A view of Australia's detention of asylum seekers and a search for an antidote to the dictum "might makes right"
Friday, August 19, 2005
Our own Guantanamo?
THE controversial detention centre development on Christmas Island has been labelled "Australia's Guantanamo Bay" by locals, concerned the facility resembles a military base. Read Nicolette Burke's article in the Herald Sun.
The Govt's insistance on proceeding with building such a huge detention facility on Xmas Island at such massive cost is truly bizarre.
I saw the site for the new centre, which had already been cleared back in mid-2003. When I was there again at the end of 2004, it was still just a cleared site, and they were only then digging up the roadside to lay the power cabling, water and such out to the site.
It is no wonder the locals suspect it is for some other quasi-military purpose.
Xmas Island has a bit of a history of plans for wierd and seemingly incongruous projects. There was briefly profitable casino - mainly reliant on a few corrupt Indonesian high rollers at the time of the Soeharto era - which now sits there slowly rotting. There was also the 'Space base' - I saw earthworks being done on that site in 2003 too, but nothing has ever been built there and I can't see that it ever will.
who knows what they'll end up doing on the detention centre site, but there's already been plenty of taxpayer's dollars spent, and we sure as hell don't need another detnetion centre now or in he forseeable future - we have plenty of empty and half-empty ones on the mainland.
1 comment:
The Govt's insistance on proceeding with building such a huge detention facility on Xmas Island at such massive cost is truly bizarre.
I saw the site for the new centre, which had already been cleared back in mid-2003. When I was there again at the end of 2004, it was still just a cleared site, and they were only then digging up the roadside to lay the power cabling, water and such out to the site.
It is no wonder the locals suspect it is for some other quasi-military purpose.
Xmas Island has a bit of a history of plans for wierd and seemingly incongruous projects. There was briefly profitable casino - mainly reliant on a few corrupt Indonesian high rollers at the time of the Soeharto era - which now sits there slowly rotting. There was also the 'Space base' - I saw earthworks being done on that site in 2003 too, but nothing has ever been built there and I can't see that it ever will.
who knows what they'll end up doing on the detention centre site, but there's already been plenty of taxpayer's dollars spent, and we sure as hell don't need another detnetion centre now or in he forseeable future - we have plenty of empty and half-empty ones on the mainland.
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