Honouring the Mandaeans held captive
in Australia's Gulag
Free the Mandaeans
a plea for action
a worldwide campaign
I Will Write Freedom Till I Die
I WILL WRITE FREEDOM TILL I DIE
written in blood by a Mandaean detainee on a wall of Woomera detention Centre in Australia.
To what extremes must one endure to use their very own life blood to write upon the walls in protest?
In Australia, people are imprisoned like animals, treated inhumanely, and mercilessly persecuted in prison-like concentration camps. Their crime? To flee a land of persecution and find freedom, a place to live without
being terrorized and tortured. They came to Australia to find a helping hand; instead they were shown the cruel, iron fist of the Australian Government. Who instead of helping these poor refugees made an example of them to further propagate their political agenda of
xenophobic policies. The government wrongfully imprisoned them in `detention centres' (a nice term for concentration camps), tortured them mentally and physically, then cut them off from the outside world
to strip them of all hope and humanity. This treatment continues to this very day, and in ever worsening conditions.
The community of Mandaeans, across the world and from many different countries, plead on our knees that some course of action be taken by
the international community to aid these tormented people. We wish them to be freed from their slave bondage by the Australian Government; either acknowledge them as refugees or allow them to go to
countries which will accept them as refugees. It is the Australian Government that has imprisoned them,made them suffer inhumane treatment, and keeping them from leaving and from their loved ones.
What purpose could the government have in this? Is it not more
economically and socially sound to help them on their way instead of imprisoning them? The answer is simple; they wish these people to suffer mercilessly to make an example of them to others who would want to seek freedom by going to Australia
Curtin, Woomera, and Baxter; these are three of the camps which house oppressed, refugee, Mandaean prisoners. Many others exist, scattered across the Australian continent far from any civilized city. In these camps, Mandaeans endure brutal treatment along with many other people of different creeds.
The conditions of Baxter are ostentatious, they rival some of the worst ever crafted by man. First, the numbers: 239 people, 155 adult men, 32 adult women, and 52 children. Fifty-two innocent children being
held by the government in camps, which make grown men break down mentally. The psychological trauma that everyone endures at these camps is devastating, but to these children, it is worse. One a single note is a
picture drawn of a primitive catapult to launch someone over the razor wire electric fences. It is drawn in crayon, with the message, "It is possible, the way to freedom." But, perhaps the worst of this is
the children who are too sick to write the ones who need desperate medical attention that the Australian Government denies them. A father, who has been imprisoned for two years in Port Hedland Detention
Centre, writes a simple note on poor quality paper with a cheap pen. An excerpt from the letter reads:
"I have two daughter 8 and 4 years old my younger daughter is sick. she has a heart problem and asthma and need special medical care and open heart surgery. I am stuck in the camp and don't know what to do to
help my family. I met with Dimia and ACM and asked them to help me. but they didn't. I asked Red Cross to help. but they refused so the only source of hope for me in this dark place are good Australian people."
A father who is helpless to save his dying daughter of 4 years of age, all because of the Australian Government's policy on refugees. And who are these terrible refugees that must be imprisoned under such
inhuman terms. Some of these refugees are the Mandaeans. These people represent a small religious minority that has lived under intimidation and
harassment by their oppressors in Iran and Iraq for centuries. However, in recent years because of turmoil and rigid Islamic rules in Iran and Iraq, the Mandaean people have been suffering a great deal of hardship
such as persecution, religious repression and discrimination, violation of human rights, and inequality from both social and government authorities. These people are composed of a highly educated, skilled, and hardworking group. In recent years have left their native lands in hope of finding new homelands that will give them the protection and
human rights that every human being is entitled of.
The Mandaeans came to Australia's shores where they expected to find freedom from opposition, freedom to pray in peace, freedom to go to school and learn, freedom to live unafraid, freedom of justice. Instead they were met with a government determined to use the Mandaeans along with others to deter future refugees from coming to Australia.
By making his or her life so miserable, no refugee would dare to think
about coming to Australia. The results of forced detention and the conditions of the camps have been documented by media sources worldwide:
The Guardian ran a report of a first hand visit to Baxter and the conditions within. The report stated
*All of the compounds are constructed in a circular fashion with a continuous facade. There are no outward looking windows.
*Each of the compounds has at least two guards on duty.
*There are many cameras in each compound. The only place to be out of camera range is to stay in your room, or in the toilet
*Detainees told us that it takes five days to receive medical attention, and that when you do you will be told to drink lots of water and given Panadol for every ailment.
*There is no education happening for the children.
*The people we met and talked of included a pharmacist, goldsmiths, engineers, teacher, electricians, psychiatrist, many students, a person
who had read all of Shakespeare's works in Farsi, and were familiar with most of the Western classical traditions in literature and music, boys from
Afghanistan who want to go to school, to contribute to Australia; children who love math, physics, and chemistry and can't wait to go to university.
*One woman knits a jumper, then unravels it and knits it again to keep herself occupied.
*One television channel, but the picture is ghostly, two videos per week,
*People my age looked 20 years older, haggard and saddened.
* Two men were taken to isolation for not saying`please'. They were told they had to say please before they were given a glass to drink from.
* People who ACM wishes to punish are placed in isolation. Cells are single rooms with a toilet. The room is fitted with cameras so people know they are being watched on the toilet. Food is brought to the
cell
*The sentence in isolation ends when ACM chooses to bring a document which the isolated person signs, admitting to ACM's version of what preceded the lockdown and promising not to do `it' again.
*As with all prisons, `order' is maintained with physical and chemical restraints, cameras, electricity, Valium, Zoloft, and Terazepam.
Thomas Crosbie Media quotes Commonwealth Ombudsman Ron McLeod as saying ''I also expressed the view that immigration detainees have lesser rights than convicted criminals held in jails and that they were
being held in an environment that appeared to have a weaker accountability framework.''
Guards have be given the power to strip search detained illegal migrants - including children as young as 10"
The United Nationals High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers has stated that "Among asylum seekers there may be refugees who have fled persecution and many have suffered torture and trauma in their countries of
origin. These refugees should not be put through an additional ordeal."
CNN reports that "a United Nations human rights envoy has slammed conditions in Australia's Woomera detention camp, saying the situation there in many cases was "inhuman and degrading".
The BBC's report on a young boy quotes Robert Manne (professor at La Trobe University) "The boy is dying from grief. This is the logical outcome of a system of mandatory detention for everyone for a protracted
period."
According to The Middle East Times " at a recent conference examining the effects of mandatory detention, psychiatrist Derek Silove cautiously listed the similarities between the detention camps and Nazi
concentration camps. "
ABC Television broadcasted a secretly filmed tape that shows the everyday reactions of a young boy. "He does not speak and refuses to eat and drink since seeing a detainee attempt to kill himself by slashing his
wrists several months ago."
The Sydney Morning Herald report on a visit to Woomera where "Younger children asked us why there are no flowers in Australia."
Kris Janowski, a spokesman for UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). States that "Our position on this is well known. We oppose the detention of asylum seekers, especially the detention of minors. In our view, people can be detained only
for a short time while their identity is being determined."
Amnesty International reports that a three-year-old boy had been placed in leg restraints at Woomera, and later kept with his father in a suicide-proof cell without windows, toilet or a shower for 13 days.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio reports that three children were deprived of food for 32 hours while being transferred from Villawood across the continent to the Port Hedland. The parents had asked the staff to save food for the sleeping children, but were refused and the children were forced to go hungry.
These horrible conditions are not adequately described using words, for one must see the hell that these detention camps truly are. It would make anyone who has a soul cry or grow sick to his or her stomach. We
implore you to aid the Mandaeans of these detention centres to send them to freedom; to be let out of this prison from which they were placed without crime. Any help will be greatly appreciated to free these
detainees, and as Mother Theresa once said, "If you can not feed one hundred people, then just feed one."
When you go home tonight, to your families, and your children or grand children look you in the eye and ask you what you have done today, please have the answer be, "I have helped free a people who were suffering and made the world a better place." Instead of, "I
allowed hundreds of men, women, and children suffer under tyranny and die at the hands malice and persecution." We can ask no more, then to aid us to do what is right and just, in the name of humanity.
In closing, we thank you for your time, this opportunity, and the aid you may give, leaving you with one final thought:
"I said, 'We don't come here for a room. We don't come
here for clothes. We don't come here for handouts. We
come here for freedom to live. I said, 'If you
understand, you tell all people outside.' (A Mandaean
voice from Woomera)
Please Sign the Petition to Australia's Minister For Immigration - Phillip Ruddock
