"Camp Howard" - Australia's very own Guantanamo Bay on Christmas Island - Sunday February 25, 2007 at 12:04 PM
The completion date for this $364 million dollar Guantanamo-style detention complex is mid-2007...
Christmas Island is 2,400 km from Perth, 360 km from Jakarta and nearly 2000 km from Darwin. The detenton complex is at the far end of the island, which is 24 km long and 7 km wide. The area surrounding the centre has high cliffs making access to the sea impossible. Escape is impossible. Why this intense security?
What is it? The Government says that it is a detention centre built as 'a deterrent'. Yet only 153 people have arrived by boat since December 2001 - that's an average of 30 per year over a five year period [not counting the recent arrivals from Sri Lanka - pc]It makes no sense to build an 800-bed prison merely as a contingency.
The Prison - A high-tech hell
The complex has 'energised' [electric] fences and microwave probes [movement detectors] similar to the Baxter Detention Centre. There are hundreds of different cameras, posted under eaves, on roofs and in every room, where, together with microphones, they are wall-mounted behind heavy metal grills.
The camp on Christmas Island has CCTV linked to a RCR [Remote Control Room]so guards in Canberra can watch detainees around the clock. Detainees will wear electronic ID tags or cards, identifying them wherever they are. These are so sophisticated that the central electronic control system can read each ID even if two people stand side by side or back to back.
The doors to the rooms are electric and centrally controlled. Detainees must push RTE [Request to Exit] buttons.
Microwave probes surround every building as well as the layers of perimeter fences encircling the centre. Access by car is through airlock systems and electric doors.
Between the multi-layered fence system there are checkpoints for human guards on patrol and outdoor security cubicles for them to sit, sited at short intervals all around the perimeter of the centre. Each of these is wired with duress buttons and microwave probes. There is a hospital, operating theatre and visiting rooms with non-contct glass panels. Once admitted a detainee need never leave even of gravely ill.
Thre are even RED ONE and RED TWO Management Units with solitary cells similar to those in which Cornelia Rau and other detaines who were suicidal were locked for 23 hours a day. Chillingly, there are family units and a nursery in this management compound. Everything can be controlled remotely — doors, TV, radio ...
USA Homeland Security Inspection
From 4-9 November 2006 United States officials from Homeland Security inspected this centre. They flew by chartered plane all the way from Singapore to take a look. Why? What has the USA to do with Australia's domestic policy on immigration detention?
For Whom? We don't know for whom this hell-hole is being built but we do know that whoever is incarcerated in this place will suffer in body and spirit. They will be deprived of their human rights and have no access to Australian legal rights.
We know that the people left on Nauru for five years were eventually removed because they became so sick and depressed that their very survival could not be assured.
In this place human beings will be under intense electronic surveillance.
Refugee advocates and lawyers will have no access unless the Government allows it. Christmas Island is a distant and expensive plane trip from Australia. There are no lawyers on the island.
We've witnessed the disintegration of the human spirit in Baxter. We can only shudder at the likely impact on detainees of years of isolation and intense surveillance in this new Christmas Island maximum security facility.
We must not allow the Government and a compliant Opposition to build this soul-destroying hell-hole out in the Indian Ocean far from scrutiny, beyond the reach of law and justice.
We must awaken all Australians to what is being done in our name.
What you can do
Contact your local MP. Insist on knowing why this gulag is being built. Demand it be stopped. Tell them that we will not allow human beings to be incarcerated in this island gulag, and denied all human rights.
Do this before the Government tries to stop you knowing what is being done in your name.
Contact the media and make sure everyone knows about this secret prison. http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/02/140942.php ......................................................................................................................................
Detention Centre, concentration camp? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqi123hBw2A
