SYDNEY, March 30: Hundreds of campaigners against the Australian Government’s policy of mandatory detentions of asylum seekers, attacked the Woomera Detention Centre in South Australia on the evening of Good Friday and helped many detainees to run away.

About 37 of those who escaped with the help of protesters were recaptured on Saturday while ten are still at large.

Protesters, who outnumbered the police and security personnel, tore the fence of the detention centre and authorities blamed them for ripping police uniforms and sheltering the runaway detainees in their camp. Government has reinforced the security of the centre by sending more police force.

Those escapees, who are recaptured, are kept at the police station and will be charged for illegally “escaping the lawful custody.” Police arrested 16 protesters and charged them with “aiding, abetting and harbouring the escaped asylum seekers.”

They will appear in a local magistrate’s court on Tuesday, after the long Easter weekend.

A few hours after detainees’ escape on Friday night, another scuffle started in a compound of Woomera Detention Centre where, according the Immigration Department, 15 staff of the centre were injured when they were attacked by detainees. Tear gas was used to suppress the uprising.

The Department said that a large number of detainees attacked a group of officials from all sides with razor blades, rocks, steel bedposts and part of a fence. Many officers received injuries including bruising and razor blade cuts.

An Immigration Department spokesman says the situation inside the Woomera Detention Centre looked calm on Saturday. During the last few months, the centre had been the scene of many protests like hunger strikes, lips stitching and suicide attempts by detainees complaining over the long delays in processing their applications for refugee status.

Different Action Groups, who are campaigning against the Howard Government’s policy of mandatory sentence, planned the weekend protest and hundreds of protesters gathered and camped a short distance away from the Woomera Detention Centre in South Australia. Many protesters came from other states like New South Wales and Victoria. They stormed the centre on Friday evening and tore down a part of the fence covered with razor wire and helped some asylum seekers to go free.

A 12-year-old Afghan boy, who said his name was Muntazer, was one of those who escaped with the help of the protesters and spoke in an exclusive interview to SBS Radio of Sydney, about his escape and his plight:

“Someone took me out. We broke the fence, so we came outside. You are crazy in the camp. Very bad. Drinking shampoo, cutting yourself. I sew my lips, cut myself, drink shampoo, because I want freedom.”

Kristalo Hrysicos of Refugee Action Collective, who came from Melbourne to take part in the protests, was one of those who helped Muntazer and some others to escape. She defended her and other campaigners’ actions. “We ran out of the detention centre back to our camp and proceeded to feel we were absolutely right to protect and support these people’s plights and to hear their stories. They are absolutely desperate to take their story out, to get out of the concentration camp,” said Kristalo.

Muntazer, who says he has been living in Woomera Detention Centre with his mother and uncle for 16 months, wants to go to Sydney where he will have to find his father who arrived in Australia with an early group of asylum seekers.

The Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has said that detainees who escaped detention centre could go to jail for escaping the government custody that, he says, is a criminal offence under Australian law. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted him as saying, “We have no requirement under our law to give protection to people who commit serious criminal offences.”