http://www.safecom.org.au/
Australia's Alcatraz: History will judge Howard as Down-Under Guantanamo Man
Media Release
Friday November 16, 2005 - 6:35am WST
For immediate Release
No Embargoes
"History will not be kind to the ageing Australian Prime Minister John Howard over his control of people fleeing regimes
such as Saddam Hussein and the Taliban - and even perhaps in the near future people fleeing countries destroyed by
climate disasters," WA Rights Group Project SafeCom said this morning after an EXCLUSIVE in the Sydney Morning Herald
revealed (hyperlink below) the most minute detail of Australia's Christmas Island detention centre, already starting to
be dubbed 'Australia's Alcatraz'.
NOT REVEALED: Crises controlled from Canberra
"Now that the leaked plans of the Christmas Island Detention centre have finally made it into the Australian media, the
revelations leave big gaping holes of accountability, openness and the unbelievable squandering of hundreds of millions
of taxpayer funds," spokesman Jack H Smit said, but what the Fairfax paper not revealed, is that the plans show that
infra-red camera footage and other electronic communication is beamed straight to Canberra, and as we presume, directly
to John Howard's Prime Ministerial Office," spokesman Jack H Smit said.
"Just like at the time of TAMPA, where the controls of the NAVY were held firmly by the MP from his control room with
Jane Halton and Howard himself at the helm, any crisis inside the Aussie Alcatraz will be monitored and steered from
Canberra," Mr Smit continued.
"For years we have unsuccessfully asked for reporters' attention to the fact that you can land a Russian Tupolev on the
airstrip - renovated three years ago - on the island - with concrete more than a meter deep and a length enough to land
the world's largest cargo aircraft. Similarly, it has also been reported that you can drive an army helicopter through
the opened front doors of the Sport and Recreation Centre on Christmas Island."
"With top-secret white papers doing the rounds amongst conservative governments world-wide, alluding to massive future
security implications of climate change, climate disasters, and associated people movements around the world, while the
UN estimates as many as 150 million climate refugees within decades, Australians should immediately demand on the same
massive scale as the scale of the Christmas Island Alcatraz secrecy, answers as to what Mr Howard exactly plans to do
with the Christmas Island detention centre."
"John Howard and his administration predictably acts with manipulative secrecy on the Christmas Island project - but he
is squandering about half a billion dollars of our taxpayers' money."
"It's about bloody time Howard is forced or wedged into accountability and openness. The massive inpenetrable borders
around the Christmas Island detention centre stand symbol for the Prime Minister's top-secrecy while in government. Both
Howard's manipulative secrecy and the state-of-the-art security barrier keeping people outside as well as inside under
control at the Christmas Island detention centre are of the same making, and they both should be taken apart and pulped
with minute precision by the opposition and Australian citizens, assisted by the media, blow-by-blow, between now and
the 2007 federal election," Mr Smit concluded.
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LINK TO SMH: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/
detention-camp-has-it-all-but-no-people/2006/11/16/1163266639951.html
ENDS