>ZNet Commentary
>The Paydirt of Paranoia February 20, 2003
>By Aziz Choudry
>
>"They'll privatise your hopes and they'll privatise your fears. If they
>catch your children crying, they'll privatise the tears" (Brian McNeill,
>"Sell Your Labour, Not Your Soul")
>
>Forbes magazine reported that the September 11 attacks had made private
>security firms "the economic darlings of the world". Many of the major
>players were already raking in profits. In the waves of political
>opportunist "security" hysteria which continue to sweep the world, with
>even more draconian immigration detention regimes, more fear, paranoia and
>warmongering, many of these companies have been doing very well indeed.
>
>"It's clear that since Sept. 11 there's a heightened focus on detention
>... more people are gonna get caught. So I would say that's positive ...
>with the focus on people that are illegal and also from Middle Eastern
>descent in the United States there are over 900,000 undocumented
>individuals from Middle Eastern descent ... that is a population, for lots
>of reasons that is being targeted... The Federal business is the best
>business for us and ... Sept. 11 is increasing that business," said Steve
>Logan, CEO of Cornell Corrections, a US private prison company in a Third
>Quarter 2001 conference call with analysts.
>
>The immigration detention business is booming. The global reach of the top
>players in the security industry is astounding. They are truly
>transnational corporations in every sense. And in our struggles against
>the neoliberal agenda, just like other transnational corporations, they
>must be vigorously exposed and opposed.
>
>It is in their interests to encourage private "solutions" to governments
>imposing racist, restrictive border controls, mandatory detention,
>domestic security measures and aggressive foreign policy. Meanwhile they
>help to whip up and sustain a climate of fear and hysteria in the name of
>the "war on terror" and "security". Private security firms and government
>security, intelligence and defense agencies have long been closely linked.
>
>Since awarding the contract to run its notorious immigration detention
>centres to Wackenhut Corrections Corporation subsidiary Australasian
>Correctional Management (ACM) in 1997, Australia's Department of
>Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) earnt the dubious distinction
>of becoming Wackenhut's third largest customer, after the States of Texas
>and Florida.
>
>By 2001 this contract was providing the corporation with eleven percent of
>its total global revenues. In an SBS interview, reported in The Australian
>on November 25, 2000, George Wackenhut, former FBI agent and head of
>Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, said: "Australian operations are very
>important to us. They're really starting to punish people the way they
>should have done all along. The do-gooders say no, punishment is not the
>answer, but I can't think of a better one."
>
>Wackenhut's directors and senior management have long resembled a Who's
>Who of former CIA, FBI, US Secret Service and military high-ups. In the
>security business, as with other corporate players, there is a revolving
>door of personnel between industry and government, close political
>contacts, enormous political lobbying power, secrecy, and unaccountability.
>
>Many such companies offer a vast array of services. In the spirit of
>deregulation, privatization, cost-cutting and contracting out, governments
>are willing buyers. From airport security, to running private jails, from
>surveillance of activists to private military operations, there is money
>to be made in the security business.
>
>The UK's largest security corporation, Securicor, was the first private
>company to buy into the British immigration detention regime in August
>1970, when the then Conservative government awarded it the contract for
>the Harmondsworth Immigration Detention Centre. It ran this until December
>1988 when Group 4 took over. Securicor now boasts 125,000 staff in 28
>countries. It owns the embattled Argenbright Security, Inc., which was the
>largest U.S. airport security company on September 11, forced out of most
>of its airport operations after the Department of Transportation announced
>it would not do business with the company after security lapses.
>
>Chubb, another global security corporation, provides guards for
>Australia's detention centres holding predominantly Iraqi and Afghani
>asylumseekers on the tiny remote Pacific island of Nauru.
>
>Like the rest of the corporate world, mergers and acquisitions are
>commonplace. Swedish-headquartered global security giant Securitas entered
>the North American market by acquiring Pinkerton in 1999 and Burns
>International in 2000. Now the Securitas AB group has some 300 offices in
>over 30 countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and
>Africa with annual revenues of US$6 billion and over 210,000 employees.
>
>Political activists will be interested to know that Pinkerton Global
>Intelligence Services (PGIS) sells intelligence on a range of groups,
>including political organisations Its website
>(www.ci-pinkerton.com/global/groupProfiles.html) explains:
>
>"The Group Profiles provide a detailed overview of high-profile fringe
>organizations and terrorist groups. The Group Profiles highlight both
>global and domestic organizations. PGIS covers the following groups:
>politically-based, environmentalists, anti-globalists, anti-Western
>groups, extremist religious factions, recognized terrorists, among many
>others."
>
>In another major move, a US $570 million deal, Copenhagen-based Group 4
>Falck bought out Wackenhut Corporation last May. In December, Australia's
>Federal Government announced that Group 4 Falck Global Solutions Pty Ltd
>(Group 4) would be taking over the operation of the immigration detention
>centres.
>
>Just as the continued spotlight on conditions at Woomera, breakouts, and
>ongoing resistance of many detainees had doubtless led to its gradual
>phasing out and replacement with the newly opened Baxter immigration
>detention centre, so too the Howard government hoped that an apparent
>change in management might defuse further embarrassment and outrage. I say
>apparent because the move is little more than a name change. Group 4
>already owned ACM when it was awarded the 4-year, Aus $100 million-a-year
>contract to run the centres. Spot the difference? I can't.
>
>In Australia ACM/Wackenhut and the Immigration Department routinely
>avoided scrutiny and hard questions by referring inquiries back and forth
>between them and denying media access to the camps. No doubt the "new"
>contractor will enjoy the same symbiotic relationship with government.
>
>According to its website (www.wackenhut.com), "The Wackenhut Corporation
>is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. We uphold all State
>and Federal Civil Rights laws. We also believe that fostering diversity
>within the workplace contributes to the success of the Company". Wackenhut
>claims that it will not tolerate sexual harassment or workplace
>harassment, whether it occurs between a supervisor and subordinate or
>between co-workers. Too bad about the rights of the people it imprisons.
>
>South Australia's Department of Human Services reported that between
>January and June 2002 there had been 130 notifications of alleged abuse at
>Woomera, 92 requiring investigation. 10% of these involved sexual abuse.
>ACM has been accused of covering up incidents of physical and sexual abuse
>within the camps. Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
>Commission slammed the conditions and ACM's management, calling it a
>"miasma of despair and desperation". Many guards have used racist abuse
>against the detainees, and beatings, tear gas and other forms of violent
>tactics have been commonplace inside the cages and razor wire.
>
>Meanwhile Group 4 Falck maintains (www.group4falck.com) that it "works
>both nationally and internationally on the basis of principles regarding
>such issues as human rights, racism and child labour."
>
>As Group 4 officially takes over in Australia, its operations elsewhere
>give a sense of things to come. It operated Europe's largest immigration
>detention centre at Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire, England which was closed
>after being virtually destroyed by fire in February 2002. Firefighters
>complained that Group 4 had grossly inadequate safety measures and had
>impeded them from reaching the scene of the blaze.
>
>Fire Brigades Union General Secretary, Andy Gilchrist criticised Group 4
>for treating asylum seekers as "second class citizens" by putting "private
>profit before the lives of asylum seekers. Group 4 flatly refused to put a
>sprinkler system into these premises to cut their costs". With last year's
>takeover it is now the largest detention contractor in the UK.
>
>In her book "Open Borders: The case against immigration controls" (Pluto,
>London, 2000), Teresa Hayter documents the poor conditions, inadequate
>medical facilities, punitive and racist treatment and lack of
>accountability that characterised the regime at Group 4's Campsfield House
>near Oxford. So much for principles. More detentions and more cost-cutting
>mean bigger profits for companies like Group 4.
>
>Many of those detained under Australia's mandatory detention policy are
>from the Middle East. So let us not forget how, late last year, British
>and Danish journalists exposed the activities of Hashmira, a leading
>Israeli security firm in which Group 4 had bought a 50 percent share.
>
>In the Occupied Territories it provided back-up for the Israeli military
>in settlements deemed illegal by the UN. In October, in the Israeli
>settlement of Kedumim, The Guardian's Peter Lagerquist and Jonathan Steele
>observed: "In the name of "security" the guards, many of whom are
>settlers, routinely prevent Palestinian villagers from cultivating their
>own fields, travelling to schools, hospitals and shops in nearby towns,
>and receiving emergency medical assistance."
>
>"Intimidation and harassment are common, causing many villagers to fear
>for their lives". Uncomfortable with adverse media publicity and political
>pressure from some Danish MPs, Group 4 withdrew its guards from the West
>Bank. Following this the Brimbank Community Legal Centre in Melbourne
>wrote to Group 4 that the UN High Commissioner Human Rights Special Envoy
>and Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission had found
>the mandatory detention policy violated human rights law as it applied to
>adults and children in detention, and invited the company to withdraw from
>the tender process.
>
>Needless to say, it did not. This month, Immigration Minister Philip
>Ruddock admitted to Parliament that the average time spent in detention by
>children is fifteen months. The Fortress Australia mentality and security
>paranoia of governments like John Howard's mean more profits for companies
>like Group 4.
>
>This Easter, Baxter, with its 9000 volt electric fence, and high tech
>surveillance and alarm systems, will be the site of another major
>mobilization against Australia's privatised immigration concentration
>camps (see www.baxterwatch.net)
>
>As we mobilise against the war, and plan to confront the next World Trade
>Organisation ministerial meeting in Cancun this coming September, and as
>people inside and outside the corporate-controlled Woomeras and Baxters of
>the world struggle for a world where "no one is illegal" we must continue
>to expose the connections between these issues.
>
>John Howard's enthusiastic support of the US oiligarchy's war on Iraq is
>all the more obscene, given the numbers of Iraqi people already
>incarcerated in the privatised hellholes like Baxter, Woomera, and Port
>Hedland. Howard stands ready (subject to Cabinet approval) to commit some
>2000 Australian special forces and other troops, a squadron of F/A-18
>fighters and Australian warships to the US's oil war. Somebody should tell
>him that war creates refugees.
>
>Neoliberal logic reduces all living things and all human activities to
>mere commodities to be bought and sold in the market place. Group 4 Falck
>Global Solutions' website boasts: "People, is our business...our business
>is our people" Exactly. As Michael Welch, Associate Professor of Criminal
>Justice at Rutgers University wrote in a 2000 paper on the role of the US
>Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Prison-Industrial Complex
>"[U]ndocumented immigrants are commodified as raw materials for private
>profit."