AT a time when Australian Federal Police were called in to quell unrest at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre and a leading international authority on refugee law criticised the Australian Government’s “extraordinary callous disregard” for its refugee obligations, Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Father Laurie Bissett has voiced his shock after visiting the Scherger Immigration Detention Centre outside Weipa, in Far North Queensland.
In a letter to The Catholic Leader and other Catholic news agencies, Fr Bissett said his visit left him shocked and sick.
“I had visited another detention centre in Adelaide during the Vietnam War, but I was not prepared for the (6m) double row of wire surrounding the camp, the desolation and isolation of the centre in the Weipa red-dirt bush, the lack of beauty, water, flowers, scenery, civilisation, comfort, home of any kind,” Fr Bissett said of his recent visit.
Fr Bissett, who is administrator of the Sacred Heart Mis-sion Parish in the Torres Strait, visits Weipa about once a month and had been asked to celebrate Mass and provide Reconciliation at Scherger for Catholic Sri Lankan detainees.
He said to see the young men crowding into the tent for Mass and hearing their stories of desperation as they waited for processing left him feeling sick and deeply pained.
“This is what my country, the best in the world I am told, does to people seeking what we all take for granted, a home, peace, security, food, family, water, a garden, a car, and being able to walk freely around,” Fr Bissett said.
“I am not intending to write a political comment, but to register my pain at what our refugee solution, Pacific or otherwise, means in practice.”
That government solution also came under fire on ABC Radio recently from Professor James Hathaway, who is Professor of Asylum Seeker and Refugee Law at the University of Michigan and a leading authority on international refugee law.
“Let’s be frank, the Government is acting in extraordinary bad faith and when I say the Government I don’t mean simply the current government but its predecessor as well. Both political stripes have acted with extraordinary callous disregard for obligations they helped craft,” he said.
Fr Bissett, who visited the Scherger detention centre with a group of local Catholic volunteers, said he was not looking forward to a return visit.
“These men have surely suffered enough from their own civil war and now seek what is their right,” he said.
Fr Bissett said, during the Mass, “one young man was brought forward by his friends with the red raw marks of attempted suicide on his neck”.
“It was the interpreter of my words (at the Mass) that heard the chair fall in the early hours of the morning and went to investigate.
“A few minutes later and the man would have been dead.
“I am not looking forward to my next visit. I feel afraid even as I type.
“I do not want to see the pain and hurt in those eyes again, and the deadly frustration of waiting, waiting, waiting … to be like me.”
Meanwhile, the visits by Weipa Catholics will continue each Saturday at 11am.
Weipa pastoral leader Kath Newman said the ministry followed a request from a manager at the detention centre.
“They hold regular community meetings to keep locals informed and I offered support if any Catholic detainees ever arrived,” Mrs Newman said.
She said with the arrival of the Sri Lankans the offer was followed up and the parish had organised a weekly roster of volunteers who had visited since just before Easter.
“We offer them a Liturgy of the Word and Communion,” she said.
Mrs Newman said about 30 to 35 detainees participated each week with 47 detainees the highest attendance to date.
She said with one detainee acting as an interpreter the service was a mix of both English and Tamil as there was a mixed level of English amongst the detainees.
“We have the service in a tent and read the Gospel in Tamil and sometimes the first reading, and we take out our ‘ghetto blaster’ and generally sing the first hymn in English but the detainees sing the hymn after Communion in Tamil and sometimes the last hymn is also sung in Tamil,” she said.
Mrs Newman said about six volunteers visited the centre each Saturday with the number of volunteers kept small to allow detainees to become familiar with the Weipa parishioners.
