The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) in Melbourne backs the HREOC recommendation in �A Last Resort?� - Children should be released from detention centres and residential housing projects within four weeks of the tabling of this report . This deadline is June 10. The Report will be launched tonight at 383 Albert St Melbourne.
� A Last Resort? detailing the abusive conditions of children of asylum seekers comes just 5 years after the Bringing Them Home Report which recorded the appalling treatment of Aboriginal children who were taken from their families. Both the Government and Opposition must accept responsibility and implement the recommendations of the HREOC report without delay�, said Kon Karapanagiotidis, Coordinator of the ASRC. �A Last Resort ?� represents two years solid investigative work into the effects of detention on children. Implementing the recommendations is a first step towards healing the pain inflicted on these children by a government which used this policy as a means of deterring others from coming .�
�Australian Governments have a sorry history regarding the care and protection of children. Indigenous children were taken from their parents and locked up in orphanages where many were abused. The children of asylum seekers are locked up in camps surrounded by electric fences and razor wire and ruled by guards,� says Pamela Curr, ASRC campaign coordinator. � We must remove all children and their families from detention, remove the legislation which enabled this cruelty and resolve as a nation never to allow such policies ever again.�