Port Hedland Immigration Reception and Processing Center
The Port Hedland Immigration Reception and Processing Center was an Australian internment camp for boat people . It opened in May 1991 and was the first to serve a new and more rigid migration and asylum policy in Australia after a new law was passed.
Building complex
The detention center was located on the grounds of the port of Port Hedland , a town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia . It was a complex of buildings from 1960 that the mining company BHP Billiton had originally built for its workers who shipped iron ore there. The brick buildings were two-story and the entire complex was fenced in to prevent attempts to escape. The camp had a capacity for 820 people.
politics
The internment camp followed a paradigm shift in Australian politics: the liberal treatment of Vietnamese boat people changed to immigration detention , initially primarily for Cambodian boat people. When the Migration Legislation Amendment Act was passed in 1989, the Australian administration was the first to have a legal requirement to arrest boat people. The aim of this law was to deter Cambodian boat people, even though the number of asylum applications by Cambodian boat people was only 26 in 1989. On May 5, 1991, the Port Hedland Immigration Detention Center was opened. On the basis of the "Migration Amendment Act 1992", immigration detention was ordered for all persons who arrived or stayed in Australia without a visa. The length of stay of the imprisoned boat people was initially relatively short, but not for the Cambodians, because while boat people from other nations were housed in Australian internment camps for an average of 15.5 days in 1989, the average for Cambodians was 523 days.
Conditions in the camp
There were numerous protests, both peaceful and violent, at Port Hedland Detention Center. The inmates protested against their detention with escape attempts, hunger strikes, rioting, suicide attempts or sewn their lips together in protest. The camp, which is located far away from larger urban settlements, was sealed off from the outside. For the first time in 1999, representatives of the press were allowed to enter the internment camp.
development
On December 31, 2001, it was burnt down in a riot, it was a loss of EUR 3 million AUD . In July 2002, the camp was due to receive an isolation pad for $ 3.3 million. It was completed in June 2003. Towards the end of 2003, the number of boat people arriving had fallen sharply: there were 1,176 boat people seeking asylum, 145 of whom were housed in Port Hedland. In 2004 the internment camp was closed and in 2007 it was finally abandoned as an internment site and used for other purposes.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ 1991: Port Hedland immigration detention center opens , o. A., at National Museum Australia . Retrieved April 4, 2017
- ↑ Port Hedland Detention Center '' , o. A.,. on the Shire of Port Hedland. Retrieved April 4, 2017
Coordinates: 20 ° 18 ′ 6.7 ″ S , 118 ° 38 ′ 12.7 ″ O