The small Australian island houses hundreds of asylum seekers pushed to despair by a merciless regime. Oliver Laughland meets residents and local workers who find themselves caught between governmental policy and humanitarian catastrophe

Two small coaches pull up outside the Christmas Island mosque, white dust spraying from beneath the wheels in the intense midday heat. The doors slide open and 20 men step out. They are under escort – asylum seekers from the island’s high security detention centre.



Two guards casually cast an eye over their movements.



“You look happy,” says one guard to a Pakistani asylum seeker, as the men mill outside, chatting and play-fighting.



“Because I’m getting a visa, mate,” he replies, smiling.

News of the Australian Coalition government’s anticipated U-turn on offshore processing for some asylum seekers has already reached Christmas Island. It had been announced less than 24 hours before.

The group sits next to me. I shoot off a few mundane questions.

“You’re from the detention centre?” I ask a 23 year-old Pakistani after telling him I’m a journalist.

He nods. A small scar is nested under his right eye. He points to the jetty.

“I came from over there. 13 months I have been here.”

“How is life here?”

“It is good,” he says, shooting back an awkward smile and glancing over at the guards.

And then I’m called away.

The call to prayer starts up and echoes around Flying Fish Cove; off the tall cliff faces, through the rungs of a phosphate cantilever, past the office of the island administrator and from the jetty out to the open ocean, where warships sit on the horizon.

“You need to stop asking questions” says Tony, a guard employed by Serco, the British security company which runs the island’s two detention centres.

“But I’m on public land, I can ask what I want.”

The mood shifts. The men are moved away. Tony gets on the radio to talk to his boss.

“This may be public land, but if you don’t leave now we’ll be cancelling the excursions and these men will miss Friday prayers. What are you writing about, anyway?”

A territory in limbo

Secrecy, segregation and trauma underpins much of daily life on Christmas Island.

The Australian territory is a dot on the Indian Ocean, closer to Jakarta than any city on the antipodean mainland. The island counts three populations: around 1,000 asylum seekers, 1,400 long-term ethnically diverse residents (10% Malays, 20% Europeans and 70% Chinese), and 600 fly-in-fly out workers. They live in near isolation from one another.



For more than a decade, Christmas Island has been the theatre upon which Australia’s debate on asylum seekers has played. It is the landing place for hundreds of boats, the site of one Australia’s biggest detention centres and the point from which thousands of desperate people are transferred offshore to Papua New Guinea and Nauru.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The RV Triton patrols of Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

But now the Australian government is heralding a brutal victory in “stopping the boats”. Through its use of military led boat turn-backs and its network of harsh offshore detention centres, only one asylum seeker boat has been registered as an arrival in Australia since December 2013.

What this so-called victory means for the island is uncertain. For the asylum seekers there are still no guarantees of a visa or a life on the mainland. For the residents, there is economic uncertainty about what will happen if the detention centre is no longer needed. The awful memories of this tumultuous, sometimes fatal, period in Australia’s will also stay with them.



For now, Christmas Island is in limbo.

The island’s democratic deficit

Morning tea at Jon Stanhope’s office is a muted affair. It is his last day as the island’s administrator. His staff have come to say goodbye. Curry puffs and coconut pancakes are served alongside English breakfast tea and sandwiches.

“Is this a special occasion?” a latecomer asks.



“Yeah, very special. They’re getting rid of me. There’s dancing in the streets.” Stanhope replies, half smiling.

The chatter moves to the drawing down of the detention centres. The Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison has announced a deal that will likely see the introduction of temporary protection visas, which could see those detained on the island moved to mainland Australia, as opposed to offshore detention.



Stanhope says he’s been told that the island’s asylum seeker population will soon dwindle to 150 – perhaps by the end of the year. He tells his staff there is no economic management plan, and likens it to the recent closures of car factories in Geelong or the SPC Ardmona processing plant in Shepparton, both of which resulted in government aid packages for affected communities.

A 2012 report commissioned by the infrastructure department revealed that 40% of the island’s gross regional product came directly from the detention of asylum seekers, with up to 80% of the local economy dependent on the centres. The report, says Stanhope, is a case study in itself of how disenfranchised the islanders are. It was not made available to the public – despite its commissioning being strongly advocated for by residents – and had to be accessed via freedom of information request from a resident.



Christmas Islanders cannot vote in state elections and are essentially governed by the Australian department for infrastructure, which holds overall legislative power for the island.



Stanhope says that his overarching experience of government here is that when an issue arises,”the instinct from Canberra is to say ‘well, lets see how long we can go without acknowledging the problem’”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Outgoing Christmas Island administrator Job Stanhope talks about the lack of democracy on the island.

Before arriving on Christmas Island, Stanhope served as the chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory for 10 years. He oversaw the implementation of Australia’s first Human Rights Act in that time.

The work here is less formal. He acts as my guide for much of the week long trip and is often dressed in shorts and t-shirt. Every time we meet, he greets me with a warm smile and a firm handshake.

He became administrator of the Indian Ocean Territories in 2012. It’s a role he describes as stripped of all executive power, leaving him to operate largely as the island’s most prominent public advocate. “I’m not quite sure what the Commonwealth’s expectations of me as administrator were. I’ve tended to make it up as I go along,” he says.

His tenure has been controversial, to some degree. Many on the island believe he has been too vocal a critic of successive government’s hardline asylum seeker policies.



In April last year, Stanhope took the controversial step of nominating an Indonesian people smuggler and three Burmese asylum seekers for an Australian bravery award. They swam for four days after their boat foundered off the coast of Christmas Island to get help for their fellow passengers, including a pregnant woman. Only one survived. The boat was rescued almost as soon as the four jumped off, making their ordeal futile. The nomination provoked uproar amongst some in the community, who nickname him “Refo Lover Jon”.

In April of this year, Stanhope wrote to the Pope after the pontiff visited Lampedusa to express his solidarity with asylum seekers making the perilous boat crossing from Africa to Italy. “The experience and circumstances you spoke about at Lampedusa are essentially the same as those which exist on Christmas and Cocos Island,” Stanhope wrote, adding that it would be, in his view, “of great interest” for the pope to visit the residents of the island. Stanhope proudly shows me a reply reading that “the Holy Father has been dutifully informed” of the invitation. There’s no word on a visit, however.

The paradoxical nature of the island’s beauty and its public reputation as a place of detention has always fascinated Stanhope: “There is something foreboding. Forbidding ... It creates an atmosphere. We have that conflict here, that contradiction of a stunningly beautiful tropical paradise with warships patrolling off our beach and people being kept against their will in places of detention.”

Nevertheless, the vast majority of islanders describe him as a decent man who has advocated passionately on behalf of islanders his entire term. Stanhope has fought for better age care and disability provision on the island – both of which he says are non-existent. He also campaigned for the island’s history to be fully recognised and documented (it was the only place in Australia to be occupied by the Japanese during the second world war after British officers were murdered by a group of Sikh policemen, allowing for enemy troops to invade).

Stanhope’s last memo to residents reads: “Are Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands colonies?”. Below the heading, he attached chapter 11 of the UN charter, which legislates for non-self governing territories. “Because of the complete disregard for the civil and political rights of the residents – they [the islands] are effectively colonies,” he tells me.

An uncertain economic future

Settlement, the island’s main drag, is dead on the weekend. A crowd is gathered at the Golden Bosun, a local bar overlooking the ocean to watch the AFL grand final. The small stretch of shops are empty, and the main road deserted. The Ocean Protector, the customs vessel used most recently to intercept and detain 157 Tamil asylum seekers at sea for four weeks, sits on the open ocean, the sun blazing behind it.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zainal Abdul Majid, president of the Christmas Island Islamic Council. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

Around the island, the ebbing and flowing of the local economy attached to the detention centre is articulated through a tangible sense of frustration. John Richardson, owner of the Lintex electrical store, says he has already lost a substantial proportion of his business since the boats stopped coming.



Zainal Abdul Majid, a manager at the phosphate mine and president of the Christmas Island Islamic Council, says around 70% of Malay women work in the centre as cleaners. “They’ve started thinking, where will we go next?” he says.

Islanders hope that the federal government will consider reopening the casino, which brought a boom to the island throughout the 1990s. The establishment was mostly visited by millionaire tourists from Suharto’s Indonesia and was one of the most profitable casinos in Australia generating $12bn in its first two years. The Asian financial crisis forced its closure, and it’s now mostly used to accommodate immigration department staff. When I visit the pool is empty, the lobby deserted, with only a few drunk revellers found at the karaoke, singing a near unrecognisable version of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep.

But the detention centre has also brought prosperity to some.

Stanhope estimates the island is home to at least 10 millionaires, many of whom have cashed in on the detention boom. A local car hire company has a fleet of 100, nearly always booked out. The island’s largest resort charges a small fortune for rooms, and is nearly always filled with detention centre staff.

Other locals direct a sense of anger at the asylum seekers themselves. “They have faster internet in that centre,” says one resident – pointing out that the asylum seekers have no freedom of movement falls on deaf ears. “They don’t have to pay for food,” says another. In the island’s only supermarket, an iceberg lettuce costs $16; all fresh food is flown or shipped in. Misplaced envy also quickly leads to resentment towards Fifo workers, whom residents blame for price inflation. “They [Fifos] are rude, too” says a resident, reeling off anecdotes of being patronised at supermarket queues and overhearing conversations during which Fifos mock the island.

Considering the vast majority of detainees are Muslim, it’s surprising how little the Malay community, and particularly the Islamic Council, have to do with them.

“Language is the main thing, sometimes we meet them outside when they have their excursion or when they come here [the mosque] for prayer on a special day. But we’re not that close,” says Majid. Later, a centre worker tells me that the Sunni mosque prevents many of the asylum seekers, mostly Shia, from wanting to participate.

“It’s fatigue, I think,” says resident Robyn Stephenson, who has lived here for over 15 years. “Just like if you have guests coming to stay at your house … after a couple of weeks it starts stretching your friendship. I think this island and its people have been left out of any decision making to do with asylum seekers. It’s something that’s been dumped onto our island ... None of the decisions have been made locally, no one has been consulted locally about it, and it has affected the day-to-day working of the average person.”

Stephenson is one of the minority of residents who takes an active interest in what goes on inside the detention centres. She, Stanhope and a handful of residents used to be the only ones down at the jetty watching asylum seekers arrive.

“I’ve been watching people get off the boats for a long time. I see their faces, I see how the adults try and protect their children, I see how emotionally and physically exhausted the people are,” she says.

But the residents aren’t just fatigued. They’re traumatised, too.

Christmas Island’s humanitarian catastrophe

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christmas Island residents recall the SIEV 221 boat disaster of 2010.

The morning of 15 December 2010 will never be forgotten. Suspected illegal entry vessel 221 was carrying 90 asylum seekers, of which 48 drowned after the boat crashed against the cliffs off Flying Fish Cove. It was the biggest shipwreck in Australia since 1890, and many residents saw men, women and children die in front of them. Some find it near impossible to talk about. “I saw them, I was there. But to be honest I don’t want to bring that memory back,” says one local business owner who doesn’t want to be named.



Zainal and Richardson recount the story; both were down on the cliff face throwing ropes, life-jackets and surfboards to asylum seekers thrown overboard.



“We tried to ask them [the asylum seekers] to stay away from the cliff, swim out to the open sea … I think most of them couldn’t swim,” says Zainal. “When the boat hit the cliff with that big wave, that’s really just right in front of us. I was standing there, it was right down below. Even before the boat got smashed we can see people, they just hold out their hand. We can see bodies floating around the boat. And yeah, nothing much we can do.”



Many residents risked their lives that day to save people they had never met. The waves were so heavy they crashed over the cliff faces, and residents risked being washed away themselves. One man nearly jumped in to try and save those drowning in front of him. Questions also remain as to whether the Australian Navy – many of whom also risked their lives that day – were institutionally inhibited to get to the scene fast enough.

“To see people dying in the water is something that does last with you forever,” says Richardson. “To assist with the recovery of the survivors and the bodies is something that is just totally indescribable ... I saw a gentleman about my own age, very well dressed, lovely hair, hanging onto a rope just as the ship impacted the cliff. I had him written off as being a dead person, and just about fainted when I saw him come onshore as a survivor. We locked eyes for a second, we both knew what had happened and what he’d been through.”



The survivors were instantly detained. None of them were allowed to attend a community memorial held just 10 metres from the detention centre in the following days, something which profoundly frustrated and shocked islanders. “We desperately wanted them to come in so that they could thank the people who helped them. It was denied, everything was very carefully and closely managed and that’s just the way it is,” says Stephenson.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christmas Island resident Robyn Stephenson. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

How does witnessing this catastrophe change one’s perception of the issue? Has it hardened locals attitudes to asylum seekers?



“It does change people’s attitude,” says Richardson. “When you see people dying, your attitudes have to change. That doesn’t mean to say however that we necessarily welcome refugees with open arms – there are a lot different opinions on whether or not we should accept refugees and to be truthful I’m not really sure whether we should or we shouldn’t.” Richardson is a supporter of the Coalition government’s policy of turning back boats: “We don’t hear of any incidents where boats have been turned around and lost people overboard. The policy is obviously working, lives are being saved, so as far as I personally go, I’m in favour of it”.

Richardson drives me up to the cliffs, overlooking Flying Fish Cove and the point where the SIEV 221 crashed. Spear fishermen dive off boats below.

A memorial for the boat disaster’s casualties sits at the road’s edge. The twisted 221 propellor head is cemented to the ground, surrounded by pebbles carrying the name of the dead. The writing is fading. “We will reflect on this day with sadness. The loss of each person’s life diminishes our own because we are part of humankind,” the plaque reads.

Richardson rarely comes up here. The memory is too awful.

Finding relief where possible

Centre workers are difficult to talk to, but two detention healthcare professionals agree to take me out for a drive. They worry we might be seen, and on occasion I duck down beneath the seat as cars pass by. We drive out to Temple Ruins, at the south point of the island. A buddhist temple overlooks the cliffs.

“It’s a constant barrage of misery we’re presented with, that we have to fight our way through on a daily basis,” says one of them. His colleague adds: “After a traumatic case, I come up to the temples. I light some incense. It’s not religious, it’s spiritual I suppose. I just feel better.”

In August, it was reported that two guards were evacuated from the island after the pressure got too much. A department of immigration councillor is now presumed dead after his empty car was found on the western coast of the island last Friday. He had been due to fly out of Christmas Island on the same flight as me.

Down at the jetty, three Serco officers are chugging Coronas, smoking and barbecuing meat. They’re friendly enough to talk, but concerned enough not to request their names are withdrawn.

“Guys have been getting sacked recently. We had to sign a new contract when the new minister came in,” one says. I ask what drew them to the work. “It’s a paradise,” says one who has worked here for three years. He points to the shimmering beach and turquoise sea, the panorama spliced by construction cranes and a phosphate tanker.

“I never thought I’d be out here, in a million years. I used to work in a mine. But that’s the thing, we’re all guys from different walks of life. Just like the guys in the centre, they’re all different too,” says another.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A guard at the detention centre on Phosphate Hill, Christmas Island. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

What have they learned from the work? “The most intelligent guys deal with detention the worst,” says one. “Shut your eyes and listen to the words. That’s the best bit of advice I learned, not to judge someone by how they look,” says another. He adds, though, that it’s often easy to determine who has legitimate refugee claim and those who are “trying it on”. And then he continues: “Before I started working here I thought the way to deal with the Middle East was to build a giant wall around it and let them fight it out to the death,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate how that view has changed.

On Saturday nights, Fifos drink themselves stupid down at the resort. Some work 12 hour shifts six days a week and find relief where they can get it. “There’s an attitude that what goes on on the island, stays on the island,” adds another. The only group which don’t seem to take part are the Special Response Group officers of the Australian Federal Police – the riot squad. They’re on call 24 hours a day and can be seen in the early morning running up the cliff faces around flying fish cove.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Outgoing Christmas Island administrator Jon Stanhope reflects on the island’s detention centres.

Whilst those working in the detention system experience their own trauma, the situation for detainees is untenable.

Families and unaccompanied minors are held up at Phosphate Hill. Long rows of shipping containers lie four deep. Families mill about, separated from the public road by a five foot pool fence.

There’s a scheduled excursion to the recreation centre that sits 20 metres from the site, and I sit with a camera hoping to speak to some of the families. Instantly, a guard comes over. I tell him I’m a journalist and he scurries back into the centre, waving me away. Families are shepherded back into their containers. Guards pour out, maintaining a perimeter around the fence. Two AFP officers appear on the front gate. It’s a lockdown.

“Don’t talk to anyone,” I’m told, “And stay away from the fence, that’s Commonwealth land.” They won’t say which laws they are citing to stop me. The excursion is cancelled.

The extent to which the department for immigration goes to prevent the media gaining access to the centres on Christmas Island is extraordinary. Guardian Australia’s formal media visit application was denied. Immigration sources say that no applications have been successful since the change in government, meaning not one journalist has been allowed into an Australian immigration detention centre for over a year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest View from outside the Construction Camp detention centre on Phosphate Hill. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

In detention, poor healthcare standards remain

The reality of life for asylum seekers on Christmas Island is well documented. Many of the families and children hidden behind the wire have been here for over a year – in some cases a year and a half of indefinite detention with the constant fear of a late night transfer to detention on Nauru. Some babies have spent their entire lives behind a fence.

The poor standards of health care are now an accepted fact for most. In December 2013, a group of 15 doctors operating on Christmas Island revealed “numerous unsafe practices and gross departures from generally accepted medical standards which have posed significant risk to patients and caused considerable harm”.

The 92-page letter of concern spoke of a period in Christmas Island’s history when boats were still arriving; asylum seekers would then routinely spend less than five minutes being examined by a doctor before being approved for transfer to the tropical detention centre of Manus and Nauru.

But poor standards in care on Christmas Island remain. When paediatrician professor Elisabeth Elliot visited with the Australian Human Rights Commission in July, she observed that most children detained on Christmas Island were ill with chest or gut infections, living in “unacceptably cramped and high density accommodation” not designed for long term detention.

“Many mothers are depressed after giving birth and suffering health problems related to childbirth and the unhygienic conditions in the camps. This maternal distress has the added impact of disrupting the mother-child bond and will potentially have lasting adverse effects on the mental health of their children,” Elliot said.

A healthcare worker on the island speaks of a constant tension between advocating for their patients and resistance from the immigration department to transfer asylum seekers in need of advanced medical care to the Australian mainland. “We are constantly battling because we’re healthcare providers but we are governed by people who are public servants, creating policies on the run and changing the rules every week to fit their little flawed model. They really do not like to move sideways in any capacity. They don’t want to help any individual in this scene. They’re a number. They’re a non-person.”

Things have improved marginally for children in recent months. A school run by the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia has given them more of a structured day. Stanhope says he’s sees them walking to school proudly carrying school bags, dressed in yellow t-shirts. A playground has opened. But indefinite detention remains.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An asylum seeker walks with her child to Phosphate Hill detention centre. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

The flaw of the department’s strict contact restriction with asylum seekers is that it simply doesn’t work. I log onto my computer and start chatting to one asylum seeker, an unaccompanied minor who resides in one of the containers I’ve just seen from the outside.

I first reported Ali’s* case in November last year. Then 16, he was transferred to Manus Island after a processing error. As a point of policy, no children should be sent to Manus, but after the Rudd government introduced mandatory resettlement in PNG and Nauru, process went out of the window. Rapid transfers meant that age determinations weren’t adequately completed.

When the department realised their mistake, they moved Ali to a tiny room in the centre, where he was kept with one other minor for three months. There were no excursions, and they were not allowed to leave the room. One began self-harming. After Guardian Australia raised his case with Scott Morrison, the two teenagers were flown off the island.

He has now been on Christmas Island for almost a year, confused and alone. “I don’t want to stay in detention no more,” Ali writes. “One officer gave me a room but this room is very dirty and also air-condition is not working, so I said please give me other room. Officer said this is not [sic] hotal which one I give just live and shut up”. He says he wished he’d never been born.

There are roughly 25 unaccompanied minors detained on Christmas Island. There are hopes that they will be moved out of the centres before the end of the year.

I never told Ali we were walking distance apart during our conversations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jon Stanhope sat in the departure lounge of Christmas Island airport before leaving the island for the last time. Photograph: Oliver Laughland

What will the verdict of history be?

Stanhope sits in the departure lounge of Christmas Island airport. He sips a beer as a small group of his staffers turn up to say goodbye. At the community blackboards near his office, a chalked message reads “Thanks Jon,” with large heart drawn around it.

Earlier, I asked Stanhope what the legacy of refugees policy will be. “History will treat us very, very poorly in relation to this”, he replies. “Just as we’ve looked back on the white Australia policy, I have no doubt that my grandchildren and their children will look back at this period in our history and think ‘what did they think they were doing and how did they allow themselves to demean Australia and themselves in that way?’. I believe that will be the verdict of history.” And what will he say to his grandchildren, if prompted? “I will say, ‘well I fought the good fight’.”

Stanhope’s replacement, Barry Hasse, sees the situation differently. Just days after, when asked whether he had any sympathy for asylum seekers who self-harmed, he said that “there would be no self-harm in the centre if they hadn’t gotten on a leaky boat and paid thousands of dollars to be there. You can’t deny that that’s the truth”.

Stanhope boards the plane. Even the ground staff know him by name. He shakes each of them by the hand, and looks out one last time over the island. The islanders have lost their most passionate advocate.

*Ali’s name was changed to protect his identity.