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Monday, 20 September 2010

Men threatening to jump from Villawood

Six men are on the roof of the Villawood Detention Centre after the death of a inmate this morning.
Man facing deportation found dead
Earlier, the Fijian man died; refugee advocates say he jumped.

Authorities said it was too early to be sure of the cause of death.
Sara Nathan, a refugee advocate, told SBS she knows three of the men, all Tamils, and headed to the centre to try and dissaude them from jumping, but was not allowed near them.

There is one other Tamil and one Afghan also on the roof, she says.
She understands that the men are upset at the treatment of the Fijian man, who she says committed suicide.
They can understand why he took his life, as he's about to be deported.'
'Tamils who have been previously deported have been tortured by Sri Lanka', she said.
Nathan said the man who appears to have jumped had written to the Department of Immigration to properly look at his case, claiming they had not done the proper determiniation on his case.

She also says there have been some errors in dealing with the case of one of the men currently on the roof.

'One of the guys on the roof is a UNHCR-mandated refugee but was rejected by the department', she told SBS. 'The rejection letter has a lot of factual errors.'

At least three of the men are stage-three, and many detainees at the centre are reportedly on hunger strike.

Authorities on the scene have "put mattresses on the floor and called fire trucks", the Refugee Action Group's Ian Rintoul told SBS.

"The other Tamils are very distressed, there's a lot of manhandling going on", he said.

SBS is awaiting comment from the Department of Immigration.

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