Darwin; 7 Refugee Convergence Activists Arrested

Activists arrested while trying to make contact with refugees in Wickham Point- Occupy Sydney offer full solidarity

by REFUGEE RIGHTS ACTION NETWORK on 8 APRIL 2012 

originally posted on rran site here 

Seven people from several Australian cities were arrested by Northern Territory police for trying to make contact with refugees inside the Wickham Point Detention Centre outside Darwin.

They were out at the remote site to show support to the 500 people locked up there for legally seeking asylum in Australia. The protest occurred the day after a refugee inside Wickham Point tried to commit suicide.

“This protest was meant to be a message to the Australian public and politicians that people are prepared to come out in these 40 degree conditions, and are prepared to challenge the police that defend a detention centre that locks up innocent people,” Jay Fletcher, spokesperson for the Easter refugee convergence said.

“Wickham Point is Australia’s newest and biggest detention centre, the government has built it to lock up 1500 people. But this site is considered ‘unfit for human habitation’ and locking up people in the middle of nowhere so no one can see them and help them.

“This system kills people, it has been killing people for 20 years.”

Police and private security had blocked the entrance to the centre when about 35 refugee supporters arrived. Last Thursday, representatives from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and private detention contractor Serco banned four refugee advocates from officially visiting the asylum seekers inside.

Mark Goudkamp, among the seven arrested, said: “The ‘approved site’ for our protest at Wickham Point was out of earshot and out of sight from the people we’d travelled across the country to support. Our simple attempt to reach an elevated point where we could interact with the asylum seekers, albeit still from a long distance, is clearly not what DIAC, Serco or the police want us to do.”

For more information, contact Jay Fletcher on 0438 819 131.

Proposed Stop Serco Action March 9th - 12th

OccupyPerth and other Occupy groups around Australia and New Zealand have started a campaign against Serco's profiteering off secretive private contracts to provide essential public services. To launch this campaign in Perth we holding an action on March 9, with the support of affected local unions, the Deaths in Custody action group, the Refugee Rights Action Network and Serco Watch. The action will take place outside the Serco office in Perth CBD.

Since Serco are an internationally active company, Occupy Perth would like to propose Occupy Sydney get involved and launch a similar campaign of your own. This group, Serco, is after all one of the biggest, shadiest corporations on the globe and they make most of their profits directly from the tax payer.

On March 9 the OccupyPerth will be collecting signatures for letters to various Government ministers (for one example, see the attached letter to our Health Minister).

We will also be handing out Serco-related leaflets with a request and information on how to "Call your minister" on the following monday, March 12th. These leaflets should give some certified facts and a basic run-down on what to say. We encourage all individual pressure groups involved, as well as other Occupy groups to create their own equivalent flyers and leaflets, reflecting their own local issues with Serco and the relevant local ministers to call. Occupy Perth will cover the general issue of keeping essential Public infrastructure out of profiteering private hands.

We currently have 3 main unifying points for our campaigning around Serco:

1) Keep essential public services in public hands (end privatisation).
2) Full public disclosure on Public-Private bidding processes and public auditing of all Serco contracts.
3) Prevent future profiteering from human misery.

There is just over a month of time to plan, so we would like to test our limits and try make this a well co-ordinated, public campaign. Would be absolutely delighted to have you on board and would especially appreciate any outreach you can do to other anti-Serco groups in your area (I suspect several unions would be in similar positions to ours, in regards to Serco).

Please send any questions or replies to @occupyperth ( Perth )
                                                          @chichtweets or @occupysydney ( Sydney )

The Serco Group - the biggest company you’ve never heard of.

• Governments all around the world contract to Serco
• Serco run half of Londons traffic lights and all of Dublins
• In Ontario, Canada Serco do the drivers licence testing
• Largest air traffic controllers in the world

-54 towers in the US
-Control Baghdad's air traffic
-Maintain the RAF’s squadron the queen flies on

• Transportation services are spread from Dubai to Adelaide
• The largest operator of prisons in the UK

-They increase the capacity in these prisons by placing beds in the toilets
-A 14yr old hung himself after being assaulted by an officer this was recorded as the youngest ever death custody

• In Bradford, all state schools in the district are run by Serco
• Serco have been running the UKs missile defence system since 1964
• They also look after Britains entire nuclear arsenal
• Hold contract for setting GMT (Greewich Mean Time) time
• The Annual Turnover has increased by 1200%

-1994 = $238 Million
-Now = $3 Billion+

• 85% of workforce are Ex-Public Servants -all training and resources to handle government contracts are therefore already provided
• In Australia Serco have a presence military base, immigration centre, 2 prisons and cross country trains such as: The Indian Pacific and The Ghan.
• In Sydney Australia Serco run the much maligned Transport info service 131500 for Transport NSW