The Yongah Hill detention centre has been locked down this evening after growing numbers of asylum seekers have joined the roof-top protest that began around 3.30pm (Perth time).
Twelve asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, and from three compounds, Eagle, Hawke and Swan, are now on the roof.
The protest began with a couple of asylum seekers climbing onto the roof; numbers have grown throughout the afternoon.
The protest is over the long times in detention times as well as the general conditions.
Some of those on the roof have been detained for two and half and three years. One asylum seeker in Yongah Hill has been detained for almost six years.
“The protest is against IHMS [the health provider]; it is against Serco and it is against Immigration,” one Yongah Hill asylum seeker said.
There is no nurse at Yongah Hill after 5pm and none are on duty on weekends. There are complaints of racism and abuse by some of the Serco guards.
Yongah Hill was also the scene of a bashing by so-called criminal deportees on 5 March that left a Nigerian asylum seeker in a coma.
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713
