BY BEN COLLINS
MELBOURNE — 27-year-old Palestinian asylum seeker Mohammed Dawood has spent the last eight months in solitary confinement, first at the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre and then at the centre in Maribyrnong, in Melbourne's western suburbs.
Immigration authorities claim that his confinement is to prevent him from harming himself. Dawood is a survivor of extrajudicial imprisonment and prolonged torture at the hands of Syrian security forces, and fled to Australia 13 months ago. He has spent all that time in immigration detention.
Palestinian community groups fear that solitary confinement is worsening his mental and physical well-being. They have called for him to be released from confinement and given appropriate medical care.
According to Asem Judeh of the Palestinian Refugees Exile Awareness, whose representatives have visited Dawood in Maribyrnong, Dawood has already attempted suicide or serious self-harm on several occasions.
"We have witnessed a significant and ongoing deterioration in Mohammed's mental state and his capacity to communicate and trust those who are attempting to assist him", Judeh said. "We are fearful that this unbroken regime of solitary confinement has the very real possibility to reinvoke his traumatic experiences of torture, mistreatment and imprisonment".
Judeh also claims that the care available for Dawood and other detainees is inadequate. While the agreement between the government and Australasian Correctional Management, which runs the centre, specifies that a qualified medical officer should visit detainees daily, the doctor at Maribyrnong only visits Dawood twice a week.
A spokesperson for immigration minister Philip Ruddock said that authorities do not believe Dawood needs medication or further care.
Palestinian Refugees Exile Awareness has encouraged supporters to write to Ruddock, opposition immigration spokesperson Con Sciacca, their local MP and the parliamentary human rights sub-committee regarding Mohammed Dawood's case.