The daily protests inside Darwin detention centre are continuing. For the last five days, up to 70 asylum seekers have been holding hourly protests twice a day \u2013 between 12.00 and 1.00pm and from 6.00-7.00pm. More protests will happen today.<\/p>\n
The protests involve all nationalities in the detention centre\u2013 Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Burmese and Ahwaj Arab Iranian minority.<\/p>\n
The protests have banners saying, \u201cWe are prisoners in a land of liberty,\u201d and \u201cWe are human, stop playing with our lives and future,\u201d \u201cPeople smugglers and DIAC are the same, both of them playing with our life\u201d and another compares Australian detention with Guantanamo Bay.<\/p>\n
Frustration is growing inside the detention centre as Serco and immigration has ignored the demands of the protesters about long term detention. The dismissive proposals from Serco in response to the protests, to change the food, offer more fruit, bring singers into detention have only inflamed the tempers of the asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Most have been in detention at least a year, some two years. One of them, in detention for a year, has now been waiting six months to get a date for an appeal hearing after an initial rejection.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody comes to see us, nobody cares,\u201d one of the protesters told the Refugee Action Coalition, \u201cNew rules are made for new arrivals, but we are waiting and waiting and there is nothing for us. Everytime, Serco, and immigration say \u2018we know your problem but we can\u2019t do anything.\u2019 We need help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are self harm and attempted suicide every day and every night. A lot of people have mental health problem. People try to hang themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are urging the Immigration department to urgently respond to the situation in Darwin. The problems with mandatory detention need to be rectified as much as the government\u2019s mistaken obsession with off-shore processing in Malaysia,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe asylum seekers want someone from immigration department and give them some explanation and answers. There is no excuse for the long delays in processing. Asylum seekers were promised more than six months ago that processing would be sped up, but that hasn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing nothing is not an option. The protests will only escalate.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information contact Ian Rintoul mob 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The daily protests inside Darwin detention centre are continuing. For the last five days, up to 70 asylum seekers have been holding hourly protests twice a day \u2013 between 12.00 and 1.00pm and from 6.00-7.00pm. More protests will happen today. The protests involve all nationalities in the detention centre\u2013 Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Burmese and Ahwaj […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}