Recently, a netizen named ausikiwi posted an article entitled "my days in Australia-the villawood Immigration Detention Centre" on Tianya forum, describing his inner experience and what he saw and heard at the villawood Immigration Detention Centre.
The following is the original text:
On the evening of February 6, 2018, I was sent to the villawood Immigration Detention Centre. I was in a coma because of my fear of entering immigration prison, and I was dragged into a detention centre by two big Australian police officers who helped me from a medium-sized van.
Then I was put on a couch, and I couldn't see the people around me, but I could hear them talking and laughing, as if they had entered a grand theater. A middle-aged woman, probably a paramedic, said to me, she brought me a pillow and told me to lie on the couch. However, I was still paralyzed sitting on the sofa motionless. She fed water from a teacup to my mouth with a plastic spoon. After two days without eating any food, she opened her lips and swallowed a few mouths of tea.
For about half an hour in the hall, two police officers dragged me back into a cell in a detention center in a semi-unconscious state, put me on a loose bed, and covered me with a blanket.
When the police were gone, I looked over the cell with my eyes open. A single cell of about 30 square meters has a bed and a separate bathroom and is clean and tidy.
I closed my tired eyes, filled with despair, do not know what will happen tomorrow. I fell asleep in a muddle.
The next day, after dawn, I don't know how late it is. A policeman opened the door of the cell, calling my name and gently pushing my body a few times to try to wake me up. I lay motionless in bed with my eyes closed, as if I were not in the same time and space as him.
A few minutes later, I heard the voice of a woman who said, "if you don't wake up, you'll be repatriated, and if you wake up, you still have one last chance to apply for an immigration postponement."
I opened my eyes slightly and said to her in a faint voice, "I cannot be repatriated. If I return, I will be in danger of my life." She said to me, "Okay. I'll wait for you outside for a few minutes. When you get up, go outside and tell me in detail why. "
I dragged my tired body to the bathroom for a moment, and simply washed my face and tidied my hair. Then I went outside the cell to the table. The woman just handed me her business card. At the same time, she told me that she was the case manager in charge of my case at immigration, named Laura.
I looked at Laura, a 30-something married woman with ring, blond hair, thin face, slim figure, delicate voice and kind manner. I immediately developed a good feeling and trust in her.
After listening to the reasons for my request for an extension of repatriation, she made a detailed written record. Then she asked me to sign her paper. After a while, she took out another piece of paper and told me that I could apply for an extension of repatriation for seven working days and asked me to sign and confirm it.
After she left, a policeman took me to the immigration property office. A 30-year-old from Nepal named Ba Sang, the handsome staff received me amicably. He took my photos, typed my fingerprints, copied all my credit and bank cards, and then gave me a full set of clothes and bedding. Then he took me to the office kitchen to pick out my own food and drinks. After I cooked frozen beef and rice in a microwave oven, I had my first meal in custody for two days.
After that, a policeman led me through the big iron gates, walked about 500 meters through a maze-like aisle in a steel mesh fence more than 5 meters high, and after a 150-meter-wide circular lawn playground, I came to the Latrobe apartment area.
I was taken to a dormitory on the second floor. When the dormitory door opened, I saw a dark-skinned Chinese inside. The old man is very talkative, 1.8 meters tall, the body is also very strong. He told me that his surname Xu, from Yantai, Shandong Province, 66 years old, he spent more than 100,000 yuan to help through the agency to come to Australia, has been in Australia for 10 years.
He said he made A $270 a day when he worked as a bricklaying worker at the construction site before he came in. He has made a lot of money in Australia over the years, but most of his hard-earned money is lost in casinos because of gambling.
The apartment dormitory is a suite with an area of about 200 square meters, a living room of 60 square meters, a kitchen, six small bedrooms, two bathrooms and two bathrooms, with air conditioning in the room. Television. Refrigerator. Microwave oven. Washing machine Telephone facilities, etc. Each bedroom upper and lower bunk can live 2 people, inside has wardrobe, desk chair and so on furniture.
Every day a professional cleaner cleans the apartment. I live in this apartment only three are Chinese, the other seven or eight roommates are Vietnamese. But the Vietnamese are still friendly to our Chinese, who like to play cards in the dorm.
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre covers an area of about 500 mu, which is divided into male apartment area. The girls' apartment area. A round lawn playground. Basketball Court。 Football Field。 Two canteens. Fitness Room。 An indoor playground. Coffee Shop。 The library. Barber Shop。 The store will. The guest hall and other facilities are available. These facilities are sufficient to provide living services for 300 to 500 people. Apart from the lack of freedom of access, the infrastructure is comparable to that of a first-class university.
Lunch time at 12:30, my roommate and I went to the cafeteria. The restaurant was followed by dozens. Hundreds of people lined up for dinner. There's air conditioning in the restaurant and it's cool. The queue was moving forward, and as I moved next to the cooler, I took a disposable foam glass and picked up a red juice drink. There are usually two members of the staff at the time of the meal. The first staff member served cold food, including vegetarian food. Dessert。 Fruit, etc. I usually want cucumbers. Tomatoes。 Beans. The second worker had hot food, including chicken. Beef and Mutton。 fish。 Potato, corn, etc. I prefer beef, mutton and fish.
After picking up the meal, everyone sat down to the table in good order and began to eat. There are all kinds of colors and languages in the restaurant from China. Korea. Viet Nam India Malay. Germany。 Britain and other dozens of different countries, men and women eat together, we all get along with each other. It's fun and mellow.
After the meal, I like to take another glass of juice and walk out of the restaurant. Then go to the 500-square-meter lounge outside the restaurant and sit down and slowly taste the sweetness of the juice. At the same time, you can also chat with cellmates from other countries and regions in the rest area.
There is an Internet cafe equipped with more than 30 computers in the immigration detention center. You can surf the Internet for an hour at a time. I like to go to this Internet cafe to browse the information online. In the hot summer, sitting in an Internet cafe to browse the web and get outside news advice is a great consolation to a person who has lost his freedom in life.
The days in immigration detention centres are much the same every day, with little change.
For sports lovers, you can play football on the round lawn. Do aerobics. Play basketball on the basketball court or football field, or go to the gym to exercise. But I'm not interested in prison sports.
What I like to do is to read. Reading newspapers and surfing the Internet. Breakfast starts at 7:30 every morning. Breakfast food is very simple, usually 2 boxes of honey. One fruit. Two eggs. Plus self-picked a little bit like domestic oil tea grain cereal. I like to take a glass of milk and add a box of honey, microwave it for a minute and a half, and then combine the cereal for breakfast.
During the two weeks at the immigration detention center, I met some of my cellmates.
I was impressed by a 22-year-old boy from Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. He was dark-skinned, of medium build, with a small flat head. He told me that he had been in Australia for five years, and that he first came to study in the UTS language class, and then started working on the gyprock (gypsum board) project because he couldn't afford to study, and he could earn more than A $600 a day at the most.
A middle-aged Chinese from Malaysia told me that he had been in Australia for more than ten years, and his wife and children had been naturalized in Australia. He used to have PR, but his PR was cancelled for breaking the law for two years. As a result, the immigration detention centre this time, may be repatriated to Malaysia.
A girl named Yuyun from Fuqing, Fujian, told me that she had spent three hundred and twenty thousand of her time working in Australia three months ago through an intermediary. Packing at a e-business factory, salary is $14 an hour.
Unfortunately, her boss was reported, immigration and customs officers surrounded the factory, and employers and workers with expired visas were arrested in immigration detention centres. The boss is also from Fujian, where his e-commerce business sells more than A $10, 000 a day. Unexpectedly, this time along with the boss's son was also arrested in immigration detention centre. The boss also comforted her not to be afraid. The immigration detention center was like a four-star hotel with food and drink. New Year's Eve, Yuyun was arranged by the Immigration Board flight back to the country. The dream of a 30-something woman working in Australia to become rich has since come to naught.
By the way, why are these people in immigration detention centres brought in?
This is thanks to Australia's most terrifying animal; it is not a viper, not a black widow spider, but an omnipresent, haunted Australian police officer.
There are police stations in every town in Australia, police cars running on the roads, plain-clothes police lurking in every corner of the city and country, and local residents, who have been advertised by the police as neighbour watch, can call the police at any time.
This year, the government in Xinzhou asked police to double-check drivers on the road in an effort to reduce traffic accident rates. It is estimated that 80 percent of those entering immigration detention centres were arrested after being stopped and checked by police while they were driving.
In addition, some people enter immigration detention centres for a strange reason, but it boils down to the fact that visas expired and were seized by Australian police and sent in.
Therefore, this is a reminder that visa expiration still stay in Australia friends must stay away from the police, but also watch out for your neighbors to report.
Used cars in Australia are cheap, one. A used car can be sold for two thousand Australian dollars. However, when buying a car, it is important to see if the rego and insurance of the vehicle are expired. As soon as these expire, license plates are automatically blacklisted by traffic cameras on the road. Such cars will be spotted and intercepted by police vehicles on the road for minutes, with fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars, heavy revocation of driving licences and even prosecution in court.
In early October last year, I drove on the road around 07:30 in rego and an expired insurance car, and was stopped by the police before driving five kilometers away. In order to force me to get out of the car, a female policeman smashed the window glass on the side of my cab with an iron bar. Another male policeman stood in front of my car and raised pistol to aim at me. If I don't get out of the car, maybe the police will shoot me at shoot.
Half a month ago, when I was caught by the police, I got seven tickets in a row, for a total of A $2000. This time, the police not only put me in prison, but also cancelled my driver's license and sued me in court. Later, I applied to the judge for bail, which allowed me to regain my liberty after two days in custody. But I lost my car and lost more than A $500 in car custody.
On February 23, 2018, around 3: 00 p.m., I received a note from the security guard of the Serco service. He asked me to call back the phone number on the note.
After I dialed the number with a pay phone, a woman who called herself Sali told me that she was a visa officer for immigration. Then she told me that she was reviewing my bridge visa.
She asked me if I needed an English translator. I said, no.
Then she asked me more than a dozen questions in English. I felt that every question she asked was tricky, as if she had to pick a few bones out of the egg. I kept asking her to repeat the questions and try to hear what she meant before answering them. But she told me in a very clear tone that she was not satisfied with my answer. She said she could not believe what I said.
She asked me, do you have a job in Australia? I said, no job. I have a car and trailer in Canberra, she said. There must be trailers for work. I find her logic of thinking strange. Can't trailers be used for personal purposes other than for work?
She questioned me for half an hour in a manner similar to interrogating the criminal. She said she did not believe me at all. I had a hunch that she would refuse me a visa to cross the bridge. I told her that because there was no English translator on the phone, I did not understand her questions accurately today. I hope she will give me another interview. She agreed to my request. Let me call her again at 10:00 next Monday.
On Feb. 26, 2018, at 10:00, I dialed visa officer Sali on time. She said she had found me a Chinese translator. I said, thank you. Then, with the help of a Chinese translator, she asked me more than 20 odd and tricky questions. I answered all her questions calmly. The female translator who spoke in Chinese also translated my answer to her more accurately. However, from this call I still faintly feel that many of the visa officer Sali's problems are playing tricks. She said she would consider submitting my bridge visa for review.
About 3 p. M., my case manager, Laura, told me when he met me. My bridge visa was denied. It is difficult for me to suppress the anger in my heart. Only then did I wake up. Visa Officer Sali interviewed me for a bridge visa not to issue it to me. It's just that she's trying to find a reason not to issue a bridge visa.
A long-haired friend from Xinjiang, who entered Sydney airport three months ago on a tourist visa, was directly denied entry by Australian immigration staff after being transferred to the Villawood immigration detention centre because he was suspected of having a tendency to work.
According to him, several other Chinese arrived at the airport on one of his flights, for the same reason that they were sent to the detention centre. This year, the Australian Immigration Service has stepped up inspections of Chinese people who come to Australia on tourist visas. Especially for those Chinese tourists who travel to Australia alone, especially when filling out the entry application form at the Australian airport, the address of the Australian residence or hotel should be specified. Otherwise, it is easy to be refused entry by the Australian Immigration Service.
March 1, 2018, the autumn is bright today, the weather is fine. After nearly a month in the immigration detention centre, the days of loss of freedom are often gaunt and heartbroken.
When attending a church event at 10:00, I spoke to Helen, a church volunteer, about the refusal of a bridge visa, hoping that she would provide me with a place to live and help. She also seemed very embarrassed, telling me that tens of thousands of people are now applying for bridge visas, and it is very difficult to get a visa smoothly.
After 3: 00 p.m., I successfully completed the revision and submission of the statement with the help of my lawyer. The visa officer also responded to the email in a timely manner, confirming that my statement had been classified with the Protection Visa Application form and that the visa would be approved as part of the assessment document.
At around 5 p.m., I received a fax from Serco security to my AAT informing me to attend the hearing on March 6. I did not expect to receive notice of the hearing the day after the application for appeal was filed. It gave me renewed hope of getting a bridge visa.
On March 6, 2018, at 2: 30 p.m., the AAT hearing for me began on time in the conference room on the sixth floor of Clearence. A few minutes before the arbitrator arrived, I was still calling my lawyer to ask him if he had sent evidence of an important letter to AAT. Fortunately, the woman in the AAT conference room told me that she had received the letter.
As the judge walked into the hearing office, the whole audience rose to show respect. After that, AAT's female staff took out the Bible and asked me and the church volunteer in attendance, Helen, to take an oath in the hands of the Bible. A middle-aged man with glasses was also sworn in by an interpreter at the scene.
The moderator of the AAT hearing, who introduced the judge's name, and we can call him Member.. Then the judge started asking me question-by-question from the visa officer who refused me a bridge visa last time. The judge, in his mid-fifties, wore glasses, and his expression was very serious. He is always skeptical of the questions I answer and likes to ask the bottom. I listened carefully to the Chinese translation of every word passed to me, I calmly and calmly answer in Chinese. The translator then restated my reply to the judge in English.
When the judge read my friend's testimonial letter to me, he read it to me. I saw the judge's expression begin to lighten up. He gave me a detailed account of the conditions for a bridge visa. I felt at once that the hearing seemed to me in the right direction. The hearing came to an end when the clock on the wall pointed to five minutes past 4: 00. The judge asked me if there was anything to add. I said, I have spent a month in the immigration detention centre isolated from the world, lost freedom for a month. I have suffered a great deal of damage to my mind. The visa officer snapped at me that you had been taken to immigration detention because your visa had expired and that there should be no complaints. Then the visa officer clenched on my speeding suit, asked me for more than a dozen minutes, and recorded it in his notebook. It was only then that I realized that I should not pull up topics that the judge did not like to hear.
At the end of the hearing, the judge did not announce on the spot whether to grant me a bridge visa, but asked me to go back and wait for notice. When I walked out of the hearing room, Helen rebuked me that I should not, at the last minute, pull out redundant questions to the judge. I took Helen's hand and thanked her for coming to the hearing. Then I returned to the immigration detention centre.
On the afternoon of March 8, 2018, I received an email from AAT. With apprehension, I held my breath and opened the e-mail slowly. When I saw the contents of the attachment, I was stunned. AAT's review still rejected my application for a bridge-crossing visa. Although I have done my best to prepare for the hearing. At the hearing, I was also very careful to answer the judge's tricky questions. Lawyers and friends have tried their best to help me prepare the documents. Unexpectedly, the end is still a "bamboo basket in the air."
One of the reasons why the judge who refused a bridge visa in AAT's e-mail was far-fetched, misguided and deliberately distorting the facts. I have a deep sense that in a country dominated by ghosts, it is almost impossible for Chinese to defend their legitimate rights and interests.
This article is from Tianya forum. The article is provided by netizens. The authenticity of the article is yet to be determined.