Hunger strikers set to unsew their lips
By Rebecca Di Girolamo, Matthew Spencer and Barclay Crawford
29jan02
The Australia
DETAINEES protesting in the Woomera detention centre last night agreed to unstitch their lips in a significant breakthrough in the 14-day hunger strike.
A statement by one of the detainees, Hassan Varasi, released late yesterday, said the Afghani asylum-seekers agreed to remove their stitches as a gesture of goodwill to the Australian community and to on-going negotiations with the federal Government's Independent Detention Advisory Group.
"We, the Afghani people at the Woomera detention centre, will unstitch our lips out of respect for IDAG and the Australian community and for the sympathy we have for the recently arrested ABC reporter," the statement read.
Detainees in Melbourne's Maribyrnong detention centre in Melbourne also made a concession yesterday, ending their six-day hunger strike.
The group of 35 detainees began their hunger strike in support of the Woomera, Curtin and Port Hedland detainees. But yesterday, the Maribyrnong asylum-seekers called on detainees at other centres to consider ending their "destructive" and "violent" action.
The Woomera strikers' concessions came as the Catholic Church yesterday demanded the release of all women and children held in detention centres around the nation, as a first step in an overhaul of the federal Government's refugee policy.
Catholic Archbishop of Sydney George Pell yesterday said the Government's "policy of deterrence is being implemented at unacceptable moral costs". "We're speaking publicly now because I think we have an obligation to Christian principles and an obligation to the Australian people to explain the way we see the situation," Archbishop Pell said.
He said he recognised the Government's right to regulate immigration, but said there was deep unease within the church leadership about the hunger strikes and self-mutilation at Woomera.
Archbishop Pell's comments were backed by the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, Francis Carroll, who said there was widespread unease in the community about the situation in Woomera.
But Prime Minister John Howard repeated that the Government would not change its policy of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers.
"I respect their views, I don't always agree with them, but I certainly listen to them and I pay very considerable regard to what they have to say," Mr Howard said before departing for a World Economic Forum meeting in New York. "But we have no alternative and I want to make it perfectly clear that the Government will not be altering its current policy."
Up to 48 detainees stitched their lips as part of a protest against delays in the processing of visas and conditions within the Woomera centre, 600km north of Adelaide.
The 268 hunger strikers at the centre continue to refuse food. Four more Woomera children considered at risk were taken into state care yesterday, but there are no plans to remove 11 boys reportedly making suicide threats.
Six members of the Independent Detention Advisory Committee will return to Woomera to continue negotiations tomorrow. Yesterday, two committee members, Paris Aristotle and Harry Minas, publicly rejected comments by chairman John Hodges.
On Saturday, Mr Hodges claimed the hunger-strikers were solely responsible for their fate.
But Mr Aristotle said Mr Hodges's comments were "not constructive" as the negotiations were at "a delicate stage". Despite significant headway being made in the negotiations, many of the Afghani asylum-seekers still held a deep lack of confidence that their concerns were being heard, Mr Aristotle said. But he said there was no split within the committee.