Detention centres are horrible places to live in. Refugees stay in these horrible place when they come to Australia. Here is proof of how bad these places realy are:
New accounts given to journalists and humanitarian agencies indicate that children have been placed in leg restraints, deprived of medical care, disallowed food and placed in isolation cells. Asylum-seekers have been sexually and verbally assaulted while being deported, traumatised detainees have been locked up instead of receiving psychiatric attention and authorities have not reported the sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy.
These accounts, labelled “the tip of the iceberg” by Amnesty International, follow reports of the rape of a 12-year-old boy and a staff member at the Woomera detention camp, located in harsh desert in central Australia.
Some of the most serious reports include the following:
* A three-year-old boy had been placed in leg restraints at Woomera, and later kept with his father in a suicide-proof cell without windows, toilet or a shower for 13 days. Another four-year-old girl at Maribyrnong had a broken wrist for two weeks before being taken to hospital.
* Three children were deprived of food for 32 hours while being transferred from Villawood across the continent to the Port Hedland. The parents asked staff to save food for the sleeping children, but were refused and the children were forced to go hungry.
*A 15-year-old boy, repeatedly sexually assaulted by an older man at Woomera, was so traumatised that he burned holes in himself. Barbara Regalla, a former nurse at Woomera, said the case was reported to police only after several complaints. Management banned the nurse, in whom the boy had confided, from accompanying him to the police interview. Regalla said this may have contributed to the boy’s failure to divulge the information to the police.
* A 14-year-old Iraqi boy is in a Perth children’s hospital after allegedly suffering psychological disorders during a year-long detention at Port Hedland. His family said the imprisonment had badly affected him, to the point that he had locked himself in a room, refused to eat for three days and threatened to harm himself, causing officers to break down the door. Earlier he, his father and two brothers had been held for several days in individual cells.
In some instances, detainees have been severely punished for complaining or protesting about the conditions inside the camps. Kadhem El-Helo, a 39-year-old jeweller from Iraq, was locked up with 23 other men and his 10-year-old daughter Maysaa, after complaining about conditions at Woomera. They were denied food for the first three days. El-Helo fed his daughter biscuits and sugar. Maysaa watched her father being beaten with sticks by Australian Correctional Management (ACM) staff, in retaliation for breakouts by inmates in another section of Woomera. Maysaa suffers from anxiety and nightmares because of the incident.
There are many signs of unrest in the camps. At Port Hedland, authorities have admitted extinguishing a series of fires in the past month; all thought to have been deliberately lit by inmates in protest at their conditions. Last month two detainees scaled electric poles more than 15 metres high and threatened to jump. Later, two escaped after cutting their way through a perimeter fence.
* An intellectually disabled detainee and other men in need of psychiatric care were locked up in police cells at Woomera. “The police cells consisted of a concrete yard concealed behind brick walls. There was a small sheltered area (in which) to sleep and the place was infected with cockroaches,” a nurse said. One inmate, grieving the loss of his wife and daughter, attempted to commit suicide and was subsequently locked up.
* ACM staff sexually assaulted and verbally abused several Chinese women who were being deported. In all, 85 people were escorted from Port Hedland to China by 35 to 40 ACM staff. According to an internal report, a senior staff member placed his hands on the breasts of several women and pushed a woman forward “with his hands upon her buttocks”. ACM management told the author of the report that, “it won’t be going anywhere.”
Former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser has accused the government of taking an inflexible stance. He called the Woomera detention centre a “hell hole” and called for it to be shut down. “They (illegal immigrants) ought to be detained, but they ought to be detained properly,” he said.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/dec2000/ref-d20.shtml
