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End Privatisation
of Immigration Detention Centres |
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Back in September 2004, four men and one woman were roughly and without notice thrown into a van and driven via Mildura to Baxter detention Centre at Port Augusta. They were locked in individual compartments in a van with faulty air conditioning. They were allowed no toilet breaks or food, and three of them were denied water. Global Securities Limited (GSL) guards watched their discomfort on cameras in the front cabin. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner John von Doussa’s report was tabled in Parliament today. Get it here. These people were lucky that it was September and not January. They survived, unlike the aboriginal man driven 952 kilometres by GSL guards, in the back of a van on Australia day this year in 45 plus degree heat. He died a horrible, painful, brutal death. He cooked to death. The GSL guards either took no notice or did not watch the cameras. It may be years before a coronial inquiry investigates how and why the guards did not think to give him a drink or check that the sealed van was not too hot. Read more here. In December 2007, yet another man died in the care of GSL guards at a Sydney hospital after being rushed there from Villawood. Say that this failed policy must cease in the name of humanity and decency! There have now been two failed contracts, the first with ACM and the second with GSL. The previous government failed its moral and ethical responsibility to treat people with care and respect by abrogating their responsibility to these brutes.
A 300 million dollar
plus contract is up for grabs right now, and the private security contractors
and legal firms doing due diligence are desperate to see this government
largesse in their pockets. There is intense pressure on the new government
to maintain the deals which saw the private sector snouts in the trough
of the public purse. We are waiting for the new Labor government to keep their promise made at the ALP Policy Conference 2007 to END THE PRIVATISATION OF DETENTION CENTRES. The HREOC report tabled in Parliament today gives Senator Evans ample reason to say no to the global security companies. Pamela Curr |
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