Destination Woomera
: Tear Gas and Water Cannon
by Helena Janson 25 September, 2001
 |
Demonstrators gather outside the detention centre in
Woomera |
Tear gas and a water cannon were used against the people who live behind the barbed and razor wires at Woomera Detention Centre on Saturday 22 September.
About 200 people, who had travelled to Woomera in South Australia to protest the locking up of refugees and asylum seekers, watched the police turn on the detainees.
"It's despicable. It's indefensible. I have never seen anything like it. Never," Tanya McConvell, of Refugee Action Collective in Canberra, said. "It was a gratuitous show of force that was totally unnecessary."
Natasha Verco, a member of Refugee Action Collective in Sydney, cried when she saw the water cannon and tear gas being sprayed at the detainees. "But every time they protest or we protest they face reprisals inside the detention centres. So they know that, and we know that," she said. "If we didn't protest they would be in a worse position psychologically."
The protest was organised by the Refugee Action Collective and gathered people from Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney.
Grace Gorman from Melbourne decided to go to Woomera and take action, after she watched "The Inside Story" on Four Corners (13 August 2001), when the lawyer on the program said in effect, 'Evil happens when good people do nothing'.
"There I am sitting in my ?jamas' watching Four Corners. I'm a good person, you know, and I am doing nothing. And I thought, I can't sit by and let this happen."
The protest started off peacefully on Saturday morning and took place 500 metres away from the detainees. The South Australian Police, the Australasian Correctional Management, and the Department of Immigration had closed the road and the area around the centre.
Two police officers were filming the demonstrators outside the fences. One officer said that the footage would be used for police training purposes, but he wouldn't exclude the possibility of the film being used for later identification of the protesters.
Demonstrators on the outside held banners with "Welcome" printed on them. Kites flew in the air. Music played out of loudspeakers and demonstrators danced, waved and jumped up to communicate with the detainees on the inside. Several hundred detainees waved back and cheered.
"I know when they saw us they felt really good. When they waved back at us we felt really good," McConvell said.
Then suddenly, after a couple of hours, the peaceful protest
was shattered. The police started using the tear gas and the water cannon on the detainees. The protest got louder and the line of demonstrators moved closer to the detainees. The police got tougher and stopped the demonstrators after about 100 metres.
"They put a good show on in an attempt, I think, to punish us by making us see it and be helpless," McConvell said.
Shocked and angry, the demonstrators screamed and chanted. "The whole world is watching," echoed through the remote landscape, followed by "Open the borders. Close the camps. Free the refugees."
Some protesters felt guilty by watching the scene unfold in front of them. "If you go further [closer to the detainees] they will get hurt more," the police argued. "They are gonna get hurt anyway," some protesters yelled.
"We saw it and it happened while we were there. That doesn't mean we made it happen. It happened without us:The fact that we were there meant we became eyewitnesses to what happened. That's important," Tanya McConvell said.
The reason why tear gas and a water cannon were used is not clear. The police claimed that the detainees had cut a hole in the fence and therefore it was legitimate to use force to restrain them.
Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock later blamed the demonstrators for provoking the disturbance inside the detention centre.
"The idea that we caused it, I think, treats the detainees as if they are passive or little children, which has a danger of being racist in itself,"
Bruce Krobloch, an activist in Refugee Action Collective, said. "We should remember that the first people to protest about mandatory detention were the detainees themselves."
Natasha Verco suggested that the argument that the protesters provoked the detainees contained an element of racism. "We don't incite them. They are very aware political actors, and that's probably one of the reasons that they are inside the detention centres. They know what they are doing and they make choices in the situations they are in."
Later on, in the afternoon, four detainees managed to get over the barbed and razor wires, but were quickly stopped by the waiting police, and walked back into the centre.
The detainees clearly knew they weren't going to succeed in their escape with such high security forces surrounding them. It was a symbolic act on their behalf, representing an escape from inhuman conditions on the "inside".
Verco was amazed that the people inside the centre had the courage and passion to keep on fighting. "I can't comprehend how they can keep on struggling in the situations they are in, and what they've been through, and with the sure knowledge that trying to escape will give them a criminal sentence which will definitely harm their chances of asylum."
Krobloch agreed. "Any protest in circumstances where you are already locked up and traumatised is very, very courageous."
The 44-hour long bus trip from Sydney to Woomera and back was more than worthwhile, Krobloch thought. "I think it was important that we were there to show the people inside and people around Australia that we are prepared to travel. And that the government's plan of isolating refugees in far away places can be thwarted by our actions."
Following the protest, some of the Woomera detainees phoned Cyrus Sarang, a spokesperson for Refugee Action Collective, and expressed their appreciation to the people who had travelled there. "Shake hands with all the protesters", they said to him. "We thought we were forgotten."
(Helena Janson is completing her Master of Journalism degree at UTS.)