Evacuees from flooded remote Indigenous areas in NT housed in compound likened to ‘a prison camp’

Hundreds of evacuees from remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory have been housed behind temporary fences and denied visitors after being forced to evacuate their homes in the most vicious wet season on record. In March, the Daly River in the NT reached a record peak of 23.93 metres, forcing families from Palumpa and Nauiyu to flee for the second time in four weeks. As the scale of the damage became clear, the NT government moved families from an evacuation shelter in Darwin to student accommodation and temporary dongas at the Batchelor Institute, about 100km south. But many evacuees say it has felt like detention. “What they’re doing to us, it’s like a prison camp,” said Nauiyu traditional owner James Parry. Nauiyu traditional owner James Parry. Photograph: (A)manda Parkinson/The Guardian He said that at night guards shine their torches into the window of his room, checking if people are sleeping. “You don’t do that to people.” Residents must sign in and out at a security gate, and vehicles and bags are routinely searched. “Women’s bags are checked by men when they come back from the shops,” he said. “Every car that comes in and comes out, they stop and search … that’s not a home. “This is because we are Aboriginal people … I just want my freedom.” The once idyllic education setting on the edge of Litchfield national park is now surrounded by a 10-foot temporary ringlock fence, erected after the evacuees moved in. …