BY SARAH STEPHEN
Earlier this year, clinical psychologist Zachary Steel released a report describing children's experience of detention as a "living nightmare". It found unprecedented rates of mental illness among young asylum seekers: among the 22 children and 14 adults he studied, just one child was not suffering serious depression.
Reporting on the release of the study, ABC Lateline's Margo O'Neill noted on May 12: "One of its most distressing findings is that the children were mostly healthy before being locked up. But after two years in Australian detention camps, they're all suffering at least one psychiatric illness and more than half of them have multiple disorders — most commonly major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. That's 10 times above the norm for mental illness — the highest ever recorded for children in modern medical literature."
O'Neill continued: "In the report, all the children claimed to have seen people self-harm and make suicide attempts. Ninety-five per cent had seen a physical assault. Nearly 40% claimed to have been assaulted by camp officers. One quarter claimed to have been kept in solitary confinement, and around 10% alleged sexual harassment."
"The symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder experienced by the children were almost exclusively related to experiences of trauma in detention", Steel told the May 13 Melbourne Age. "Children described nightmares about being hit by officers and five of the children had also self-harmed, either by slashing their wrists or banging their heads against walls."
Thirteen-year-old Montazar Baktiyari told a friend over the phone on July 25: "Without [committing] any crime we are in detention. We've been here three years. They made us go crazy. Then we have to go back, crazy. Come and kill me. I don't want my life any more. I'm sick of my life. It's a bad life. Nobody wants life like this. Some Australian people love us but they can't help us."
The study's findings came a year after a broad alliance of doctors and health professionals called for the immediate release of children from detention centres and a review of Australia's detention policies.
There is a chorus of such calls from Australians angered and embarrassed by mandatory detention, in particular the harsh and unjustifiable punishment of detained children.
Yet little has changed in the past year, despite immigration minister Philip Ruddock's admission in December that the system needed to change.
As of May, there were more than 100 children in Australian detention centres. There are also around 100 children imprisoned in the Australian-run detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru. Nine of these children have been found to be refugees, but are still waiting to be resettled.
Ruddock claims it to be too costly to consider releasing children into the community. An official department estimate pointed out that releasing the five Baktiyari children into the community would cost "more than three times" keeping them in detention.
Margaret Reynolds, president of the United Nations Association of Australia, wrote in an August 6 letter to the Australian: "It is ludicrous that a member of the Australian government that is prepared to spend billions of dollars on detention cannot quickly find resources to place children in community care", and she called on people to contact Ruddock with offers to support children if they were released from detention.
Ruddock argues that children are better off with their parents. But this is not an argument for detention; it's an argument for releasing all families immediately!
The hypocrisy of this statement is also breathtaking. Some children not only leave detention when they are deported, but their parents as well. On July 23, Massoumah, a seven-year-old Iranian who was imprisoned for more than two years in the Curtin and Baxter detention centres, was suddenly removed and flown to Iran without her father's consent or knowledge.
Massoumah was suffering from a bad cold and anxiety after trying to care for her father, Amin Mastipour, who was not eating. She was taken to Baxter's medical facility while her father was locked in the isolation unit, then she was deported.
Mastipour had custody of Massoumah following a divorce from his wife. He had been her sole carer since she was two. In a July 24 media release confirming the deportation, the immigration department stated that Massoumah had been "successfully reunited with her mother", falsely alleged that Massoumah's mother had custody, and that she had been brought to Australia by her father without her mother's approval.
Massoumah was not even allowed to say goodbye to her father, who went on hunger strike, in a dangerously depressed state, after her deportation.
The appalling medical neglect of asylum seekers is illustrated by the situation of 15-year-old Iranian asylum seeker Shahin Agdar who lost sight in one eye, and is losing his sight in the other. The government's neglect has left him almost completely blind.
Shahin had healthy vision before he came to Australia. In detention he developed a serious progressive eye condition, which according to Perth ophthalmologist Dr Bill Ward was misdiagnosed and left untreated for at least four months after the symptoms began.
It took a further 16 months, and some intensive campaigning, before the immigration department gave in to pressure and moved Shahin and his family from the remote Port Hedland detention centre, where his condition could not be monitored properly, to Melbourne's Maribyrnong detention centre.
Ruddock couldn't even bring himself to admit that the boy was going blind. Challenged on the July 30 edition of ABC's Lateline, Ruddock said: "I understand he has one damaged eye and he is continuing to receive treatment for the other. So, I mean, he hasn't been made blind in detention."
Presenter Tony Jones replied: "When you say he has one damaged eye, he's blind in that eye, isn't he? ...he wasn't blind in that eye when he came to Australia and, according to Dr Ward, the four-month delay while he was detention in a remote camp, he went blind in one eye." Ruddock replied: "I am not an ophthalmologist, I'm not an optometrist."
Then, on July 28, the Family Court found that it had no jurisdiction to stop the deportation of a woman without her 18-month-old child.
The woman, who is known only as KN, fled from Russia in 1997 on a false passport. She formed a relationship with an Australian man, and they had a son in December 2001. Five months later, after all her attempts to apply for refugee status had failed, she was taken into custody at Villawood detention centre. The child's father takes him to visit his mother three times a week. She now faces imminent deportation.
At least two other women in Villawood detention centre have Australian children and are fighting deportation orders. One is a Malaysian mother of two who has not seen one of her children in three years. Another is a US citizen, with a three-year-old son, who overstayed her visa.
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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