We need to tear down all cages

“It has come to this because we have seen life lost and we believe we have to do this in order to protect our lives” – detainees in Villawood

 On the morning of Monday September 20, Josefa Rauluni committed suicide in Villawood detention centre. He was to be deported that day. This death rests in the hands of Australia’s paranoid and racist border regime.

 Other detainees immediately responded to show respect for Josefa and express their anger at their own detention and imminent deportations. Eleven people occupied a roof of the Villawood detention complex for more than 30 hours, demanding that their own cases be reviewed; and many more began a hunger strike, which has not yet ended.  On Wednesday 22, 10 more people occupied another rooftop for two days, again in an effort to prevent their impending deportations.

 The events of the past week demonstrate the desperate situation in the detention centres and the brutality that underpins the Australian border regime.  Deportations and invisible queues have claimed more lives than we will ever know. The experience of living under this oppression cannot be measured.

 These rooftop protests are part of a growing militancy and desperation amongst those incarcerated in detention centres. In the past months we’ve seen hunger strikes, breakouts, roof occupations and self harm. The recent protests in Villawood are an expression of rage and despair by people whose control over their own lives has been taken away by the Australian Government.

 Throughout the past week there have been protests on both sides of the detention fences.  Friends and supporters stood every night outside Villawood detention centre – chanting their solidarity, making sure that those on the roofs could hear.  Angry allies occupied the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) offices, locking-on, refusing to leave until DIAC agreed to appropriate negotiations with those on the roof.  In Newtown, a solidarity gathering took over the public square, with banners and fliers.

 We must continue to take action in solidarity with the struggles occurring from within the detention centres. Our actions must reflect the urgency of the situation as the government amps up its racist, anti-migrant rhetoric and implements harsher policies that cost people’s lives.  As detainees struggle to make visible the hell that is the Australian border regime, we too must struggle to deny the government the invisibility that it relies upon for this regime to function.

 We need to struggle against the policing of people’s movement and micro-control of people’s lives at the borders (and in detention) not because of humanitarian concern, but because their struggle is also ours. 

 We need to struggle against all borders because no death as a result of border protection brings us more freedom.  Instead, we are all less free when governments decide who can and can’t move to seek a better life; safety; refuge. 

We need to tear down all cages because people’s desire to move will never be caged.

Members of Sydney’s Anti Deportation Alliance.