Happy Birthday Sweetheart
Jessica Perini, 10 June 2004.
Today we marked the birthday of Christina, but we didn't have candles or a cake. We probably should have as it was her twelfth birthday, but we didn't. We didn't because it was a sad occasion.
When I think of a twelfth birthday, I remember of course my own, being surrounded by all my girlfriends from school and around the neighbourhood. I remember going to McDonald's and, while I don't remember the food so well, I remember that we had ice-cream cake. That special McDonald's ice-cream cake - all pink and blue with dozens of little swirls on top. Also I remember having the party room upstairs, all to ourselves, me and my friends, and that was so grand, because no one else could be there, no other McDonald's customers. We were special customers; we were princesses, and this was our castle. We may have been eating out of the same Styrofoam packaging as those common people downstairs, but we didn't care. This was the 1980s. We still used cancer-producing packaging back then.
I wish it could have been this way for Christina. (Not the cancer-producing packaging, but the whole princess bit.) But it wasn't. As a matter of fact, she wasn't even at the celebration of her passing into this most wondrous age.
The reason was because she was in Baxter immigration detention centre, in South Australia.
When I finally got to Sydney's Town Hall Square at 3 pm there were only a few people milling about. Mainly, fellow ChilOut volunteers giving out pamphlets and white balloons.
Would anyone turn up? I worried. Several years of hard work, and it all came down to this. Getting children out of detention had been the main aim of this organisation since before the Tampa picked up its now-infamous human cargo, and today was the deadline. The day we co-incidentally marked Christina's birthday.
The national independent human rights watchdog, HREOC (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) conducted an Inquiry into the detention of children like Christina. So many reports had come from immigration detention centres alleging abuse of the children, depression, all kinds of self-harm and the children witnessing self-harm. And in 2001, the Commission took notice. They interviewed psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, detention centre guards, teachers; people who had been involved with the kids in the centres. But more importantly, they interviewed every detainee child at every detention centre over 2002. They also asked former detainee children about their experiences in detention. The findings of the Inquiry speak for themselves and no one adjective could aptly describe the 900-page document citing case after case of loss of self-dignity, safety, and the inalienable rights that are absolutely bound with being a child.
About a month ago that Inquiry's report was supposed to be tabled in parliament by the very person who was in charge of Christina and all her friends' welfare from March 1996 until last October; Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock. All day that day I listened to the proceedings of parliament, waiting for the announcement of the tabling of the report. All day, other ChilOut supporters tuned their ears to ABC radio. What's going on? Wasn't he supposed to do this at 4 pm?
Nothing.
The report was quietly tabled by the Minister for Health, Tony Abbott. There was no speech, no acknowledgment. No apology. The abuses that had been perpetrated under our government's policy were handed over without comment. Somehow an email went around saying that the report had been tabled. But�the public didn't hear anything. A joint press release of Vanstone/Ruddock crept up on Vanstone's site.
They must have been hoping that the report would be tabled and then die a quick, almost silent death.
Dr Sev Ozdowski, the Human Rights Commissioner, placed a deadline on the government for the release of the children. That deadline was today. That's why we're here in Sydney's Town Hall.
The children are still imprisoned and it is Christina's fourth birthday spent in detention.
Imagine that.
The first two birthdays she spent in detention were in Woomera. At the tender age of nine she would have seen riot police, water cannon and people jumping on wire fences. I try to remember what I was doing at the age of nine. Probably playing with Barbies or swimming in my neighbour's pool. I don't actually think I knew what a water cannon was until the tender age of thirty, when I saw one on TV at Woomera.
Woomera, the place where they tested atomic weapons. What a place to put a child. And a child from Afghanistan at that. Wouldn't you think at the age of nine that she had seen enough desert, enough war, enough weaponry to last her lifetime?
Over the last four years she has seen people, including her own family, slowly degenerate before her eyes, as all hope slowly ebbed away. This month is their 41st in detention.
As the sun sets over Sydney tonight I look over at a sea of white balloons. They're not birthday balloons but nevertheless, I suppose we have to take what we can get. They say "children don't belong in detention centres". They're not a traditional heart shape, nor do they have ponies on them. Do twelve year olds still like ponies? That's about as close as we get to birthday decorations for Christina.
Religious dignitaries of every faith pray for the delivery of the kids into our free land. Rabbi Raymond Apple, Bishop David Cremin, Sheikh Jehad Ismail and Reverend Dr Dean Drayton have all experienced what Australia has to offer, and unequivocally open their arms to share it with the kids and their families.
Politicians from all parties come up to the podium and all say the same thing. The children should be free.
Happy Birthday Sweetheart.
I'm sorry we couldn't give you more.