Leaked video and audio reveals tension as onshore detention centres become more like prisons and increasingly house people awaiting deportation

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Leaked video, audio and images have revealed allegations of excessive force and harassment inside Australia’s network of onshore detention centres.

Last year the federal court overruled a ban on detainees having phones, which has allowed snippets of life inside the centres – long closed to media and cloaked in secrecy – to be recorded and leaked out.

The secret recordings form part of a Guardian Australia investigation which has uncovered serious concerns about transparency and accountability, as well as allegations of assaults, arbitrary transfers and cover-ups.

The investigation found:

guards had allegedly discouraged detainees from pursuing complaints

allegations of abuse and mistreatment of detainees

allegations by a former Serco employee that complaints were “covered up”

allegations that detainees had been arbitrarily transferred away from their home state

claims of “prison-like” conditions in detention centres

allegations of an increasingly militarised approach from authorities and rising tension within the centres

In one recording a guard who works for the detention centre operator Serco claims he has been the subject of numerous complaints, but none has ever been investigated.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Serco says the recordings are unverified and has refused to comment on them. Photograph: Cortlan Bennett/AAP

“I honestly have no idea how many complaints I’ve ever had,” the guard says. “You know how many times I’ve been investigated? Never.

“It just gets shut down just like that, because they know I’m doing the job I’m supposed to be doing.”

The context is a conversation about complaints from a Pakistani detainee, Nauroze Anees, his behaviour towards new roommates and his feeling that he is being targeted.

In another audio recording from around the same time, a senior officer tells Anees that if he withdraws a complaint he has made against a guard they would be “all good in the hood”.

The department and Serco said the recordings were unverified and declined to comment on them. Four people have separately told Guardian Australia they recognise the voices as Serco employees.

Numerous videos seen by Guardian Australia show guards – often the emergency response team (ERT) – using allegedly excessive force to deal with incidents as insignificant as taking a second piece of fruit or asking kitchen staff for more garlic.

Some videos show groups of guards slamming men to the ground.

One, shot last year at Mita (Melbourne immigration transit accommodation) showed guards responding with force against two detainees. One was held face-down on the ground and the other man attempted to tell officers he was struggling to breathe. He was also restrained and pushed against a wall.

Others show a detainee, who was earlier restrained by guards, handcuffed to a clinic bed. Leaked photographs believed to be taken by detention staff show numerous men with unexplained facial injuries.

The recordings – made by a handful of the 1,700 or so people in detention – typically start halfway through an incident, are without context and require explanations that are not forthcoming from Serco or the government.

They are made to bolster allegations by detainees against detention staff. Guardian Australia has been told of numerous allegations involving ERT officers, including random room searches in the middle of the night, physical and sexual assault, intimidation, false accusations, verbal abuse and force resulting in injuries including broken fingers.

Questions to Serco were directed to Australian Border Force, which rarely comments on specific incidents. “All staff, including service providers, are expected to adhere to the laws, policies, rules and practices that govern how people are treated in immigration detention facilities,” ABF said.

‘Prison-like’ centres

The Coalition government has frequently noted that it has closed 19 detention centres since it took ownership of the Labor-era “legacy caseload” of asylum seekers, although that figure is bolstered by counting individual wings rather than entire centres.

The number of people held in detention – at a cost of around $790m a year – is declining, and the make-up of the population is swinging away from asylum seekers towards people whose visas have been cancelled and are awaiting deportation under controversial “character test” provisions. Drugs can and do get in, some detainees have allegedly been able to run criminal enterprises from detention, and many deportation cases involve violent individuals.

Multiple detainees, however, have told Guardian Australia they fear the staff, not other detainees.

The changing demographics mean the centres are increasingly restrictive, with some, such as Mita and Yongah Hill, outside Perth, building new wings described by detainees as prison-like.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Activists rally outside Yongah Hill in 2012. The detention centre has built new wings described by detainees as prison-like. Photograph: Rebecca Lemay/AAP

“Up until now the public has tended to equate detention with refugees,” one detainee says. “The [government] is increasing the number of those detained on cancellations on character grounds. And they’re having to race to expand the onshore centres to cope with the influx.”

Guardian Australia has previously reported on arbitrary rule changes around visitors and gifts, including “farcical” drug tests blocking visitor access and the alleged refusal to allow gifts of baby food to detained mothers.

There have been riots, protests, acts of violence, alleged assaults and deaths. Three young men have taken their own lives in the past six months. Others have tried to do so but not succeeded.

Conversations with detainees and centre employees over several years suggest that the experience of detention can lead to some detainees fixating on or exaggerating small issues, but also that lodging complaints is one of the few forms of control detainees have over their lives.

All complaints are meant to be seen by Border Force, but detention sources say they are often dealt with solely by Serco.

“There is so much that I think is covered up,” a former Serco employee told Guardian Australia. “If [a detainee] put a complaint to Serco … Serco is supposed to investigate it, but I think it depends on the management at the time. They’re supposed to talk to the detainee, non-judgmental, get both sides of the story, sort through it and work out a remedy. But what I see now is that’s not really there.”

Serco faces financial penalties for complaints that are not finalised within a timeline, the employee said.

“Some detainees have tried to ring the police from inside the compounds and it depends which centre but it appears the police sometimes don’t get involved and detainees are told to put it through ABF,” the former employee said. “I don’t think Serco or even ABF should make the judgment about whether it goes to the police or not.”

A Serco spokesman told Guardian Australia the company “encourages anyone with a concern to make a complaint through the many channels that exist”, but declined to say how many complaints had been received or investigated. He referred the question to the home affairs department.

ABF said all complaints were taken seriously by the department and service providers.

“Where appropriate, serious complaints may be referred to law enforcement agencies for further investigation,” a spokesman said.

“Detention facilities are subject to rigorous internal and external review and oversight processes, including by the commonwealth ombudsman, Australian Human Rights Commission and Australian Red Cross.”

The former Serco employee said ABF officers were less and less engaged with detainees and ERT guards were encroaching into spaces they did not usually occupy, heightening tensions.

Detainees were filming whenever they thought a guard was doing something wrong, the former employee said.

“They’re trying to catch them out,” they said. “You’re always going to get the detainees’ perspective. They feel like they haven’t got a voice, and they’re battling to get a fair go. So you’re seeing the worst of what ERT are like.”

The Serco source said the ERT officers were trained to respond to incidents “military style”, rather than to de-escalate situations or take a welfare-based approach.

“They enjoy giving a hard time to detainees,” one detainee said.

The department defended its policies and conditions, including any use of force, which it said occurred only “when necessary”.

“The department maintains a robust administrative framework around our detention facilities and they are subject to rigorous external oversight,” a spokesman told Guardian Australia, referring to “numerous public statements regarding conditions”.

“As publicly stated previously, we strongly refute claims that conditions in immigration detention facilities are inhumane or brutal,” it said in February.



The mental health risk

Three detainees have recently taken their lives in detention centres. A 25-year-old Iraqi died at Sydney’s Villawood centre early in March. Last month a young Sierra Leonean man died in the same facility, shortly after he returned from a meeting with ABF, other detainees said. Last year the death of 22-year-old Sarwan Aljhelie sparked riots at Yongah Hill and mass transfers of detainees to Christmas Island.

Ombudsman’s reports to parliaments – a statutory requirement for detainees who have been held for more than two years – repeatedly urge action on the “serious risk” that “prolonged and apparently indefinite detention” has on mental health.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Last year the death of 22-year-old Sarwan Aljhelie sparked riots at Yongah Hill and mass transfers of detainees to Christmas Island. Photograph: Rebecca Lemay/AAP

In 2016 the national audit office found the government’s administration of onshore detention health services was improving. But two years later a report by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre found a “legislative vacuum” in healthcare inside detention, with no guaranteed right to reasonable care and treatment.

“The Australian government is failing to provide people in immigration detention with access to the medical care and treatment they need,” the centre said.

One demand disseminated by detainees during protests earlier this year noted the apparently arbitrary transfers of people across the network.

Shortly before he took his life, Aljhelie was sent from Sydney’s Villawood – near his family and children – to Yongah Hill, 100km east of Perth, without any explanation.

“If you’re from Melbourne they take you to Christmas Island or Perth; if you’re from Perth they take you to Melbourne,” a detainee told Guardian Australia last year.

Some detainees felt they were in “limbo”, held with no pending criminal or migration matters, or no explanation of why they were still in detention after successful judicial reviews.

Others face deportation, under the “character test” provisions introduced in 2014, to countries where they have few or no ties other than that it was their place of birth.

Their jail sentences have been completed but the department detains them as “risks” while they go through the estimated 18 month-long process of court appeals.

“If I was an Australian citizen in exactly the same circumstances … where would I be?,” said one detainee facing deportation to a country he has never lived in. “I’d be back home in the community living with my family, working and getting on with my life.”

The majority of these detainees are from New Zealand, whose prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has labelled the situation “corrosive” to the two countries’ relationship.

The chair of the parliamentary committee on migration, Jason Wood, says the character test laws are working and Australia is “a safer place without these people”.

The home affairs department and its minister, Peter Dutton, have frequently defended the increasing number of deportations and the conditions in onshore detention. Detailed questions about allegations raised by detainees and the former employee were not answered.



