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Rooftop Protest Continues at Australian Asylum Center

   Phil Mercer | Sydney 21 September 2010
   Asylum  seekers  hold a protest on the roof of the Villawood detention
   center in Sydney, Australia, 21 Sep 2010

Photo: AP

   Asylum  seekers  hold a protest on the roof of the Villawood detention
   center in Sydney, Australia, 21 Sep 2010

   Tensions  remain high at an Australian immigrant detention facility as
   a  group  of  detainees  continue a rooftop protest. The demonstration
   follows  the  death  of  a  Fijian inmate who apparently jumped to his
   death Monday.
   Australian  authorities  spent  Tuesday  negotiating with 11 detainees
   holding a protest on the roof of a building at the Villawood detention
   center in Sydney.
   They  began  the  protest  Monday  after  a Fijian detainee apparently
   committed  suicide  by leaping from the roof after learning his asylum
   request had been rejected and he would be deported.
   The  detainees  - Sri Lankan Tamils, an Iraqi and an Iranian - ask the
   authorities to reconsider their asylum applications. There are reports
   the  men's asylum requests have been denied and they face deportation.
   Australian  officials,  however,  have not confirmed the status of the
   applications.
   Negotiators  appealed  to the men to end their protest, and large mats
   have  been placed on the ground to cushion the fall should any jump or
   fall.
   Refugee advocate Brami Jagen says the men are desperate.
   "Apparently they'd had a visit from an immigration official earlier in
   the  week who'd said that, given that the situation in countries - and
   he'd  named  a few countries - was getting better, or was better, they
   could  expect that some of them or more of them could be sent home and
   this  had  kept  them  in  a  real  heightened state of anxiety," said
   Jagen.   "You  know,  two  of  the guys from Afghanistan that we, our
   group,  met  with,  they were just bawling their eyes out because they
   were  so  upset  and  scared. And I think that's kind of the mood that
   then, kind of escalated when they saw this, this young man die."
   The  sprawling  Villawood  immigration  center  holds inmates who have
   overstayed  their  visas and are awaiting deportation as well as those
   who have applied for asylum.
   Australia  generally  detains migrants who enter the country illegally
   while  their  requests for asylum are processed. But detention centers
   have  become  overcrowded because of a steady influx of asylum seekers
   by boat in the past 18 months.
   The  government  wants  to  open  a refugee center in neighboring East
   Timor  to  deter  boat  people  from  making  the  hazardous voyage to
   Australia.
   Australia  grants  visas to about 13,000 refugees a year under various
   international resettlement programs.

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