The Stories That Changed Australia: 50 Years of Four Corners

by Sally Neighbour

  The Four Corners program had included a black-and-white line picture drawn by Shayan Badraie inside Villawood. It showed Shayan and his sister with big tears falling from their eyes. Another stick figure held a raised club and in one corner, there was a man with what looked like blood dripping from his wrist. The picture was covered by a grid of black lines, with a curl of razor wire running across the top.

  Lawyer Jacquie Everett told Four Corners that while in Woomera, Shayan had seen riots and fires and a man who had threatened to kill himself by jumping from a tree. ‘He saw guards with batons, using the batons to quell the riot, and that’s when he started to withdraw. And that’s when the family became quite worried. So they came to Villawood and then, not long after they arrived in Villawood, he walked into a room where one of the detainees had cut his wrists, and there was blood and he saw all this happening. And he ran out and he spoke to his mother and he said, “There’s a man dead.” And he hasn’t spoken since.’

  In a follow-up program on 20 August 2001, the 7.30 Report interviewed a former Woomera counsellor and registered nurse, Wayne Lynch, one of the first detention centre staff to speak out publicly. Lynch said he’d seen Shayan looking on when the man had threatened to commit suicide by jumping from a tree. In the same program the Minister for Immigration argued the suicide attempt couldn’t have been serious because the tree wasn’t high enough. I know Woomera,’ said Philip Ruddock:

  I know the nature of the trees. And quite frankly, I don’t think we are talking about serious suicide attempts when people are sitting in the trees that you have at Woomera, largely. I mean, they are not trees which lend themselves to people being at the sort of height that’s going to occasion very significant damage.

  By then, the Minister had known about Shayan Badraie’s case for well over two months. Four Corners had copies of letters written to him by a senior doctor at Westmead Hospital. The doctor had made it clear that Shayan’s illness was caused by his traumatic experiences at Woomera and Villawood and recommended to Ruddock that Shayan be allowed to live outside detention with his family. But the Minister preferred to argue about the height of a tree.

  Unlike the politicians and most media, many Australians were outraged by what they’d seen on Four Corners. Diane Hiles, a young mother working in IT, organised a group of concerned parents and citizens to meet in response to the program. They went on to form ChilOut, and led the public campaign to release children from detention.

  Solicitor Michaela Byers also took action after seeing the program, offering to act for the Badraies pro bono. Later that year, Byers helped take the family’s case to the Federal Court, which decided there had been an error of law and sent it back to the Refugee Review Tribunal. In 2002, helped by Byers and others, the Badraies were found to be refugees and were granted temporary visas.

  Peter McEvoy and I were thrilled to meet up with the whole family in a park one day and watch Shayan and our son kicking a soccer ball. It was almost normality.

  But Shayan’s trauma had long-lasting consequences. In 2002, the Human Rights Commission made a finding that Shayan had become ill due to the traumatic events he witnessed and the Australian government’s failure to protect him. The Commission recommended compensation and an apology, but the Department of Immigration dismissed the finding.

  Exactly two weeks after ‘The Inside Story’ was broadcast, the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, rescued more than 400 asylum seekers from a sinking asylum boat. The Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to allow the Tampa’s captain to land them on Australian territory. A few weeks later, Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and killed nearly 3000 people, and within another month Australia had joined the United States in its attack on the Taliban, which was harbouring Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But even though most Afghan asylum seekers were in Australia because they were fleeing the Taliban, the war in Afghanistan only made life in the detention centres worse for them. Once the war started, the Department of Immigration stopped processing nearly all Afghan visa cases. In Woomera, hundreds of Afghans tried to find out what was happening but couldn’t get any answers. Frustrated, and terrified they’d be sent back, they began a series of hunger strikes.

  I wanted to see Woomera for myself and I visited it on a baking hot day in early 2002. It was soon evident that Four Corners would never be able to smuggle in a video camera — the metal detectors were high-tech, and the search at the gate was extremely thorough.

  Visitors were kept away from the detainees’ compounds. But on the way to the visiting huts, I was able to see across the centre to a red dirt area. It was the middle of the day, and the hunger strikers were outside under the burning sun, sitting or lying on mattresses they’d dragged out of their boiling metal dongas. Some had covered themselves with sheets. It would be more than a year until I would see their faces and realise that many of them, including some children, had stitched their lips together.

  In September 2001, within a week of the Tampa stand-off, Prime Minister Howard had announced the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’. All asylum seekers were to be detained outside Australia, and the Defence Forces would step up the surveillance of waters between Indonesia and Australia. The new mission was called Operation Relex. By the time an election was called a few weeks later, the navy had already taken nearly 800 asylum seekers to Nauru.

  Throughout the election campaign, apart from the ‘children overboard’ scandal, there was a complete news blackout on Operation Relex. Journalists weren’t allowed near navy ships, there were no press briefings, no maps and no detail about the operations. Sailors on the ships weren’t allowed to talk to the media and detainees were locked away, either on the ships or in detention.

  In early 2002 Four Corners began trying to piece together what Operation Relex was all about. We knew that asylum boats had been turned back and I heard that some of the asylum seekers on board might now be on the Indonesian island of Lombok. I phoned local Lombok guesthouses asking a classic journalist’s question: ‘Is there anyone there who was on a boat to Australia and speaks English?’

  I found Mohammed Ali, an Iraqi. Ali told me the boat he’d been on had been turned around by the navy and had then run aground and sunk. Three men had disappeared. In early March, I travelled to Lombok. Four Corners’ ‘To Deter and Deny’ was broadcast in April 2002.

  Mohammed Ali was living with a number of other Iraqi men in a run-down local hotel paid for by the Australian government. The Australian warship HMAS Arunta had intercepted their boat carrying 230 asylum seekers in October 2001, just as the election campaign was beginning in Australia.

  The first to talk to the Australians, Mohammed Ali had asked for the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) or the International Red Cross. But instead, the asylum seekers — including children, many suffering from sunstroke, dehydration and conjunctivitis — were held on their boat for six days, with no food or drinking water. A source in the navy (who risked court martial by speaking to Four Corners) said the Arunta crew believed the boat was held up so as not to interfere with the Liberal Party campaign launch.

  Four Corners later obtained an unedited video filmed by the navy on Mohammed Ali’s boat after it had been boarded by the Transit Security Element. The TSE was a unit made up of infantry, military police and intelligence officers, put together for Operation Relex. In the video, the Australians are driving the boat. During the night before, Ali and others had noticed it had changed direction to head away from Australia.

  The video shows the asylum seekers just after they are told they are being sent away and are now only three hours from Indonesia. A man shouts, ‘You can kill me now, kill me now. Saddam will kill me.’ The Australians clearly feel threatened. One man jumps overboard and another holds up a child, in a scene that is still often used in TV reports about asylum seekers. What the man says is reported less often: in Farsi, he asks the Australians, ‘What law allows Australia to deport this child in a broken wooden boat?’

  ‘You couldn’t control all those people a
t that time,’ Mohammed Ali told Four Corners. ‘They were all hysterical and they were ready to commit suicide. They lost everything; this is as if you are killing them, shooting them. This is a decision of execution for them, so they don’t care.’

  The Australians tried to control the asylum seekers with batons and double-strength capsicum spray. When the roof of the boat’s wheelhouse started to collapse, the Australians chocked it up with milk crates. Then they left.

  ‘They took their boats and they left us there to face our destiny of 230 people: women and children, sick people,’ Mohammed Ali said. ‘People passed out, you know. I cannot describe that moment because they were very horrible. I cannot describe it at all. All the people were down, crying, you know, shouting, hitting themselves, slapping, you know. It was a very horrible situation.’

  Twelve hours later the boat went aground a few hundred metres from the Indonesian island of Rote. The asylum seekers swam and waded ashore. Some who had conjunctivitis told us the capsicum spray had blinded them. Three of the asylum seekers were never seen again.

  Four Corners interviewed dozens of Iraqi, Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers who had been turned back. One boat carrying more than 200 Afghans had spent two days adrift. A baby onboard had died and another baby was born. The new baby’s mother, Fatama, named her Ashmorey after Ashmore Island. She didn’t know the island had recently been excised from Australia for immigration purposes.

  The navy frigate HMAS Warramunga held the Afghan boat for nearly a week, bringing food and water. But Fatama was bleeding severely and vomiting blood. A worried navy doctor wanted to take her to hospital and her husband, Saeed, agreed. But Saeed told Four Corners the doctor said the decision had to be made by a higher authority. ‘He said he had asked for a security permit but hadn’t got it yet but that he would try and get it soon to take her away.’ Fatama was never taken to hospital. Four Corners was told she bled for more than a month.

  Four Corners went to air just as a senate inquiry, which later revealed the details of Operation Relex, was beginning. The next morning I heard Sydney shock jock John Laws talking about the program and agreeing with a caller that the Four Corners reporter was ‘unAustralian’. I phoned up and Laws and I had a very civil conversation on air. He admitted that he hadn’t seen the program and I promised to send him a copy.

  Months later, the UN confirmed Mohammed Ali was a refugee and, eventually, Norway accepted him and some other Iraqis for resettlement.

  In mid-2002, Dr Aamer Sultan, who won a human rights award for his work in Villawood (though he wasn’t allowed out to receive it), was granted a visa and released after nearly three years in detention. He now works as a doctor in Sydney.

  Through 2002, I kept trying to make a program about Woomera. I talked to everyone I could — lawyers, former staff and some detainees. I found Alley Crace, a former welfare officer who had been an office assistant when Woomera first opened and had stayed there two years. The first time we met, we sat up most of the night talking. Alley said that until then, she hadn’t been able to talk about Woomera. Talking to Alley, I began to understand for the first time, how a place like Woomera had come to exist in Australia.

  Alley Crace said that when Woomera first opened, it was intended for about 400 asylum seekers. There were only a few besser-block buildings, several demountables and a handful of toilets. But within weeks, Woomera was overwhelmed by the arrival of nearly 1000 asylum seekers. Many were brought in sick, collapsing or vomiting, dehydrated or with diseases like malaria. There were only two nurses and the unqualified Crace. They were told if they didn’t process all the asylum seekers within 48 hours, the private company that ran Woomera, Australian Correctional Management (ACM), would have to pay a penalty to the Australian government.

  By April 2000, Woomera had nearly 1500 detainees — as Alley Crace put it, ‘living in that compound with, you know, maybe two washing machines or three washing machines and five toilets. Um … no communication being passed to them about what’s going to happen to them. And not enough … no resources or facilities set up for them to actually keep busy.’

  Crace said that after six months, some detainees still hadn’t even been interviewed, while others were getting rejection letters they couldn’t understand. The detainees started protesting, demanding to see the Department of Immigration.

  But when the Immigration officials finally came, Crace said they abused the detainees, telling them, ‘They should be grateful that they were in Australia, that they are being looked after in good conditions, and that we were not responsible for them coming here and that the process will take as effing long as it will.’

  Alley Crace said the Immigration meeting was a turning point. A month later there was a mass escape and a few months after that, the centre was in flames.

  After meeting Alley Crace, we decided that even though Four Corners couldn’t get inside Woomera, we should still try to make a program. Producer Jo Puccini and I went to Adelaide and almost melted our mobiles, phoning what felt like everyone in South Australia. Immigration staff were too afraid to talk and most ACM staff had signed confidentiality agreements. But we found a group of nurses planning to lodge compensation claims against ACM. And then Jo Puccini found a lawyer who was about to settle a claim by the centre’s former operations officer, Alan Clifton. We drove to Woomera to see Clifton. It had been his job to try and control the riots. And his story dovetailed with Alley Crace’s.

  Alan Clifton had arrived at Woomera in early 2000, after a long career in private prisons. He found Woomera desperately understaffed, with no firefighting equipment and only six sets of riot gear. When he complained to ACM, he was told not to be paranoid. ACM told him the same thing when he found plans for the mass breakout and tried to stop it. The problem was, ACM had no financial interest in preventing disturbances.

  Despite the understaffing, Clifton said ACM consistently overstated staff numbers and claimed government funds for nonexistent workers. Senior Immigration officials knew it happened but did nothing. If extra guards were needed to control a riot, ACM flew them in from one of its private prisons and charged the government double rates. If the centre was damaged, it was the government that paid to repair it.

  Alan Clifton agreed to an interview and trusted our promise not to show it until his claim against ACM was finally settled. We also interviewed a number of former Woomera nurses and psychologists and a doctor. Lack of medical staff (such as one nurse for 1300 detainees) led to shocking incidents, including chemical sedation. One nurse said the centre manager prevented her sending to hospital a boy who had been sexually assaulted, then destroyed her medical notes. Files disappeared and hourly reports for detainees on suicide watch were filled out retrospectively in bulk. ‘If they’re still alive at 4pm, they must have been alive at 2pm,’ one officer told us off camera.

  During our research, we heard there might be copies of videos filmed inside Woomera by ACM. We managed to obtain them. The source can’t be revealed for legal reasons.

  I first watched the Woomera videos late one night at Four Corners, after everyone else had gone home, wearing headphones and playing them one after another. It took several hours. The videos showed detainees throwing rocks and having panic attacks, men and children covered in blood and slash marks, a man threatening to kill himself with a shard of glass and guards threatening to take a man on suicide watch to the local jail because there weren’t enough staff to look after him. The sounds were just as bad — detainees screaming, guards making off-hand comments and constant radio calls for emergencies in other parts of the centre. The filming was continuous and unedited, like a security camera. By the end, I almost felt as if I had been in Woomera myself. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be trapped there. Or what I would do if my children were.

  But shocking as the images were, we had no details to explain them. All we knew was the dates they were filmed. It took a while to work out how to really use them.

  As well as the videos, we had b
een given three years of ACM’s computer records documenting incidents of self-harm, suicide attempts and disturbances. There were several thousand reports, each listing the detainees involved only by number. In the last week before the program went to air, Jo Puccini, researcher Trish Drum and I spent a couple of long nights going through every one of them, building up histories of individual detainees from their numbers, then matching the incidents to dates on the videos and other information.

  ‘About Woomera’ went to air on 19 May 2003. It began by showing a young Afghan man climbing into the razor wire and yelling that if he couldn’t see the Department of Immigration about his visa he’d kill himself. As he slashed at his arms with a razor, a group of detainees, including children, watched him.

  The program also showed the Afghan hunger strikers, filmed around the same time I’d seen them. Guards offer food and water but no one takes any. One man asks for a visa. Others, including a child, have sewn their lips together. One man needs to be taken away on a stretcher. A young Afghan man sobs: ‘We are crying. We are screaming. We have nothing. This is what you want? This is [what] Australia say to us?’

  After ‘About Woomera’ went to air, the critics were silent. It was impossible to pretend not to know the truth about what Australia has done to asylum seekers.

  In 2005, after months in court, the Department of Immigration offered Shayan Badraie $400,000 in compensation for the harm he had suffered in detention. The government’s legal battle against Shayan cost taxpayers an estimated $5 million. As soon as his parents accepted the settlement, the family was granted permanent visas.

  More than a decade after Australians first saw Shayan Badraie inside Villawood, the Australian government says it no longer holds children in detention centres. But as this is being written, more than 400 children are being held in what are called ‘alternative facilities’. At one Darwin facility, a ten-year-old girl who’s been detained for a year has just passed a note to a visitor: ‘Our lives are very sad, depressing and hopeless … We don’t know who will help us.’