Baxter visit
by Sara Saint-Saens

Baxter Welcome Centre for the Stateless and Storm-Tossed is a maximum security prison. Brighter than Port Augusta, it can easily be seen from 15 kilometres away at night time, and is the worst place I have ever been. It is much worse than Woomera.

• Detainees from Curtin who have gone to Woomera say that Woomera is much better.
• Detainees from Curtin who have gone to Baxter say that Curtin is better than Baxter.
• People my age looked 20 years older, haggard and saddened.
• Many wanted the option to go to a safe third country, straight from Australia, fearing to go back to their country of origin.
• Some think they are going to die in detention and worry about the fate of their children who are there with them.
• Having grown middle eastern men weeping in my arms was unbearable. Knowing they are still there utterly sickens me.

Visiting hours: 8-11am and 1-4pm

1) When you first arrive, the gate is opened for you by someone who records your number plate and name and wants to know the purpose of your visit.

2) Then you park your car and the cameras are trained on you.

3) You then go to a steel gate, press a buzzer and someone answers like it is a telephone, and you state your business.

4) After an arbitrary period of time - up to 10 minutes - a green light will come on and you may open the door, which you must shut behind you.

5) You are then in a metal cage about 5 metres long, with two cameras in it, with a steel door on either end and a roof overhead.

6) You walk the length of the cage and press the next buzzer and wait again. Only three people are allowed to be "processed " at once in the office. Processing may take 45 minutes or longer, so you wait in the cage to be let in.

7) After you make it through the next door you are then in Reception area. You then fill out forms, show your ID, and hand all gifts into property.

8) After the usual checks you are then moved to the visitor centre.

9) You go through more doors and then sign in to the visitor centre, where you are given a wrist band, and an invisible stamp. I'm sure mine was Pooh Bear, but the guard would not be drawn on this serious subject.

10) Then they go and get your friends, which may take half an hour or an hour more. Detainees are driven by van to the visitor centre, even though they would rather walk.

11) When your friends finally arrive, you sit at a table, underneath another camera, in front of the guards, who are sitting behind a sheet of glass about 4 metres from you, doing nothing. There is cordial in a cool drink dispenser, lemon and ant flavoured. There is a big coke and drink machine, but only for the guards' use as no-one else is allowed to have any money. You try to find somewhere for a private, comfortable chat. You take your choice of cameras.

12) When we arrived to visit, we came with lots of snacks and goodies we hoped to share with our friends; pistachios, almonds, turkish delight, fruit pastes. We could not take any of these things in with us. These things are "security threats."

a) We could not wear sandals, only closed in shoes.
b) I had to fight to take in photos of my paintings; they weren't included in the list of approved things, which said only one or two family photographs. I argued that the list makers haven't even noticed that culture exists.

13) Rules increased every day that we visited.

a) Only four people to visit at one time.
b) Cello but no cello case, recorder must be kept in the office.
c) No diaries allowed in.
d) Detainees could not bring their family photos to show to us, or even some chocolate to share

Physical Structure

14) The centre is divided into nine compounds, four of which are in use at the moment; one for Sabaen Mandaen people, one for families, two for single men.

15) All compounds are constructed in a circular fashion with a continuous facade. There are no outward looking windows. The centre of the compounds is a grassed area.

16) Each of the compounds have at least two guards on duty, who log all incoming phone calls, control the videos, and hand out property.

17) No views from the compounds; only the sky and the grass. Detainees would be completely unaware of any outside activities.

18) Many cameras in each compound. The only place to be out of camera range is in your room, or in the toilet, so most detainees that we spoke to are now staying in their rooms.

19) There is a gym for detainees, with a strictly controlled timetable. Women don't tend to use it as there are always men about and they don't have any privacy.

20) All gates and doors are controlled centrally from a computer. Only one door may be opened in the centre at any one time. You can wait for 10-15 minutes for a door to open, and if one has been left open, the whole centre ceases to operate until it is closed.

Essential Services

21) No education is happening for the children. Port Augusta school has rejected them.

22) Baxter was trumpeted as the family-friendly detention centre, and families in other detention centres are being pressured to go there, being told it is better.

23) To attempt to compensate for the lack of educational opportunities, ACM are taking children for weekly outings, except when they cannot think of anywhere to go, which happened the week that we were there. The first week the children went to Port Augusta where they saw signs saying "fuck off refugees" and "deport the boat people" and "go home refugee dogs." Three weeks later, some of those signs were still up in Port Augusta.

24) Food is cooked in a central kitchen, by 12 detainees in black and white chefs clothes, with detainees washing the dishes and cleaning up - good to keep the wage bill down. The food is then loaded into vans and taken to each compound's dining rooms, so there is still no chance for friends to see each other.

25) We were told it takes five days to receive medical attention, and that when you do you will be given Panadol for every ailment and told to drink lots of water. One lady I spoke to had headaches and blocked sinuses for the past year and a half, coupled with a cough, all probably from the dust of Curtin and Port Augusta. Why can't they just manage some Beconase or Sudafed. (I told her to insist on having them, but she hasn't managed so far). One other man that we met had gone blind at Curtin. He had been on a hunger strike and always worked in the sun. This man is now completely blind and needs a carer (another detainee is doing this) but still hasn't had a medical assessment. He had excellent vision when he arrived in Australia, and is only young.

26) There is no library. We took lots of Persian and Arabic books, but nowhere near enough for the voracious need for intellectual stimulation in there. The people we met were:

a) pharmacists
b) goldsmiths
c) engineers
d) teachers
e) electricians
f) doctors
g) many students
h) people who had read all of Shakespeare's works in Farsi, and were familiar with most of the Western classical traditions in literature and music
i) boys from Afghanistan who want to go to school, to contribute to Australia
j) children who love maths, physics and chemistry, and can't wait to go to university. Children who are immersed in the humanities, but are surrounded by guards with a culture of distrust and suspicion. Guards are used to the prison system, not a seven month old baby who was born in detention, not a blind old man, not a 16 year old in a wheel chair, not a 60 year old grandmother who wants to hug them.

27) Detainees told us that every request is met by the run around between DIMIA and ACM. One tiny woman had been trying to get her bed fixed for three weeks, only to have the responsibility shifted between ACM and DIMIA continuously. After being sneered at by an ACM guard she put a chair through a window, whereupon she had three guards ask her what she wanted. Later that day she had ten ACM guards turn up at her room and tell her she was going to have a meeting with Greg Wallace. She went with them, and they took her to the isolation block, where they removed all her jewellery, and locked her up in a windowless room under the ever present cameras for a few hours. The next day she managed a meeting. She eventually fixed the bed herself with the help of some other detainees. Most detainees reported with frustration that if you were quiet and polite in your requests, you were just ignored. However, if you put a chair through a window, after a period in isolation you usually get what you want.

28) Entertainment opportunities are limited.

a) One television channel, but the picture is ghostly.
b) Two videos per week, controlled by the guards from the compound offices.
c) They had a projector in and showed the detainees Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, which should have been very informative for middle eastern folk.
d) One woman I met knits a jumper, then unravels it and knits it again to keep herself occupied.

Management Culture and Day-to-Day Atmosphere

29) Everything is difficult for the detainees.

a) Those who smoke have to ask a guard to light their cigarettes.
b) Those who wish to see their friends in other compounds have to fill in a request form, and once a week they are taken to another compound.
c) Wait while electronic doors are opened.
d) They are not taken to their friend's compound but to a sterile area, where no-one else is, and their friend will be there, and they then have a couple of hours to interact, with the obligatory two guards helping the spontaneity.

30) We were told there is "trouble " every night in the single mens compounds (Red 1 and Whisky 2). A female guard we met outside the centre on Friday the 18th said she had just been sacked because she would not hit detainees with a baton, but a lot of the guards are big men and look like they could pack a good punch.

31) The overall feeling that I got, was that this centre designer should have been working at Guantamo Bay, or some such place, and that all these guards are dying to do something really important and security-oriented, but they have only these harmless refugees to bully, so they will practice on them.

32) This place seems to be designed for creating maximum psychological distress in the detainees, and perhaps in the guards, and I suspect this will lead to disastrous results.

33) The thing that made me want to pass on the information is that I keep hearing from people like A Just Australia, how Woomera is going to be closed and isn't that a good thing, and that Baxter is the new family-friendly place. I dread to think of what sort of monstrosity they have built on Christmas Island.

I keep waiting for good news.

Sara Saint-Saens