Asylum Seekers Protest Indefinite Detention in Australia

The United States and Australia have a lot in common: Both are predominantly English-speaking countries. Both are former British colonies, settled by Anglo-Saxons who more or less wiped out the indigenous peoples whose land they stole. They even invaded Iraq together. Good times.

And just like in the U.S., there's a vocal segment of the population in Australia that believes that, its rape and pillaging by European settlers now complete, there is no longer room enough for anyone else -- sorry folks, country's full. That we-got-ours sentiment helps explain, in part, the Australian government's policy of indefinitely detaining anyone who enters the country without a visa, whether they did so in search of better economic opportunities or to flee tyranny and repression.

Now some of those who left home searching for a better life only to end up wasting away, forgotten, in one of Australia's privately run detention centers are drawing attention to their plight with non-violent activism -- and they're making headlines.

Last week, roughly 250 asylum seekers imprisoned on Christmas Island, a remote territory that's actually closer to Indonesia than mainland Australia, began a hunger strike after they learned that one Iraqi man, Ahmad Al Akabi, was the latest detainee to commit suicide after being held for a year away from his family, his asylum application twice denied.

Then on Friday, 10 asylum seekers chose to go a step further in demonstrating their feelings of utter powerlessness, deciding that if their voices wouldn't be heard they might as well sew their mouths shut -- which they did. Over the weekend, several others reportedly did the same.

"I can confirm that further detainees have engaged in minor self-harm over the weekend," said a spokesman for the Christmas Island detention center on Monday, though he refused to "go into the nature of their self-harm." In total, roughly 150 detainees are currently engaged in various forms of protest, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

As Allison Kilkenny noted last month in a piece for Truthout, about 5,000 people are imprisoned on Christmas Island, which thanks to legislation passed by Australia's right-wing government in 2001 exists in something of a legal limbo: while considered Australian territory, those who land there are not entitled to apply for refugee status like they would had they reached the mainland, instead simply immediately deported or indefinitely detained.

Kilkenny also reported that there's money in detention -- a whole lot of it. Rather than run the facility itself, the Australian government has outsourced incarceration to Serco, known as "Australia's Blackwater." Even as a number of suicides at its facilities has attracted international attention -- in September, a man from Fiji killed himself at the company's facility near Sydney -- Serco "has made tremendous profits capitalizing on anti-refugee policies," Kilkenny wrote. "In the first half of 2009, Serco saw its profits rise by a third to $136.6 million due to an influx of contracts. Again, in the first six months of 2010, Serco reported a 21 percent rise in profits. It seems while many businesses are experiencing hardship and bankruptcy, the human incarceration business is booming."

Just as with Blackwater, the nominally private Serco makes all its money not by outcompeting its rivals in The Free Market (cue laugh track), but by assuming the role of the state. Budweiser can't go around jailing people without charge, but thanks to the Australian governent, Serco sure can. And unlike the state, it doesn't even have to pretend it's in the business for the betterment of society or some such nonsense -- no, it's in it to make money. And with a profit margin that's directly tied to incarcerating more and more people, you can be sure that a saner, more humane immigration policy isn't on the top of the company's agenda.

Photo Credit: Natalie Perkins