===================== ZNet: The Paydirt Of Paranoia ===================== By Aziz Choudry - ZNet Published on The Black World Today http://www.tbwt.com/ Article Dated 2/21/2003 "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." Send your comments and suggestions about this article to: editors@tbwt.net http://athena.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=2461 ______________________________________ Addendum: the following comments were posted to Melbourne Indymedia on Saturday 7th June 2003: http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2003/06/48569.php Backstreets of Evil - Wackenhut and Group 4 by kazza_lite, Saturday June 07, 2003 at 11:12 PM kazza_lite@yahoo.com When faced with criticisms of the way detention centres in Australia are "run", the Ministry of Truth and Children Overboard has made much of the fact that the winners of the new tender will be oh-so-more profesh than ACM dags. You might remember that ACM was a subsidiary of WCC which was a subsidiary of Wackenhut, until Group 4 Falck bought out The Wackenhut Corporation in May 2002. On 1 May 2003 WCC repurchased all 12 million shares of WCC owned by Group 4. Confused? The question is, which entity, WCC or Group 4, will be in charge of beatings in Australia's world class camps? Backstreets of Evil - Wackenhut and Group 4 Source: Prison Privatisation Report International, No. 55, May 2003, http://www.psiru.org/justice/PPRI55.1.htm Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) has paid $132m to acquire the 57 per cent stake in the company that Group 4 bought in May 2002 (see PPRI # 50, 49 & 47). Last year Group 4, the Denmark-based security and prisons company acquired WCCs parent company The Wackenhut Corporation to create the worlds second largest security firm. It also brought together the two largest international prison companies but a complex legal structure has kept them separate for contract bidding purposes. Although Australian and South African authorities that contract with both companies saw no possible conflict issues, the UK government referred the deal to the competition commission. In October 2002 the commission found there were no public interest concerns, particularly since Group 4 had stated its intention to dispose of Wackenhuts corrections business. Even though WCC was the obvious buyer this process has taken almost a year. Announcing the deal on 1 May 2003, WCCs chairman and chief executive, George Zoley, said: We think that this transaction presents a unique opportunity to increase WCCs independence and create value for WCCs minority shareholders ... we also feel confident that the removal of a controlling shareholder will provide WCC with more flexibility to pursue new opportunities related to the continued expansion of the business both domestically and abroad. The deal also terminates an agreement from 7 March 2002 wherein Group 4 Falck agreed to reimburse WCC for up to 10% of the fair market value of WCCs UK joint venture interest in the event current litigation related to the sale of The Wackenhut Corporation to Group 4 Falck results in a court order that WCC sell its interest in the joint venture to is partner Serco. WCC currently has 59 contracts in the US, UK, Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand with a total design capacity of 43,067 beds. [Group 4 Falck is the second largest security services provider globally with operations in more than 80 countries, over 230,000 employees (662 in Australia) and a turnover of 4.2 billion.] group4 notification of the buyout here: http://www.group4falck.com/object.php?obj=1fb000c&base=3e20068 wackenhut notification of the buyout here: http://www.wcc-corrections.com/wcc-corrections/milestones.asp?id=1 from the DIMIA site -http://www.immi.gov.au/illegals/uad/04.htm - in the tastefully named "illegals" sub-directory: Detention services provider Since 1997 the operation of detention facilities in Australia has been the responsibility of Australasian Correctional Services Pty Ltd (ACS). It was selected from a number of tenderers and its operational arm - Australasian Correctional Management Pty Ltd (ACM) - currently manages all the immigration detention facilities. A Request for Tender (RFT) for the provision of a comprehensive range of services at immigration detention facilities including security, health, educational and recreational programs and facilities was released on 28 June 2002. Tenders closed in mid-August 2002 and in December 2002 DIMIA announced the selection of Group 4 Falck Global Solutions Pty Ltd (Group 4) as the preferred tenderer. Negotiations between DIMIA and Group 4 are underway and signing of a final contract will be subject to successful negotiations on a range of contractual and service delivery requirements that will govern the operation of detention services in Australia for at least the next four years. It is expected the new contract will become operational during 2003. www.psiru.org/justice/PPRI55.1.htm ............. some further elucidation from PPRI by anna_torchio, Sunday June 08, 2003 at 12:52 AM anna_torchio@yahoo.com.au finding this article interesting but confounding I contacted the editor of PPRI, Stephen Nathan, and asked for clarification. he said: "As for the buyback, once the deal has been completed WCC will be the direct owner of ACM. Group 4 Falck will not be involved in ACM. What happens to ACM staff if Group 4's negotiations with the federal government are finalised and they become the new operator is really down to Group 4. [...] However, you should note that if contract negotiations with Group 4 break down then ACM are the only option and are still open to selection by the government to operate the centres. When PPRI #56 is on the internet on Monday you will see that, here in the UK, WCC is to sell its 50 per cent ownership of Premier Prisons (sold to Group 4 May 2002) to Serco which already owns the other 50 per cent.. That won't affect Australia. However it might be worth checking on Serco's Australian operations generally as they might decide to enter the Aus prisons market in their own right. "