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Article Excerpt
Horizons orient us. For the detainees at the Baxter detention centre, namely refugees that have come to Australia outside the formal refugee programs, horizons can only be remembered or imagined. In one of the most de-humanising functions of this facility, its occupants can only see the sky from their compounds, unable to position themselves geographically, watch the sun set or rise, or imagine where the roads lead as the earth's surface curves away.
The Baxter immigration detention facility, opened in 2002, is situated on the desert highway leading out of Port Augusta, South Australia. Minister for Immigration Phillip Ruddock has indicated that the centre was designed to solve the problems of the now closed Woomera by 'managing' detainees more 'effectively'. He has labelled Baxter a 'holiday camp', and stated that the lack of barbed wire gives the installation more 'amenity'.
As the site of protests over Easter, it was immediately evident to activists that Baxter is no holiday camp. A massive complex, Baxter is all steel and high fences, outer and inner walls, huge floodlights, innumerable cameras and guards, and excavated land between the buildings and compounds. There may be no barbed wire, but the electric fence that carries up to 9000 volts serves as a far greater practical disincentive for those wanting to escape, while removing the...
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