Villawood Detention Centre: Death of David Saunders – third Death in Three Months
December 8, 2010/
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.
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…
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…
There is virtually nothing that is a taboo in modern society. Death is the one exception. Ironically so, as our nightly news and popular entertainment are so often full of death. Yet there are plenty of articles that identify the death taboo. So how is it taboo? It is taboo in the sense that we live as if death is…
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…
