Australia immigration center vacated after riot

Workers at an Australian immigration detention center in the Indian Ocean are reported to have been removed from the facility "for their own safety" Monday amid ongoing unrest.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a riot broke out at the Christmas Island center after riot squad officers attacked the friend of an Iranian Kurd who died while being chased by guards after escaping detention Saturday. 

"It just went off from there. The guards evacuated, they abandoned the place," the Herald reported an unnamed inmate as saying.

"It was like a war zone. They've been smashing windows and walls, smashing the cameras, looting the canteen, and setting fires. The place has been smashed to pieces." 

Fairfax media reported another inmate as saying that foreign nationals whose visas had been revoked under section 501 of the Australian Migration Act had taken over the facility.

"Everything is burnt. The medical centre is burnt. The canteen is burnt. It's havoc – we've had enough," he was quoted as saying. 

Inmates are reported to have said that they heard the dead man -- identified as 30-something Fazel Chegeni --  being pursued after he escaped detention.  

"We heard him screaming. I think they were chasing him through the jungle. Then the screams just stopped."

Guards later told inmates that the man had died in an accident.

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton told reporters Monday that discussions to solve the situation were ongoing.

"The issues will be resolved hopefully by negotiation, without the use of force, but that’s an issue for the professionals on the ground... and then that will restore order; one way or the other at the appropriate time."

He added that advice he had received suggested there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Chegeni's death.

"The Federal Police will conduct an investigation into the circumstances of his death... and obviously the coroner in due course will release the report and we can make judgements at that point," he said.

A statement from the Refugee Action Coalition released Sunday referred to Chegeni as "a victim of the punitive detention regime that cares nothing for the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees.”

"At a meeting late this [Sunday] afternoon, detainees were told that Fazel’s [Chegeni's] body was found ‘in the jungle’ and that he had been dead ‘for some time’,” spokesperson Ian Rintoul said.

"Like so many others, Fazel, was suffering the effects of long-term, arbitrary detention. Fazel has 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."

Rintoul said that Chegeni had told other detainees that he could no longer stand being in detention and just wanted "to go outside".