Rooftop protest continues on Christmas Island

Two Iranian asylum seekers have spent a second night on the roof of the Green 1 compound inside the Christmas Island detention centre. (The protest began around 2.30 on Friday 25 May.)

Despite the mobilisation of the Emergency Respond Team, the two protesters have managed to get some food and blankets to sustain the protest.

The two protesters are long-term detainees, having been held in detention for over four years, one of them for six years.

The protest is a severe embarrassment to the government and Serco who run the Christmas Island detention centre with ruthless “behavioural management” methods in the most punitive centre of the government’s onshore detention regime.

“We are calling on the government to release the two asylum seekers and close Christmas Island,” said Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition, “There is no excuse for holding people in detention for such long periods – times that are the equivalent of a prison sentence for a serious crime.

“We also want an undertaking that the two protesters will not be punished or held in solitary confinement; they have a right to peaceful protest.”

For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713

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