Australia’s Christmas Island, which is infamous for detaining asylum-seekers and refugees, is facing national and international criticism after protests broke out at the island’s detention center following the death of an Iranian Kurdish detainee who was trying to escape.
Refugee activist Sarah Ross told teleSUR earlier Monday that no guards were visible on the site in the morning, while fires burned out of control and detained asylum seekers continued protests against poor conditions in the isolated facility.
The country’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed that authorities are still in a “stand-off” with detainees as they struggle to negotiate with those detainees involved for control of the center.
But as news of the unrest spreads, politicians and public figures in the country are urging the government to disclose the conditions refugees and detainees are facing at the center, calling the situation an Australian “crisis.”
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"The situation inside the Christmas Island detention center now is very tense,” said Greens Senator, Sarah Hanson-Young to the press on Monday morning. “There are no guards inside the facilities from what those inside have been reporting to my office and others. We understand that Serco officers have surrounded the facility on the outside but inside it is not controlled."
"There is a crisis inside Australia's immigration detention centers and it is time for the government to start being upfront with the Australian people about what is going on and to ensure a proper independent investigation and review of the conditions and of the management of the facilities," she added.
Reports indicate that it was the tragic death of Iranian Kurdish refugee, Fazel Chegeni, that was the tipping point that sparked a rebellion at the detention center.
“Once one of the compound succeeded in doing that the rest of the compound followed suit and then we pretty much banded together and got all the segregation guys out as well,” a detainee told Radio New Zealand.
“This recent death has just pushed everyone a bit too far," the detainee told Radio New Zealand.
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Officials say Chegeni was found dead outside the detention center on Sunday morning. But reports from Australia’s ABC News indicate that inmates were suspicious that officials at the detention center may have been involved in Chegeni’s death.
"The death (of the Iranian man) is very, very suspicious," 25-year-old detainee Matej Cuperka told the ABC, adding that ex-convicts who had their Australian visas canceled started the clashes.
"They (the inmates who are rioting) believe Serco officers did something to him,” he said.
“I clearly heard him in the morning screaming for help, and the next thing I see they be bringing him in a body bag, and after that the whole place went into lockdown. About 30 people started a fight with the emergency response team in front of the medical (clinic) where officers left their stations and put the place in lockdown,” the detainee said.
“They are setting fires everywhere," Cuperka added.
According to a statement from the Refugee Action Coalition, “Fazel was suffering the effects of long-term, arbitrary detention.”
“Fazel had attempted suicide when he was in Melbourne; again when he was in Brisbane, and then again in Wickham Point not long before he was transferred to Christmas Island,” the organization said.
Immigration and asylum-seekers are tense political topics in Australia. Various governments have set hardline policies against migrants and refugees seeking to reach Australia, sending them to Christmas Island, Manus Island and Nauru in the South Pacific.
However, human rights groups and even the U.N. have long criticized the conditions on the offshore detention facilities, saying that the conditions are often brutal and are most likely a violation of international law.
