Sarah Stephen
A new report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) details the horrifying conditions that refugees and their children are subjected to in Australia's detention centres — violence and despair, self-mutilation and suicide, and the infliction of severe, long-term psychological damage.
The 925-page report of a two-and-half-year HREOC inquiry into children in detention was presented to federal parliament on May 13. It calls for the release of all children from detention and for parliament to change the law to ensure that detention is no longer the first and only resort for asylum seeker children. It calls for decisions about the detention of children to be made by an independent court.
The damning report, titled A Last Resort?, found Australia's immigration detention policy breached the international Convention on the Rights of the Child by seriously failing to protect the mental health of children, provide adequate health care and education and protect unaccompanied children and those with disabilities.
Commission members visited all the immigration detention centres in Australia and took evidence from a large number of individuals and organisations.
The report noted that between July 1999 and July 2003, 2184 children passed through Australia's mainland detention centres. At its height in June 2000, the Australian detention system had 164 babies in detention. While some only spent a few months in detention, most spent up to a year.
In the six-month period from July to December 2001, there were 159 alleged, attempted or actual assaults in detention centres, 19 involving children.
The commission found very high rates of children injuring themselves, including suicide attempts.
The inquiry was barred from examining the conditions of the children detained in the Australian-funded detention centre on Nauru, where 73 children are held.
Jack Smit from Project SafeCom argued that the timing of the report was "proof beyond doubt how shamed the Howard government is about its own atrocious dealings with asylum seekers, particularly children in detention... Without a peep, the report was tabled shortly after question time in parliament by the former immigration minister Philip Ruddock, without even so much as a speech."
Rural Australians for Refugees' Helen McCue said in a May 13 press release that the report is a shocking indictment of the government's detention policies. "The accounts of physical and psychological abuse of refugee children under the federal government's care contained in this report are sickening. The high incidence of depression and post-traumatic stress among refugee children caused by these actions makes me feel angry, disgusted, ashamed and deeply saddened that Australia is condoning such shocking practices. RAR calls on the government to protect these vulnerable children by ending its mandatory detention policy.
"The report confirms that the majority of children in detention have escaped from conditions of war and brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that more than ninety-five percent of the children processed so far have been granted refugee status highlights the senselessness of government detention policies."
Referring to the riots, fires, guard brutality, and the use of tear gas and water cannon over the past three years, Dianne Hiles, spokesperson for ChilOut (Children Out of Detention), said in a May 13 media release: "No child should experience such things, not a refugee, not a citizen, not anyone... The report paints a catastrophic picture of children as young as nine self-harming. They drink shampoo, go on hunger strike, cut themselves, hang themselves and sew their lips."
Immigration minister Amanda Vanstone responded to the report by arguing that, as almost all the children have now been released on temporary visas, the commission's findings were of mere "historical" interest.
The Refugee Council, however, pointed out in a May 13 media release that while there are now fewer children in detention, "the fundamental conditions that underpinned the worst abuses are still in place and there is nothing to stop them from being repeated".
Responding to Vanstone's routine argument that to release any children from detention would send a "message" to people smugglers, Robert Manne, writing in the May 17 Melbourne Age, described this argument as "self-evidently immoral — advocating the destruction of the lives of children to keep others away. It also makes no sense... It was through military repulsion after August 2001 and not mandatory detention that asylum seekers were eventually deterred."
The Age's Russell Skelton pointed out in a May 15 article that the message-to-people-smugglers argument was a furphy because "the minister has been emptying the detention centres of children as fast as her department can arrange it... In the past seven months, a number of children, including many Iranians and Afghans held in long-term detention at places such as Port Hedland, Villawood and Baxter, have been released under ministerial orders after no appreciable change in their circumstances."
Vanstone is not keen to draw attention to the fact that her department is releasing children from detention, that it is looking at placing families in community-based accommodation, and that large numbers of Afghan refugees on Nauru look set to come to Australia. But it's not people smugglers the government is concerned about — it's the Australian population
The message Vanstone doesn't want to send to us is that the refugee-rights movement, and the impact it has had on broader public consciousness, has had a significant impact on what the government feels it can get away with.
From Green Left Weekly, May 26, 2004.
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