PERHAPS someone should have told the Correctional Services Department that history has a habit of repeating itself. Instead, that task was left to another inquiry into their activities.
The findings of the report into the raid on the Whitehead detention centre were hardly revelatory: we saw much of it before in the 1988 report into troubles at the now closed Hei Ling Chau Vietnamese detention centre. That report bears haunting similarities to the Whitehead report. Phrases like ''unnecessary force'' spring from its pages to go hand in glove with sections of the Whitehead report describing widespread assaults by CSD officers.
In the six-year gap, the CSD appears to have learned little about how to carry out a major operation without the use of violence. The Hei Ling Chau inquiry was born under similar circumstances and was used as an example of how justice can be seen to be done.
Like the Whitehead inquiry, the Hei Ling Chau probe was ordered by the Governor - then Sir David Wilson - and was also headed by two Justices of the Peace - one a lawyer and one a physician. Despite their findings of widespread assault by CSD officers, none faced criminal charges and no action was taken over the finding that excess force was used.
This time the issue of charging CSD or police officers has been left in the hands of the police department, which will make a report to the Director of Public Prosecutions. About 100 people claimed they were assaulted in the Whitehead raid, but in the two months that have elapsed no charges have been forthcoming. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the police officer heading the assault investigations was called to a special meeting at the Security Branch yesterday.
Secretary for Security Alistair Asprey had trouble explaining why no charges had been laid when he faced the press on Wednesday. Maybe he too wants an answer to this question. That aside, the issue of violence has been raised before and nothing was done, as the reports make clear; Hei Ling Chau report, ''staff who did use unnecessary force began by using knees, feet, fists and sometimes batons''; Whitehead report, ''migrants claim to have been slapped, punched and had their hair pulled''.
The Whitehead report was to look into the events surrounding the lightning raid on April 7 in which heavily armed security forces used tear gas on the Vietnamese inmates. The authors were also required to look for improvements that could be made to future operations. Unfortunately, at least one of these recommendations has only limited application and as such is flawed. It states that the Government should ''seriously consider having present, at an operation for camp transfer, a team of monitors''. It does not address the issue of monitoring transfers which result in Vietnamese being deported.
