INMATES at Whitehead detention centre had threatened to set fire to their children and use them as human shields if authorities tried to move them, it emerged yesterday.
The head of the Oxfam charity, John Torgrimson, said there had been stomach slashing, riots, fires and self-immolation in the past and the current atmosphere was building up to further extreme action.
Mr Torgrimson said order had to be restored for public safety, although he believed excessive force was used by the 1,250 prison and police officers who fired 250 rounds of tear-gas.
''The climate in Section 7 [which was the target of Thursday's raid] had the potential to be explosive. It was at the point where it was in the public interest and the interest of innocent people for the Government to take control,'' he said.
The inmates had staged protests and hunger strikes in recent weeks that escalated to threats to set fire to themselves, their huts and their children, and to meet any attempts to move them with human barriers of children and badly scarred victims of the 1992 Sek Kong fire, he said.
Most had been in the section since 1989 and had witnessed a number of disturbances, including stomach slashing and riots.