Latest Death in Detention: David Saunders. Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brunoderegge/ 2396998656/sizes/ l/in/pool-45825108@N00/
Villawood Detention Centre continues to be a place of death with the third death of a detained man in three months.
David Saunders, a 29 year old British national held for “visa breaches” was found dead at 3.20 am in the morning on 8 September. Mr Saunders was held in the high security wing and is reported to have been wanted in Britain on criminal charges.
The cause of his death is not immediately known, although refugee advocates say he committed suicide. Media report that the man “did not arrive by boat”. Presumably he arrived by plane (there being no other way of arriving in Australia). Why the mode of his arrival is considered significant is not made clear in media reports.
The Department of Immigration expressed its sympathy to the family of the deceased man, as they have done in respect of deaths of others in immigration detention.
The latest death has been greeted with calls for an inquiry into conditions in Villawood.
This man, whose name is not available at the time of writing, is the 925th person to die in connection with Australian border controls and detention facilities since 2000.
Ahmad Al-Akabi, aged 41, had a wife and was a father of three girls aged two, four and seven. He had come to Australia and had hoped to eventually bring his family with him. He arrived by boat. He was from Iraq. He is reported to have been in detention for over a year: first in Christmas Island and then in Villawood…
What is a "protest"? In the context of democracy we think of them as citizen action - citizens speaking to their government - expressing their dissatisfaction with a policy or state of affairs. What then are we to make of the actions of a few non-citizens protesting on the roof of the Villawood detention centre in Sydney Australia? The protest…
Mohammed Asif Atay and Meqdad Hussein are the latest asylum seekers to die in Australian migration detention centres. Both were young men. Mohammed was aged 19. Meqdad was aged 20. Both were Hazara asylum seekers from Afghanistan. Both committed suicide. Mohammed had been detained for 10 months in the Curtin detention centre in South Australia. He had developed depression in the lead up…
A paper delivered at a roundtable on alternatives to detention held in Canberra, June 9 – 10, 2011 By Penelope Mathew Freilich Foundation Professor The Australian National University Why does mandatory detention of asylum seekers continue in Australia when there are alternatives? In this short presentation, I invite people to think about three important issues that shape the debate about…
