A WORLD TO WIN REDFLAG.ORG.AU ISSUE #177 19 JANUARY 2021 $3 / $5 (SOLIDARITY) Still here Still fi ghting REDFLAG | 19 JANUARY 2021 PUBLICATION OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE REDFLAG.ORG.AU 2 Red Flag Issue # 177 19 January 2021 ISSN: 2202-2228 Published by Red Flag Support the Press Inc. Trades Hall 54 Victoria St Carlton South Vic 3053 [email protected] Christmas Island (03) 9650 3541 Editorial committee Ben Hillier Louise O’Shea Daniel Taylor Corey Oakley rioters James Plested Simone White fail nonetheless. Some are forced to complete rehabil- Visual editor itation programs and told that when they do so their James Plested appeals will be strengthened. They do it. They fail. These are men with families in Australia. They Production are workers who were raising children. They are men Tess Lee Ack n the first week of 2021, detainees at the Christ- who were sending money to impoverished family Allen Myers mas Island Immigration Detention Centre be- members in other countries. Now, with their visas can- Oscar Sterner gan setting it alight. A peaceful protest, which celled, they have no incomes at all. This has rendered Subscriptions started on the afternoon of 5 January, had by partners and children homeless. and publicity evening escalated into a riot over the treatment Before their transportation from immigration fa- Jess Lenehan Iof hundreds of men there by Home Affairs Minister cilities and prisons on the Australian mainland, some Peter Dutton and his Australian Border Force. Four of these men could receive visits from loved ones. Now What is days later, facing down reinforced numbers of masked, they can barely, if at all, get internet access to speak to armed Serco security thugs and Australian Federal them. Without incomes, few of these men can access Red Flag Police, the detainees rose again in a second riot—a legal support. Some of them have lived lives scarred about? further act of resistance that demands our solidarity. by trauma, poverty, childhood sexual abuse and The men currently detained on Christmas Island racism—systemic injustices compounded now by the Telling the truth are hostages of the Australian government. The peo- system of state-sanctioned torture that is Australia’s The capitalist press is full ple who started the riot are among the roughly 240 immigration detention regime. of lies, distortions and people recently transported to the island from the There are men on Christmas Island who have never right wing bias. We need Australian mainland—people facing the possibility been charged with any crime, but who nevertheless an alternative press, free from corporate interests of indefinite detention. have been deemed to be of unsound character and a and government spin, to They are not refugees. They belong to another cate- risk to the Australian community. There are some provide news and analysis gory created by the Australian government within the who have signed agreements to be deported back to of major developments in broader framework of its barbaric immigration and countries they’ve barely set foot in—people who have our world. refugee policies. They are men being persecuted by an run out of hope and are just desperate to escape the increasingly draconian section of the Migration Act— situation they’ve been forced into. Supporting resistance Section 501—that gives Dutton the power to cancel Some have been waiting for six months or more, Those who own and visas on “character grounds”. It is a legal instrument but now cannot leave, either because of COVID-19 control the corporate created to divide people between “desirables” and restrictions or because the Australian government is media are hostile to people “undesirables” and categorise foreigners as suspicious intent on prolonging their torture. And there are men fighting for their rights. They make money out and a potential risk to Australian society. who are stuck in a horrifying catch-22—weighing up of the exploitation and A large number of the men are New Zealanders, the prospect of returning to continents and countries oppression of workers Maoris and Pacific Islanders. Alongside them are ravaged by COVID-19 against the alternative of endur- and the poor. Red Flag Sri Lankans, Rohingya, Iranians, Italians, Irish and ing endless detention. is a paper on the side of Malaysians. These are people who have been building When the first riot started on 5 January, men the oppressed, telling the lives in Australia—some for decades, some since they from two separate compounds within the detention story from our side and were children. Many are long-term or permanent res- centre began a peaceful protest that escalated into a giving solidarity to those idents—people who have no family or connections in collective attempt to fight their way out of their trap. in struggle. the countries to which the Australian government is They fashioned battering rams and other devices to attempting to deport them. get themselves onto the roofs of the buildings meant Fighting for socialism Red Flag is about more According to Section 501 of the act, visa holders who to lock down their collective rage—to break down the than just highlighting have been sentenced to twelve months or more in pris- barriers and walls meant to silence them and keep problems with the system, on, and are considered by the Minister for Home Affairs them from telling us what is happening to them. They or supporting individual to be of unsound character, can be placed in Australia’s went to the roofs to shout into the night, demanding struggles. It campaigns to immigration detention regime while awaiting deporta- their basic human rights—demanding their freedom. win people to socialism, tion. Sometimes they are left there for years. By the evening of 9 January, after reinforcements to convince them that the The criteria by which a visa holder is determined from the AFP and Serco arrived, a second riot began, revolutionary overthrow of to have failed the character test are unknowable. Peo- engulfing more of the detention facility in flames. capitalism is the solution ple’s lives can be destroyed at the whim of the racist Some incredibly brave detainees had managed to to the problems of society. authoritarians in the Department of Home Affairs release footage and statements via social media about Intervening in struggles and Border Force, with Dutton having the final say on what was happening inside the compounds they had Red Flag is an all decisions. by then broken out of, into other compounds that interventionist paper, Among the men transported to Christmas Island usually separate groups of detainees. bringing socialist are people who have committed drink-driving offenc- The detainees and sources within the detention arguments to the debates es, drugs offences, assaults—some crimes considered centre told us they were protesting against their trans- of today about how we can small and some larger. There are men there who have portation, against their incarceration, against racism, best mount a fightback. completed their prison sentences only to be abducted against the lack of access to legal representation, And while Red Flag will by Border Force agents upon their release. There are against their treatment at the hands of the hired thugs argue for the views of men who have been compelled to undertake indepen- from Serco who police their lives, against their forced Socialist Alternative, the dent assessments by psychologists and psychiatrists separation from family and friends, and against the paper is also a forum in Cover art by Tia Kass. which questions on the Back cover photo by who concluded that they are not a risk but whose ap- psychological and physical torture that fills each mo- left can be debated. Sean Stebbings peals against their deportation on character grounds ment they struggle to survive. REDFLAG.ORG.AU PUBLICATION OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE 19 JANUARY 2021 | REDFLAG 3 Footage posted online shows a fire burning inside the Christmas Island detention centre in early January SOURCE: 1 NEWS (New Zealand) abandoning “us Tangata Whenua” reported on The more riots and social media: “SERCO, ERT came in protests there are to get me, elbowing me while I was on the ground against this, the better with zip lock ties around my wrist. They were off we are. The more taunting and yelling at me things like ‘You’re the detention centres are tough guy with the big mouth talking to the me- burnt to the ground, the dia, say something now’.” Approximately more strongly will flare fourteen men accused of starting the riot have those flames of dissent been sent to solitary con- finement. They’re locked that keep alive the hope all day in tiny cells with nothing other than a bed, for a society built on a basin and a toilet. They, like most of the other de- tainees, now have even solidarity rather than less access to internet and telephone contact division, on justice and with family, advocates and supporters. The equality rather than internet has been shut down so only intermit- the barbaric reality of tent telephone access to wi-fi is available. Men are capitalism today. sleeping in the charred remains of burnt-out compounds, on concrete floors without blankets or basic sanitary items. Sources inside the de- In response to the second riot, AFP and Serco guards tention centre report that some detainees welcome the used tear gas. It was windy on Christmas Island, so the prospect of being charged with crimes associated with gas drifted throughout the compounds, causing men to the riot. Then they will be transported to prisons on vomit and retch, some of course with pre-existing med- the Australian mainland, where they will have more ical conditions inflamed by the attack.