About Destination Detention
Destination Detention reveals the anguish and despair of hundreds of Single Adult Male asylum seekers while in detention and the plight of their families in their home countries. Destination Detention openly and intentionally reveals the daily life of an Irregular Maritime Arrival [IMA] or asylum seeker in the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre.
It provides summaries of stories told in interviews with over 1,400 asylum seekers and personal accounts of persecution and threats to their life in their home countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Sri Lanka, Yemen and Iraq.
Destination Detention has a special focus on interviews and weekly ‘in-detention’ contact with asylum seekers with Hazara, Pashtun, Iranian, Tamil, Yemen and Kurd ethnic backgrounds. Destination Detention tells of fascinating stories about asylum seeker experiences while travelling from their country of origin to Australia.
It tells an especially intriguing story of a persecuted Single Adult Male computer engineer from Yemen who made the journey from Yemen to Indonesia and then to Australia by sea, alone, in a dinghy. He became known as the “Canoe Man”.
The essay details the breakdown of money paid to so called ‘people smugglers’ by asylum seekers and their families. It separates the myth from reality about “people smugglers” profiting 1 million dollars for each boat dispatched from Indonesia to Australia.
Destination Detention will change or influence your opinion of the business of people smuggling from human traffickers to humanitarian travel agents. It explains why the current Papua New Guinea approach to deterring asylum seekers will never be successful and why it will have an enduring negative impact on the people of Papua New Guinea and significant implications to PNG society and the Melanesian way of life.
Destination Detention tells of the lifestyle of staff of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection living in remote locations while on deployment at the Curtin Immigration Detention Center near Derby in the far northwest of Western Australia.
The book tells of professional and social relationships between DIAC officers and Interpreters while on deployment at the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre and of the impact that DIAC staff have on the local economy.
Destination Detention reveals the attitudes, value judgments and the often myopic worldview of officers of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
Destination Detention argues that Australia must take the initiative with member countries of the Bali Process and focus on a sustainable South Asia based regional plan that removes the need for asylum seekers to travel to South East Asia in the first instance.
Destination Detention argues that a sustainable solution does not lie in the transit countries of Indonesia or Malaysia nor in the transfer destinations of Papua New Guinea or Nauru.