Al Jazeera English gets “access” to Serco-run Christmas Island camp

When I visited Christmas Island in late 2011 (researching my book Profits of Doom), the Australian Immigration Department and Serco heavily restricted access (though I finally obtained entry on my last day). This was supposedly for asylum seeker “privacy” but in reality is a policy aimed to not humanise the faces and lives of refugees.

Al Jazeera English gets access but the images are largely useless and there’s no sense that a) the place is run by a British multinational and b) the sheer scale of the place and its status as essentially a harshly run prison. Media organisations should be careful accepting “access” when it arguably contributes little to the story. Then again, showing something of the camp is perhaps better than nothing:

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