot of manhandling going on," he told SBS.

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship told SBS the government remains committed to mandatory detention.

He says Villawood's service provider, Serco, were engaging with the men and encouraging them to have fluids.

 

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