On an issue that commonly attracts overblown rhetoric and shrill commentary, it is no longer an exaggeration to say that Australia's immigration detention system is in a state of crisis. The past five weeks have seen a mass break-out and riot at Christmas Island, Australia's high security offshore processing facility for asylum seekers, and now another violent protest at the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney thought to involve men from Kurdish Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
What began as a small rooftop protest involving just two detainees escalated into a full-blown riot involving 100 men - a quarter of the 400 detainees held at Villawood. A number of buildings were destroyed, including a medical facility, a computer centre, a laundry and a kitchen. The authorities were powerless to stop a modern, high security detention facility from being torched. Given the scale of the damage, the ferocity of the protests and the intensity of the flames - which leapt over 10m (30ft) at the height of the overnight disturbances - it is a wonder that nobody was killed. More...
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