Protesters help refugees escape Australian camp
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Your support makes all the difference.Up to 20 asylum-seekers, including one child, escaped from an Australian detention centre yesterdayby cutting and scaling razor-wire fences while hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police.
Up to 20 asylum-seekers, including one child, escaped from an Australian detention centre yesterdayby cutting and scaling razor-wire fences while hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police.
Activists had gathered at the Woomera detention centre to protest against the government's policy of detaining asylum-seekers in remote camps while their applications for refugee status are processed.
Twelve of the escapees were later recaptured by the police and immigration officials. During clashes with security guards, some of the protesters provided bolt-cutters for refugees to cut holes in fences, said a spokesman for the Immigration Department.
Up to a dozen refugees appeared to be bleeding after scrambling over the razor fences around the former missile base in central Australia, which holds 300 mostly Afghan and Iraqi asylum-seekers. Protesters immediately put new clothes on those who escaped and whisked them away from police, who then began scuffling with rioters.
Ten police on horseback rode into the crowd in an attempt to quell the escalating violence, but as they did more refugees broke out, some of them escaping through holes in the fences.
The state police said later that they had restored order and conditions outside the centre were "calm and peaceful". Officers were continuing to search for the remaining asylum-seekers who had escaped.
The situation inside the detention centre remained volatile and security officers were forced to use tear gas against detainees who flung chairs, rocks, bed posts and rubbish bins at staff.
The riot came at the end of a day of protest outside the camp, which has often been the scene of hunger strikes by refugees held under Australia's tough policy of detaining all asylum-seekers who arrive in the country illegally. The policy has drawn criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups.
Refugees, including young children, are locked up until their asylum applications are dealt with – a process that can take up to three years. The government operates five detention camps that are kept deliberately spartan to discourage more asylum-seekers heading to Australia.
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