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Security guards at an Australian asylum seeker detention center “gone” amid a detainee uprising, a refugee activist told teleSUR Monday.
No guards were visible on the site Monday morning, while fires burned out of control and detained asylum seekers continued protests against poor conditions in the isolated facility, according to sources on the island who spoke to refugee activist Sarah Ross.
"There's fire and the alarms have gone off, and all the guards have gone," Ross said the source stated during a phone conversation.
The contact said all the Christmas Island detainees appeared to have joined the protests.
Similar claims were also made by a detainee who spoke to New Zealander broadcaster TVNZ.
“There's no security, there's no emergency response team, there's no border patrol, there's no guards, there's nothing," the anonymous detainee told TVNZ.
They continued, "They're not here. They've gone. They freaked out and left, I think."
The Christmas Island detention center mostly holds asylum seekers awaiting processing or deportation. The site has been touted by the government as part of a strategy to crack down on refugees trying to reach Australia by sea. The crackdown has been widely condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations, amid allegations of widespread abuses of detainees.
Ian Rintoul from Australia's Refugee Action Coalition also said the center's management contractor Serco had “abandoned” the site, allowing detainees to effectively take control of the detention center.
"I don't think the accommodation blocks have been burned — a lot of people have not been involved — but there is certainly considerable property damage and breaching of the fences,” he told Australian radio station 702 ABC Sydney.
Australia's immigration department has admitted a “disturbance” has taken place on the island.
“The department and its service providers are working together to resolve the situation,” the government said in a statement, according to Australia's ABC.
The protests began when a group of detainees kicked down a wall to escape a cell.
“Once one of the compound succeeded in doing that the rest of the compound followed suit and then we pretty much banded together and got all the segregation guys out as well,” a detainee told Radio New Zealand.
The detainee said the uprising was sparked by news of the death of Kurdish asylum seeker Fazel Chegeni.
“This recent death has just pushed everyone a bit too far," the detainee told Radio New Zealand.
Officials say Chegeni was found dead outside the detention center on Sunday morning.
According to a statement from the Refugee Action Coalition, “Fazel was suffering the effects of long-term, arbitrary detention.”
“Fazel had attempted suicide when he was in Melbourne; again when he was in Brisbane, and then again in Wickham Point not long before he was transferred to Christmas Island,” the organization said.
Prior to escaping the detention center Friday, Chegeni “had told other detainees that he could no longer stand being in detention and just wanted to go outside,” according to the Refugee Action Coalition.
The source that spoke to Ross said rumors were circulating in the detention center that Chegeni had been seen near the perimeter just hours before authorities announced they had found him dead. The source said three detainees saw Chegeni trying to reenter the center. These allegations cannot be independently verified by teleSUR.
"My friend from Christmas Island ... says three guys saw Fazel alive at 6 am on the fence saying 'I'm here, I'm back,' and that by 10 am he was declared dead," Ross said.
Detention center officials have claimed when they found Chegeni's body, he appeared to have been dead for “some time,” according to sources cited by the Refugee Action Coalition.
The incident was the latest in a series of scandals centered around Australia's detention centers.
Last month, hundreds of people protested in Sydney against the government's treatment of a Somali asylum seeker who became pregnant after allegedly being raped in the island nation of Nauru, where Australia maintains an offshore detention center for refugees. Human rights groups say the woman, identified as Abyan, was denied adequate medical care, including abortion counseling, during a temporary transfer to the Australian mainland. She has since been sent back back to Nauru against her will.
A month earlier, Australia infuriated one of its closest neighbors, New Zealand, after the government began deporting dozens of New Zealand nationals.
Since the government in Canberra made a series of controversial changes to Australia's migration laws in 2014, almost 100 New Zealanders have been forcibly deported, with over 180 more currently being held in immigration detention centers including on Christmas Island.
The Christmas Island facility has long been one of Australia's most notorious detention centers.
In late 2014, two United Nations agencies issued statements that described offshore processing as inhumane and potentially a violation of international law.
RELATED: Australia Gains Reputation as 'Law-Breaker' for Refugee Policy
The U.N. Committee on Torture announced it had uncovered brutal conditions in the processing camps on Manus and Nauru, including poor access to basic necessities such as healthcare for detainees.
“The combination of these harsh conditions, the protracted periods of closed detention and the uncertainty about the future reportedly creates serious physical and mental pain and suffering,” its report concluded.
The same day the report was released, Australia's handling of asylum seekers also drew fire from the U.N. High Commission for Refugees representative in Indonesia, Thomas Vargas.
According to Vargas, Australia's detention of asylum-seeking children violates one of the most widely ratified U.N. human rights treaties, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. “The negative impact that it has on a child's life at the very beginning of their life, to put them in this type of horrible situation, you can just imagine the negative consequences that it has on their psyche, on their wellbeing," he said.
“Not only is it not humanitarian, but it's illegal under international law,” Vargas added.
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