An account of ChilOut's history
Thank you to ChilOut coordinator and director, Jo Hind, for preparing this brief overview of our history, on Friday 29 July 2005.
ChilOut was born out of an ABC Four Corners program which went to air in August 2001. The program centred around the story of six year old Shayan Badraie who was being held with his parents and sister at Villawood Detention Centre. Much of the story was told by an Iraqi doctor, himself detained by DIMIA (the Department of Multiculturalism, Immigation and Indigenous Affairs) and using a video camera which had been smuggled to him.
The sights and the sounds of little Shayan as he was bundled from the detention centre to Westmead Hospital, catatonic and dehydrated have had an enormous ripple effect. To this day people remember the images of this slight child being rehydrated and brought to a semblance of normal childhood only to be returned to detention for the cycle to begin again. We were watching on our screens the psychological breakdown of a child and this was happening as a result of the policy of our own national government. People were outraged. I remember sitting at my computer the next morning and writing an email to the then Minister of Multiculturalism, Immigration and Indigenous Affairs, Phillip Ruddock.
What I wanted to know of the Minister was why my own father who arrived in Australia from Scotland in 1912 when he too was only six years old had been welcomed and this little boy treated so badly. I recall voicing my outrage but also acknowledging that times and circumstances had changed but did they have to change to this extent?
That email was the first of many, many thousands that I have written and marked the beginning of my seeing myself and coming to describe myself as an activist. At the time that I was writing that email, the group of friends who founded ChilOut were making plans to hold a meeting. They felt that they could not stand by and let the Australian government get away with what were incontrovertible breaches of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
A small group of ChilOut coordinators was formed as the initial group made contact with friends and acquaintances who agreed to come on board. A program of visitors to Villawood was set up and a series of Information Nights was instituted. At every event that was held there were sign-up sheets for both the Villawood visitors program and for people to volunteer in whatever capacity they were able. It was clear that the main means of contact and communication would be via email. There is no doubt that without email ChilOut would not have achieved its large membership or its range all over Australia. At one stage there was even a small off-shore group in London. As of July 2005 Chilout sends our regular Calls to Action to almost 2,000 email addresses.
Contact with our membership by means other than email became increasingly difficult but by using email adresses our reach became much greater. The predicament of these families could be made known far and wide. Lobbying on their behalf could be done by emailing asylum seeker support groups for information and politicians to register protest. ChilOut’s growing success was certainly part of the Internet phenomenon. Our website was an important part of that phenomenon and spread the word more widely and effectively.
Spreading the word and countering misinformation (which was rampant) were central aims of the fledgling group. The demands on those who volunteered to serve as coordinators were considerable, to say the least, and remain so. Coordinators meetings were held on a very regular basis and that meant at least two every month. Each coordinator committed to a portfolio of tasks. For example, Junie was a central contact point and chaired the meetings. Her networks were considerable. As she had regular contact with the Badraie family she would often give updates on them at our Information Evenings. Leonie Gardiner was the person who was willing to oversee the Villawood visitors’ program and was a regular visitor herself. Even when on holidays (once from India) Leonie kept the program going and processed new volunteers.
Not only did the coordinators attend ChilOut meetings but became increasingly involved in other refugee and asylum seekers support groups, community groups and NGOs. Apart from the time taken to attend increasing numbers of meetings the emotional demands were growing as well, as ChilOut members, and coordinators in particular, started to visit Villawood and to form friendships with those detained there.
One of the decisions the members took was to avoid the traps often set by the government itself in terms of language. While the government was portraying the people in detention as “detainees, queue-jumpers and illegals” great pains were taken by ChilOut to describe those they were supporting as “people in detention, asylum seekers and refugees.”
Of course Villawood was not the only Immigration Detention Centre to hold
families and children. Far from it. The people coming in boats from the Middle
East by way of Indonesia were being detained on Christmas Island, and in Western
Australia at Port Hedland and Curtin, a disused Australian Air Force Base. As
the numbers grew and grew the desert location of Woomera in South Australia
began to fill and to fill way beyond their planned capacity.
ChilOut’s Information Evenings began to follow a set pattern. There was finger
food for those coming straight from work and to encourage socialising and
conversation. Merchandise tables were set up to help raise funds as ChilOut has
always survived on and relied on donations. There were brochures and sign-up
sheets for membership and the visitors’ program. The meetings opened with a
Welcome to Country and there was quite an amazing array of speakers from the panel
set up by Junie Ong.
Early on it became clear that the government would use its powers to prohibit
speakers from the ranks of staff at the centres such as teachers and nurses
coming to tell of their experiences. Tom Mann was just one example. He was
teacher at Woomera who later went on to tell his story in his book “Desert
Sorrow.” Philip Ruddock was routinely invited to speak to our members. At one
stage it looked as if he might attend a meeting to be held in Turramurra, within
his electorate, but quite late in the day we were told that he would not be
coming as ChilOut could not “guarantee his safety.”
Speakers such as Thomas Keneally and Margaret Reynolds, President of the
United Nations Association of Australia drew audiences of a hundred or more. Our
numbers at meetings and rallies were never vast, a fact that was frustrating but
did not deter us. At the meeting in Lane Cove where she spoke Margaret
Reynolds called for a delegation to be formed to go to the Prime Minister on
behalf of a young Russian woman who had been taken from her baby son and locked
up in Villawood. A delegation was formed, the Prime Minister was visited, and
for months to follow two women from the delegation took the baby to see his
mother every week.
The acts of kindness and the numbers of people who became regular visitors to
Villawood as a result of attending ChilOut meetings can never be counted.
ChilOut was becoming better known and began getting more and more stories into
the media.
In 2002 founding member Junie Ong was named “Most Influential Australian of
the Year (NGO category)” by the Financial Review. This was obviously a
considerable coup for ChilOut and further enhanced our reputation and drew
further attention to our cause.
During the New Year period of 2005 the key players in ChilOut remained depressed
and dejected. Here we were facing another year but, more critically, the high
profile Bakthiari Family had been whisked away from Baxter straight after
Christmas and deported to Pakistan. We all felt that it was because they had
been willing to take a high profile that this had happened. We all knew that
they were Afghani, as they claimed, but it was to Pakistan (from where the
government claimed they originated) that they had been sent. We all felt we had
played a part in their deportation by allowing them to be seen as such a
challenge to the power of the government. The injustice of it all left us numb
and unsure of how we could possibly proceed.
St Ignatius’ College in Adelaide where two of the older boys had been welcomed could not prevent their deportation. Photos of them in school uniform looking every inch the dutiful schoolboys could not help. Pleas from their classmates and their classmates’ families fell on deaf ears. The Catholic Welfare heirarchy of South Australia was powerless to intervene. Nothing had any impact on the Minister, Amanda Vanstone. Where could we go from here with the images of these children we had tried so hard to protect stuck in our minds, night and day? The little white plane chartered to take the family to Perth, and from there out of our land. We were at a very low ebb.
In early January Baxter was in the news again. And this time the story was quite different. This time the person in need was a white woman and the people alerting others to her plight were the people long detained in Baxter. They were people who had themselves experienced solitary confinement in Red One, the “isolation compound” and were so disturbed by her distress that they started talking to their supporters.
Let me say now that I consider it a tragedy that this woman whom we all
discovered was not only a missing person but a mentally disturbed missing person
was treated so badly while in detention. The discovery that she was a permanent
resident of Australia and yet that fact had not been ascertained over her 10
months of incarceration in Queensland and South Australia stunned huge numbers
of Australians. Could this happen to one of us? Imagine if one of our children
were treated in such a way in a foreign land. But this was not a foreign land,
this was Australia. As soon as her situation was revealed she was quickly
tansported to Adelaide for immediate psychiatric care.
As Dianne Hiles, who now heads up ChilOut asked: “Where along the road between Port Augusta and Adelaide did she stop being a “detainee” and start being a “patient”?
However, time has revealed that her situation opened a new chapter in
Australia’s Immigration Detention Policy. Questions were asked, her story was
revelaed and eventually her predicament shed more and more light on those in
long-term detention.
Our High Court had declared that it was legal to keep these people in long-term
detention. In fact it was legal to keep them in indefinite detention. The High
Court judges had left the morality of the legislation that held them there to
the politicians who had made that legislation law.
Spirits started to rise among the coordinators and our membership. Our topic was back on the agenda and politicians were being criticised, their legislation questioned. The media was giving the issue of Cornelia Rau a lot of attention. This helped to share the burden we had now carried for years.
One enormous boost at that time was a donation from Circus Oz who had
circulated buckets during their Sydney Festival season, specifically asking
people to give to ChilOut. It was nearly $19,000, certainly our biggest ever
single donation. It would allow us to continue to pay our one paid employee,
Alanna Sherry who is a lawyer and a former diplomat. We pay her poorly for 3
days work a week, and we get 24/7. We could continue to campaign, we could
continue to support the children.
And then there was more good news.
We heard that Petro Georgiou was talking about going to Baxter to “see for
himself” conditions there. There was news that he was talking about a Private
Member’s Bill calling for those being held in long-term detention to be
released. He and other parliamentarians did visit Baxter and declared that
conditions were worse than they had expected.
Others threatened also to support Petro Gergiou’s Bill. Chilout and our fellow
support groups called for all members to write to Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan
and the others in support of what they were doing and to copy any letters or
emails of support to their local member. We encouraged them to encourage others.
And it seems that all that encouragement was heeded.
There were stories of heated meetings in the parliament as the Prime Minister
was brought to a realisation of just how many asylum seeker supporters there
were across Australia and of the electorates where it was considered there was a
need for these people, as there had been a need for traditional migrants in the
past. The galvanising of the converted had happened but it had been brought
about by members of the Liberal Party itself. This was unforseen, but sincerely
welcomed by all of us long wedded to the cause.
And in this climate there was more. The case of 3 year old Naomi Leong came to
public attention. Naomi was the daughter of Virginia Leong who had agitated
mightily for her release and the release of her daughter who had been born in
Villawood Detention Centre. This case reached the point where the Minister
herself admitted that it was “insane” that a little girl would not be
allowed to go to a playgroup outside detention. She was allowed out, the press
coverage was intense and the inhumanity of what had happened to Naomi in her
short life was revealed. Soon she and her mother were released.
Both Naomi and Virginia came to Martin Place on June 10 this year to an event
organised by ChilOut to mark the second anniversary of the deadline called for
by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission for the release of ALL
children from Immigration Detention. This long-planned and well-planned event
caught the attention of the lunch-time crowd as did the remarkable speakers
which included Sister Susan Connelly and Dianne Hiles. It was a day of some
satisfaction for the coordinators. We could see that our cause was alive again
and there was a palpable response as people gathered to look at the images of
the detained children on a huge screen above the amphitheatre, and bought
t-shirts, took ChilOut’s new bookmarks and basically listened to what was
being said. We’ve had other gatherings in the city, but this one felt
different.
Dianne Hiles had always said that ChilOut began on the premise that if
decent, caring Australians knew the truth about the conditions in which child
asylum seekers were detained they would be outraged and call for a change in the
law on mandatory detention.
Within days we knew that there had been a change of attitude and today, Friday
July 29 2005, it would appear that all the children are finally out.
This is not the end of ChilOut as there is still a lot of caring to do for the children who have been released, and watching that today’s better attitiudes and actions are not reversed.
Read about past ChilOut events...