Villawood burns

This is not going to help them stay her:

Flames erupt at Villawood Detention Centre as detainees protest

Paul Kent, Clementine Cuneo and AAP
From: The Daily Telegraph
April 21, 2011 12:29PM


A PROTEST at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre is expected to last one more night but there will be no more violence, detainees say.

Several detainees were still on the roof of Villawood Detention Centre this afternoon, where they erected banners pleading for help.

Staff were still trying to regain control of the facility after a night of rioting which saw nine demountable buildings destroyed by fire, and other buildings severely vandalised.

One of the roof-top protesters vowed not to come down until he was given a visa and freedom.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Telegraph, Majid Tarhizkar, an Iranian refugee who has been in detention for 20 months, said he had no regrets about taking part in the protest.

“Give me a Visa, give me the freedom”, he said.

“We need help for freedom ... we have had two years in detention and we need to get out.”

A spokesmen for the refugees said they are willing to come down if someone from the Department of Immigration talked to them.

However, Tarhizkar rejected this, saying: “if they want to talk to me they have to come on to the roof”.

“I am not going down until my lawyer gets a visa," he said.

"I promised everybody I would not go down so the answer is to keep myself on the roof”.

“Give me a visa and then I’ll come down, don’t give me a visa I’ll never come down”.

The remaining protesters have laid out several banners, one of which read "We Need Help".

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has warned the rioters that their claims could be affected.

"Violence doesn't get anyone, anywhere," she said.

We might take Gitmo refugees

The Australian government has been approached by the United States to take in former detainees from Guantanamo Bay.:

The Federal Government is preparing to quietly accept detainees, but insisted yesterday there would be no wholesale intake of former terror suspects, as each of up to 250 prisoners would be assessed on an individual basis.

About 60 detainees have been cleared for release by the US, but for security reasons they are unable to be sent to their home nations.

After intense lobbying from the US administration - which is preparing to deliver on the Obama promise to close "Gitmo" - both Australia and the British have begun laying the groundwork to examine accepting detainees.

So just why can’t these people be returned to their home country? Or some other Muslim nation whose culture they should be more familiar with?

Major General John Altenburg warns us:

General Altenburg yesterday said there was a significant degree of reoffending among the detainees who had been released from the Cuban prison.

"About 30 of them have been captured or killed or are known to be back on the battlefield," he said. "These are people who were

released because they thought they weren't dangerous. To me, it's a fair comment to say, 'we don't want these people. Now we've got the burden of watching them and we don't know whether they're dangerous or not'."

I note the United States doesn’t want to take them but Obama still wants to close Guantanamo Bay. I don’t like this at all.