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Baxtor Refugee Detention Centre Protests Easter 2k4

It could have been Agincourt or Plessey, spool forward and it could have been the Battle of Naseby.  It was South Australia, Easter weekend 2003, with the forces of the willing arraigned against the merry tribe of the free and unfettered.  The star war robo cops were defending the once free, now refugee detainees, interred for their quest for the democratic and liberated.
The free and the oppressed were separated by 5 metre high, 5000 volt electrified fences and razor wire topped with the latest in high tech surveillance paraphernalia.  The dead ground between the perimeter and water delivery pipe was being aggressively patrolled by 385 plus tactical police, security units and swat qualified STAR units.
The latter’s mission was to prevent a break in/out like last years one at Woomera detention centre, a short ride away north of the Flinders Range.  A policy to bang up the victims of far flung conflicts seeking refuge and a new life was once again being confronted.  The perennially hippyesque circus of protesters still riding the carnival of anti-war demonstrations had bussed, ute’d and cranked in to swell a number – short of the expected, though, at the start, several hundred strong.  There was no way that this band of peaceful protesters would get anywhere near to penetrating the perimeter of political preventionalism.

Permission to camp across the highway from the camp gates was denied forcing the ‘outback-packer’ kitted and ‘glad clad’ tribe, 3 clicks back to a rocky, hilltop, waterless, exposed campingplatz.
Xenon beam toting choppers circled menacingly over the nightly ‘doofs’ that preceded the banner and balloon toting forays to the Stalag’s portico.  Here lurked 13 mounted tac-swatters bedecked in nomex and plexiglass.  Snatch squads sortied from the phalanxes to assail individuals already digitally snapped and processed.  Pink tutu’d radical cheerleaders could only mock the madness.  The stern faces of the robotroopers barely greased, you could hear them thinking about all the mean things they could finish their trained for and overpaid ‘holy weekend’ with.  Peace met again with unjustifiable force that edged back the whole meaning of the rally to page four status by day two.

Those inside the wire now further restricted, their children ailing and undereducated, opportunities squandered in the land whose greatness had been forged by boat people and their Aboriginal ancestry.

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Last Updated: 30-03-2008

Date Created: 14-06-2007