Olympic undesirables - out of sight but not out of mind

By STAFF REPORTER and AGENCIES

Security is the name of the game in Australia this week as the Olympics draw near.

Nobody will be allowed in to any Olympic venue without the appropriate accreditation. No vehicles will be let in unless they have been signed for and searched.

More than 1200 security people are watching for suspicious parcels or objects in the wrong place.

And about 1400km away, in an outback desert place called Woomera, about 800 asylum-seekers are being watched very carefully as well.

Australia has rejected blame for the mass riot last week at the Woomera detention centre by Middle Eastern asylum-seekers, denying it held illegal immigrants for too long.

"We are not keeping people in detention longer than necessary," said Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock.

But the criticism has been considerable.

Nearly 30 detainees face criminal charges after rioters torched six buildings, tore down fences and attacked staff at the centre, 475km north of Adelaide. Immigration officials say 32 staff were injured.

Police fired water cannon and tear-gas to break up the riot, which erupted early last Monday after several days of unrest.

The rioters were apparently angry that they faced deportation after rejection of their bids for Australian residency.

More than 25 identified as ringleaders have been moved to the Adelaide Remand Centre, where special arrangements have been made to look after the men, all Shi'ite Muslims, and allow them to carry out their religious and cultural practices.

This reportedly includes arrows pointing towards Mecca painted on the floor to help them pray.

The Woomera detention centre, in the desert of South Australia, houses 800 asylum-seekers, mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq, who were among a wave of Middle East people to arrive illegally by boat from Asia in recent years.

Many have been held for months in isolated camps with spartan conditions while their applications for asylum are processed.

The riot sparked criticism of the Australian Government's hardline policy towards illegal arrivals, accused of trying unfairly to jump the refugee queue by paying people-smuggling rings to bring them to the country illegally.

Canberra has also faced concern from human rights groups over its decision last Tuesday to cut back its involvement in the United Nations treaty system after it was criticised by some UN committees for its treatment of asylum-seekers and Aborigines.

The Refugee Council of Australia deplored the violence in Woomera but criticised Canberra for holding thousands of asylum-seekers for too long and in poor conditions.

The council's Kevin Liston said he feared that the minority who led the riot could cause problems for other Middle East detainees whose refugee claims were still pending.

"Those people [the rioters] wouldn't have anything to lose by a riot," he said. "The other people in the centre are in the process of having their refugee claims assessed. They have everything to hope for and everything to lose."

Mr Liston described the riot as a public relations disaster for asylum-seekers and refugees that could cost the detainees dearly in terms of public sympathy.

The Australian newspaper on Wednesday said the Woomera riot had been waiting to happen and questioned Australia's policy of detaining all people who enter without a visa as illegal immigrants, whether they have grounds for refugee status or not.

"Does the violence at least in part reflect frustration after many months of being locked up in an isolated and inhospitable region?" the newspaper asked in its editorial.

Warning signs at Woomera actually appeared as early as June, when up to 500 detainees, mostly Afghans and Iraqis, staged four separate escapes and chanted "We want freedom" as they marched through the centre of Woomera, considerably alarming the population of about 290. The breakout was described as noisy but not violent.

One Iraqi told ABC radio then that the detainees' main complaints were a lack of contact with friends and relatives and the amount of time it was taking to process their refugee claims.

"We want the United Nations, we want human rights organisations to do something about us," he said. "We can't stop for a long time here. We know nothing about our future."

Official figures show 8878 people arrived illegally in Australia by boat and plane in the two years ended June 30, 2000, crowding the country's six detention centres.

Church and refugee groups say the Government's mandatory detention policies contributed to the Woomera uprising.

Australia moved to toughen laws against boat people last year after more than 1700, mostly of Chinese or Middle Eastern origin, arrived between July and November, compared with 200 in 1998.

An Australian Government Human Rights Commission found last year that mandatory detention of asylum-seekers was a violation of human rights.

But Immigration Minister Ruddock's response, even nine months ahead of the Olympics, was that more focus was placed on illegal arrivals because authorities needed to determine their identities and whether they posed a threat.

Amnesty International, however, has been critical about Australia focusing on waves of boat people from Asia and the Middle East, when records show the country now has far more illegal immigrants from Britain and the United States.

It has questioned why boat people seeking refugee status are kept in spartan camps like Woomera and others in the remote northwest of the country.

Department of Immigration records show that at December 31, 1998, there were already 50,603 people illegally in Australia in breach of visa conditions.

About a quarter of the illegal overstayers, or 12,620 people, had been in Australia for nine years or more. Between July 1998 and June last year 13,472 "overstayers" were located and 8308 left the country after being detected.

"I think the statistics speak for themselves. Australia has always had a particular fear - a particular fixation - about people arriving in boats," said Carolyn Graydon, Amnesty's spokeswoman on refugees in Australia.

"Where are the detention centres and 'get tough' policies [for overstayers]?"

As far as the Olympics are concerned, the bottom line is that Australia has more than 50,000 people living illegally somewhere in the country.

The risk they pose may seem small compared with some new arrivals.

Figures released on Friday show that almost 15.2 million people flew in to and out of Australia in the year to March. The busiest international route was Auckland-Australia, where numbers nudged 3 million, up 6.4 per cent on the previous year.

The head of Sydney's Olympic Village said on Friday that a lone attacker rather than an organised terrorist group posed the biggest threat to the Games.

"We don't believe there is a significant terrorist threat to the village or anywhere else," said the mayor of the village, Graham Richardson.

"The real danger will come, not from a huge, well-financed, well-resourced terrorist group, but from the individual nutter making a bomb in the basement or garage."

Australian authorities have been playing down Weekend Herald reports that New Zealand police have been investigating plans which seemed to point to an attack on a Sydney nuclear reactor.

Mr Richardson said preparations had included monitoring known terrorist groups with about 70 security agencies around the world but it was almost impossible to predict violence by any individuals.

Police and security chiefs have also said there is no credible threat to the Olympics from immigration racketeers.

If there is any trouble at the Olympics, perhaps the greatest surprise would be if the people responsible turned out to have arrived in the country by boat.

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