Behind bars, they wait and rot

May 25, 2005

The real tragedy of those in the Baxter detention centre is the sheer waste, writes Christine Rau.

The clean-shaven farmer, named "A", is a 33-year-old Iranian Kurd. He has been in detention since 1999 and in Baxter for more than two years. His message was stark and doubly moving for its lack of bitterness: "Please stop. We are tired. We are all dying."

He said: "You have to be lucky to get out of these gates. They have to keep some people in here - it's just a policy. We know we are a victim of this policy.

"In Iran, with political prisoners, they kill you straight away. [Here] they will not kill us physically but little by little, one day at a time; we are gone, we are dying."

I visited Baxter to thank those asylum seekers who had brought the plight of my sister, Cornelia, to the outside world. She was one of more than 100 "accidental Australian detainees" whose cases are being investigated by an expanded but closed federal inquiry headed by the former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer.

These shy, mainly Middle Eastern strangers had different stories but similar messages. They asked that their names not be used. Most had had some contact with "Anna", as Cornelia called herself.

"P" had prepared a binder of newspaper clippings about her case. The 46-year-old has spent more than four years in Australian detention. Bearded, stocky and shy, he'd done a four-year agriculture degree in Iran. Like most of the 11 detainees I spoke to, he said he'd had "problems with [his] Government" and that his story was a long one.

He had specialised in wheat, barley and olives. Now: "We forget everything, our knowledge. Baxter is a big cage." His simple message was: "We don't want anything. Just visa. Just freedom."

The most poignant story was that of "H", a 28-year-old Iranian woman who had her 11-year-old son, "M", with her. "H" has not seen her husband for five years: he escaped to New Zealand. She tried to join him but was detained in Brisbane. She and "M" have been in Baxter for 19 months and for reasons she couldn't explain, she can't join her husband in New Zealand.

It was apparent "H" was on sedatives and she spoke quietly at first. But, later, despair added strength to her voice: "'M' has too much questions for me: 'What happened to my father? It's not fair.' I don't know what to answer to 'M'. My country's government not good. But I can't tell to 'M' what happened to me and his father, because he is a kid - he can't understand anything."

"M" goes to school in Port Augusta, which has swimming and cinema excursions. "He is happy to go to school. He doesn't like the holiday [when he stays in Baxter]", said "H".

Among the most haunted eyes I've ever seen were those of "N", 27. Wearing a beanie, bearded, and hunched into himself, he looked both impossibly young and impossibly old. I've never seen the legendary 1000-yard stare of war veterans, but this is what I imagined it to be. "N" is from southern Iran. He managed to laugh at something that was said. "When we laugh, we know I'm still OK," he said.

Approaching Baxter after a four-hour drive from Adelaide, what is most striking is how the majestic landscape dwarfs the detention centre. It's the stuff of classic Australian poetry: ochre, stony soil, stunted shrubs, vast plains and hulking ranges. And, in the middle, a silvery spider web of electrified fence: 9000 volts, we were told. The barrack-like structures of the compounds concertina into the distance.

Certainly, from the little visitors get to see, it's hard to imagine it cost $42 million to build. Or that it'll cost the Government $300 million to run places such as Baxter until 2007. There are about 100 long-term asylum seekers in Baxter now. Many detainees with visa violations are also there.

Only four of the nine big compounds are in use and they are designed so detainees can look only inwards and up at the sky, not out to the horizon.

You have to book visits at least 72 hours ahead by faxing in a three-page form. The corporation that runs Baxter, Global Solutions Limited, reserves the right to refuse entry to visitors. Any items, such as food, go through an airport-style scanner, and each visitor is scanned bodily. Then you run the gauntlet of seven steel doors, six of which require a guard to buzz you through. Visitors are allowed only in the visitors' centre near the main gate. The compounds remain hidden.

The regulars said the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, had made just one visit, more than a year ago. She had been escorted at 6am through an empty compound, Red 2, and had not talked to any detainees.

Few outsiders are permitted to see the notorious Red 1 compound, where Cornelia spent most of her 94 days in Baxter. Nor can they see the cells in the Management section - known as the punishment cells but ostensibly used for suicide watch. Cornelia also spent two weeks there, according to a Senate estimates committee.

"J" is a 37-year-old Iranian Christian who was in Red 1 with Cornelia and has been behind wire for more than four years. Tall and charismatic, "J" believes the refugee application process is arbitrary. He said some people with identical stories had opposite outcomes. Some were set free while others spent years in detention. He said refugee judges should explain their reasoning in greater detail.

The years of uncertainty, without education or outside work, take a psychological toll. "H" said of her son: "'M', in the night-time, he is waking up. He's come to my bed; say had a bad dream. I came to Brisbane. Police take me, and after that he is scared. Too much crying in the airport.

"'M' is 11 years old and can't go to toilet. He can't go to shower and close the door - he's too scared. In the night-time he is still wetting the bed. I spoke to the counsellor. She say: 'That doesn't matter, no problem; all kids is same as 'M'.' But I say: 'Yes, there is a problem. 'M' is nearly 12 years.' All the time in the night-time the light is on because he is scared. It is very, very hard."

When we left, there were so many stories untold. For me, the most tragic part of the visit was not the security, the remoteness or even the pervasive despair. It was the sheer bloody waste of keeping these talented and ordinary people locked up, at great financial and human cost. They could have been farming, boilermaking, doing IT work or raising children in our community, all of which they are qualified to do.

A chaplain who has visited Baxter more than 100 times said: "The whole beauty of this town [Port Augusta] has been forever tarnished by this obscenity. I'm proud of the Anzac tradition. My father fought in the Middle East in World War II. But this has, for the first time, made me ashamed to be an Australian. I've never lost as much sleep over any issue as I have over the past few years over this detention issue."

That night, one of the Baxter guards approached me and a friend of Cornelia's in Adelaide. He also did not want to give his name. He said: "I'd release them all tomorrow if I could. You see them getting ill and getting berserk because of the length of time they are in there. It's appalling the way [the Immigration Department] just lets them rot in there."


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