Australia's Alcatraz: History will judge Howard

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

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