Copyright © 2010 Queensland Muslim Times. All Rights Reserved.
NEWS & EVENTS
Christmas Island Asylumseekers need your help!
There are a growing number of asylum
seekers in detention on Christmas Island. As the island is extremely remote -
Asylum Seekers Christmas Island
(ASCI) is the only non-
There
are a number of ways you can help Christmas Island detainees:
1. There are plenty of people in detention who would like to receive letters. Any queries about letter writing please Lisa Hartley email on letters@asylumseekerschristmasisland.com.
2. We are still desperate for reading material and DVDs in Dari, Farsi, Arabic, Indonesian, Tamil, Vietnamese and Burmese. Feel free to send pens to ACSI or asylum seekers on the island as well because the security contractor Serco is now making detainees purchase them from the canteen rather than supplying them.
Please send them to:
Asylum Seekers Christmas Island
PO Box 681
Christmas Island WA
6798
Unless you are sending quite a few books, can parcels please be sent via EXPRESS
POST. Even if it sent by air mail it still ends up going by sea, which takes between
2-
3. Quite a diverse group of asylum seekers exists: Afghan Hazaras, Iraqis, Kurds, Iranians, Burmese Rohingyas, and Tamils and Sinhalese from Sri Lanka. If anyone has contact with organisations or mainland communities who could assist specific ethnic groups please email Michelle Dimasi on michelle@asylumseekerschristmasisland.com
(Michelle lives on Christmas Island, visiting those in detention along with writing her PhD about Christmas Island community responses to Australia's asylum seeker policy
4. Detainees have previously been able to receive mobile phones, so long as
they did not have a camera and were cleared by security contractor Serco. In recent
weeks, detainees are being told they are no longer allowed to have mobile phones.
Several detainees currently have phones that were sent in before the “new rule”.
They have not been confiscated but once those phones leave the centre no more will
be allowed in
Not only is this ban on mobiles unfair to Christmas Island detainees,
who have been sent phones from friends, advocates and relatives on the mainland,
it symbolises how asylum seekers who arrive by boat in an excised territory and then
detained in an island maximum security centre are treated as second class asylum
seekers with lesser rights than those that arrive by air. Mainland detainees are
allowed mobile phones. Why should it be any different on Christmas Island?
We are
asking all ASCI supporters to write to the Department to express their disappointment
in this new rule and ask why should the mobile phone policy on Christmas Island be
any different to mainland detention centres?
All emails should be sent to Mr Bob Correll who is one of DIACs Deputy Secretaries
and deals with Christmas Island detention at: Bob.Correll@immi.gov.au
Can all emails
be cc’d to DIAC’s Secretary Mr Andrew Metcalfe at this
address: Andrew.Metcalfe@immi.gov.au
Thank
you for your support!
From the team at ASCI
Letter To The Editor
