Scores protest outside Villawood detention centre


More than 100 people are protesting outside Sydney's Villawood detention centre as part of a nationwide demonstration against mandatory detention.

The refugee activists marched from a train station at nearby suburb Chester Hill.

Protesters argue a recent parliamentary committee report provides further evidence that mental illness is widespread across the detention network.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesman James Supple says the protest shares support in the community.

"We think it's very important that protests like this happen to break down some of the isolation and hopelessness that people inside detention feel, and to bring a message that there are substantial numbers of people in the community that would rather see them welcomed," he said.

Last month, a parliamentary inquiry into immigration detention centres recommended asylum seekers be detained for no longer than 90 days.

A majority of members of the joint committee said asylum seekers who passed initial health, character and security checks should immediately get a bridging visa or be moved to community detention.

The inquiry also called for a change to the current situation where the immigration minister was also the legal guardian of unaccompanied children in detention.


www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-09/scores-protest-outside-villawood-detention-centre...


Come on Regressives, the only reason you lot want to inflict mental illness is to decrease your own quality of medicare.

You people just like shooting your own foot.

adelcrow wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 4:46pm:


When you put it that way it makes me kinda think its safer to keep them in there to save whoever they would bash if they werent bashing them.

Spot

____ wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 5:12pm:



http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/lid-lifted-on-the-ugly-80s/2005/11/24/113270...




While the graphic photo of the bruised and bloodied face of left-wing Labor MP Peter Baldwin has remained etched in the public conscience since his bashing 25 years ago, those responsible have never been brought to account.

Now, Joe Meissner, one of the central figures in the controversy, has broken his silence. Meissner, an importer as well as one of Australia's top-ranked poker players, claims it was "suggested to Tom [Domican] that Baldwin be fixed up and it developed from there". Meissner claims that Domican organised two associates to do the bashing.

When asked who had suggested this to Domican, Meissner replied: "Who else, our good friend Graham [Richardson]. Ask him."

Richardson, who later became a federal minister and a powerbroker within the ALP, was state secretary of the party at the time. He categorically denies knowing anything about the bashing of Baldwin. "I've got no knowledge of who did it or who organised it but they were obviously acting on a frolic of their own because it was madness."

On July 16, 1980 Baldwin, a member of the NSW upper house, was attacked at his home in Marrickville. He suffered a compressed fracture of the cheekbone, a broken nose, a broken upper jaw and had a number of teeth knocked out.

According to Baldwin's police statement, which the Herald has obtained, the last thing he recalled was arriving home that evening to find the orange plastic lamp in his loungeroom pulled out of the socket. As he tried to plug it back in, he was set upon.

While Baldwin told police he could not identify his attackers, he provided police with the names of suspects - one of whom was Meissner - who that year had been convicted of assaulting footballer Paul Ward and before that had been involved in illegal casinos, brothels and had been to jail over the theft of submachine-guns.

Baldwin explained in his statement that Meissner, who was the secretary of the Enmore branch of the ALP, and Marrickville mayor John Harrison both harboured ambitions of becoming the state member of parliament.

Baldwin's investigations had uncovered not only the rorting of the books in the Enmore branch but that Meissner's own membership was illegal because he lived in Double Bay.

"So in other words his whole political aspirations which he was quite explicit and clear about … had gone down the drain and that was all attributable to me," Baldwin told the police.

Baldwin also identified underworld figure Domican as a likely suspect. Domican was employed as Harrison's driver but was seen by many to be acting in the more sinister role as the mayor's bodyguard

salad in wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 5:27pm:

Yea, I wish they would, most inmates at Villawood are pommy or pacific island visa over stayers. No surprises there though, 99.98% of illegals in OZ are visa over stayers.

I think Australia must ensure it keeps the Aussie citizens safe first of all.

Terrorists can be hiding as refugees you know.

You must take big care to make sure you do not make allowance for their sad stories because it can be fake you know.

That is my view on this,

skippy. wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 5:50pm:


I has personal experience in my country of terrorists pretend to be refugees.

It do happen and Australia should be care who it allow into it.

Theres also Israelis overstaying their visas and ending up in detention centres as well 

Avram Horowitz wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 5:52pm:




Terrorists, like Israeli secret service can forge passports and enter via airports.

Israel–New Zealand passport scandal

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel–New_Zealand_passport_scandal