Voices on the line
Tanya McConvell, 2003

I sit in my house dialling the number of the Baxter detention centre. The centre is 10 kilometres out of Port Augusta in South Australia. The number is engaged and engaged and engaged. Finally I'm through. 'Try again later, the line is busy.' If I can't get through, my mind fills with the possibilities. Is Ali lying naked on the floor of one of the isolation units on suicide watch? Has there been a disturbance? Is Ali hearing the cries of despair from the other units as people are handcuffed and legcuffed until they are silenced by officers with gags? When I get through I have to give Sayad's number, he is that number, he tells me.

If I can't get through, will Hossein think I have forgotten him? Or I'm too busy to bother? We can believe anything we imagine when communication is so difficult. At the beginning of the year there were no phone calls, no visits from inside or outside, no mail - for six weeks Baxter was locked down. I've never been inside a detention centre. I live in another world, a world the people have never experienced, because they were locked up when they got to this country. They were moved from one place to another by charter plane at night. They haven't seen how beautiful the country is or how loving and accepting people here can be. I've been ringing numbers for four years - Villawood, Maribyrnong, Woomera, Perth, Port Hedland and Curtin.

Good morning, this is Baxter Immigration Detention Facility! This is Beth! How may I help you?

Why do I find it hard to write about Baxter? I've talked about it enough! I've listened to the stories and there are too many already. Maybe because the words aren't enough. The page is sterile, the words neat and clear, with no sounds, no smell. When our eyes see the word Baxter, the page should explode! We should hear the sound of resistance, the cries of 'Azadi! We want freedom! We are human!'

Without 'trouble-makers', the world will never change!

We should hear the echo of the English words, learned from the mouths of the jailors: 'Fuck you! Fuck your rules - there are no rules! We should hear the laughter, the jokes of people refusing to accept the unacceptable.

Inspectors are searching rooms looking for weapons of mass destruction, hydrogen bomb, atom bomb, biological weapon, missile. So far they haven't found even one empty cigarette lighter!

The page should vibrate with the cries of joy, of the respect and solidarity with people who have broken in to Baxter with visits and phone calls and phone cards and gifts.

Our hands and feet are tied from this government. All the people, we cannot do anything. Those who want to help us, to free us, we will welcome you every time. Our wings have already been cut by this government so we cannot fly. If you come here we will kiss your feet. It will be honour for us.

Good afternoon, this is Baxter Immigration Detention Facility! This is Beth! How may I help you?

We should gasp and fall down crawling when the page explodes! Our eyes should burn from the gas. Our skin should turn black from the bruises made by the batons. We should be spattered and know it is the blood of people we love and depend on. We should slash our skin and open up the flesh, so that the pain of the wound, which will heal, blots out for a time the pain in our heart and in our head, which never goes away.

I read the newspapers. We are terrorist with terrorist plan. I read everything. Everything is against refugee- staring in front of me. We are living in five star accommodation? I talked with the officer. Where is my Foxtel? Where is my internet access? Where is my swimming pool? The officer agreed - its bullshit! There is no hope for refugee.

We should fall down, unconscious, because sometimes the body has to shut down. It needs to cut out the world of uniforms and fences and pieces of paper and arbitrary, ever changing rules. We should be struggling not to drown in tidal waves of anger, humiliation and despair.

The oppression and exploitation is a bad thing, but it is not the most dangerous thing. If the officer beats you in the head, that is a bad thing, but it is not the most dangerous thing. The most dangerous thing is when you are filled with the peace of the dead and tolerate everything and have no urge, no desire to act! The most, most dangerous thing is the death of our dreams.

Good evening! This is Baxter Immigration Detention Facility! This is Beth! How may I help you?

We should stare at the word Baxter and hear every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year for 2, 3, 4, 5 years tick away. Baxter steals the present, destroys the future and confuses, wipes out the past. When our eyes focus on the word Baxter, our nose is filled with the stench from the swamp of racism and nationalism.

Good evening! This is Baxter Immigration Detention Facility! This is Beth! How may I help you? .......Sorry, no incoming calls, by order of the Minister.

Now I would see the place I'd been ringing ever since it opened. Well, 'open' is an odd word. It opened for one day only, then closed around refugees brought from other detention centres - Woomera in South Australia and Port Hedland and Curtin in the North West of Western Australia.

In Curtin we could see through the fence. We could see the road which led to freedom, even if we didn't take it yet. Here in Baxter, we can't see out. We can only look up and see the sky.

Baxter closed around men, women and children. In the words of Phillip Ruddock, husband, father, Christian, Amnesty member, they are failed, unauthorised, unlawful non-citizens. Whatever they are going through, they brought on themselves. Whatever their experience, he is not responsible, nor is the Department of Immigration, nor is Australasian Corrections Management. They should go...........where? Home? Its impossible! Another country? They can't, no papers. Fight to stay? Yes! So they are held in administrative detention, deportation-ready behind electric fences under unrelenting floodlights.

Its really hard, like a prison with powerful electric fence, They have more experience now about detention centre. All over detention, cameras, electric doors, every door many officers. It is a total system of control. After you have called Woomera a hell-hole there is no word for Baxter. They want to make people mad, make people give up and go home! But we can't. We came here to ask for protection.

The people fight to be recognised. They go from court to court trying to correct the decisions of DIMIA officials and Refugee Review Tribunal members. Meanwhile they are detained by their adversary in the court. While they fight a legal battle with pieces of paper, the person they face has the power to change the rules through parliament. The arbitrary, ever-changing day to day rules are enforced by DIMIA using unaccountable, uniformed employees of a private security company, Australasian Corrections Management.

Fuck you
Fuck your rules
Fuck ACM
Fuck DIMIA
Fuck Phillip Ruddock
Fuck John Howard
Fuck your visa
Fuck your rules
THERE ARE NO RULES!

Hello, my friends in Baxter! This is Tanya, What can I do!

I stood on the hill looking across the red, scrubby, wavey country belonging to the first people. There it was, around four kilometres away. Baxter, standing alone, steel shining and bright with light. It is sterile and neat and clear like the black words on a white page. No cries, no moans, no shouts, no laughter! No sounds, no smells.

We are locked up, not free! It would bother us - better we can't see the stars!

Everyone who visited the scene of the crimes at Easter 2003 knows what is going on inside Baxter. Everyone who didn't go depends on journalists and the TV companies. So why didn't they ask the Minister, why? What is going on in Baxter? Why did he need an army to stop a few hundred kite-flying, bubble-blowing, balloon-holding health workers and teachers, building workers and students, actors and musicians, shop assistants and call centre workers, lawyers and ecologists, from communicating with a few hundred refugees, failed by the Australian rules. When they wrote in the newspaper 'Mr. Ruddock said everything was normal in Baxter', why didn't the neat and clear words explode from the page?

Our defeat? There are still not enough of us to free the people locked in Baxter. Our victory? The message received on Easter Saturday, 'We hear you, but not clearly. Well come, we love you!

DIMIA are the same like religious police in Iran. DIMIA are the same like Taliban. Governments and business men are everywhere. Oppression and injustice are in every country. We have a saying for this situation. Over all the world the sky is blue!

Some good young people went to trial in Port Augusta accused of what sound like qualities not crimes - harbouring and helping. On Good Friday 2002 at Woomera detention centre, they met the people whose images had exploded in January on their TV screens. The images were of people on hunger strike with razor wire cuts, of young men with lips sewn together. Confronted with the wire and the guards and the refugees, they could not answer the questions asked. 'Why is the Australian Government doing this to us? Why are we suffering? We ask for protection, not detention!' Now they are answering with another question, 'What are we going to do about this?'

OVER ALL THE WORLD, THE SKY IS BLUE!

Tanya McConvell 2003