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Police probe asylum camp violence
By Grant Holloway
SYDNEY, Australia -- Australian police are investigating whether a string of arson and breakout attempts in immigration detentions centers over the past four days were deliberately orchestrated to put pressure on the government. Fires in four camps, and an unsuccessful breakout attempt on New Year's Eve from Sydney's Villawood center, have caused more than $4 million damage but no serious injuries have been reported. Australia has a controversial policy of mandatory detention for all asylum seekers with around 1,200 illegal immigrants, most from the Middle East and South Asia, currently being held. Conditions in the camps have been sharply criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups with some detainees having been held for more than three years with little prospect of release. Fires and riots in the camps have become commonplace, but some suspect this week's disturbances may have been deliberately orchestrated by refugee advocacy groups to refocus public attention on the detention issue. A total of 22 inmates have now been removed from Villawood and the remote Woomera camp in central Australia, and are being held in a maximum security jails, although no charges relating to the incidents have yet been laid. An Immigration Department official told Reuters Wednesday that conditions were now calm in the seven mainland centers as well as the Christmas Island facility which is located off Australia's northwest coast. "Investigations are now ongoing into all these incidents and security has been upgraded," the official said. Australia's acting Immigration Minister Daryl Williams told media there was not any substantial evidence of an orchestrated campaign of violence at the camps. "It seems more to be the case that once an incident occurs in one center, then other centers, detainees in other centers follow," he said. "But, no doubt the Federal Police in their investigations of the various incidents will be able to determine whether there is any orchestration." Williams denied suggestions the government had lost control of the centers. Tough stand"I think it's impossible to rule out incidents occurring, particularly where the detainees are determined to put pressure on the government to change their view about their (the detainees') right to stay (in Australia)," he said. Father Peter Norden, the Catholic chaplain at a Melbourne detention center, said the unrest was born from frustration and called for the government to look at other options to mandatory detention. "While no Australian citizen will respond positively to the extensive damage to the immigration detention centers ... it is now time to consider a more effective management approach than mandatory detention," Norden told reporters. But conservative Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed the recent protests, saying he will not be deterred from detaining illegal entrants. The government won broad public support for its tough stand after the number of mainly Middle Eastern and Afghan asylum seekers arriving by boat rose to 5,000 a year -- a trickle by world standards but a jump on the hundreds of five years ago. The government insists its tough policies work. No boatpeople have reached Australian shores in a year and the numbers in onshore detention centers have been halved. Reuters contributed to this report.
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