In the quiet of his room in NSW’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, Carlos, an Ecuadorian asylum seeker, found a respite from the daily drudgery of “waiting for results, waiting for a visa, or just for information” - playing songs on a donated guitar. Carlos, 51, who asked his surname not be used while he awaits permanent protection visa approval, spent several years in Villawood following an earlier visa cancellation, after a criminal conviction saw him serve jail time. Philip Feinstein says guitars remain the most popular instrument among detainees, although there are often requests for regional instruments, especially from asylum seekers from the Middle East.
Credit: Edwina Pickles “The music for us was a way of escaping pressure...
of feeling or expressing, actually, how we felt about the way we were living,” he said. He’s one of many to benefit from instrument donations organised by Music for Refugees. The group’s CEO, Philip Feinstein, 76, has been running programs for asylum seekers since 2009 and is appealing for more donations.
Feinstein said he would like to see a more humane approach to Australia’s immigration detainees. It comes after the federal government passed tougher laws allowing former detainees to be re-detained if deemed to pose a risk of committing violent or sexual crimes, after a November High Court decision last November saw 153 people, many with serious convictions, released from indefinite detention. In May, this masthead report.
