In the past, I have naively thought the facts would bring an end to the fear mongering. By explaining to people that we receive just a few thousand asylum seekers each year, and that they pose no threat to our way of life or sustainability. I want to explain that 99.99% of people who entered Australia last year, did so by plane; that Australia takes just 0.03% of the world's refugees and displaced people; and that there are 76 countries that take more refugees than we do, based on wealth.
These days, I talk about a much simpler truth: the moral responsibilities that come with living in a free and democratic country, and what it means to be an Australian. This means we have a moral duty to act and show compassion to vulnerable, innocent people who are fleeing for their lives.
Founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource CentreKon Karapanagiotidis
Release the children from detention, Senator Vanstone. I don't care what message it sends. If these children are being sacrificed to achieve my security, then the price is too high to pay. Release them all and release them now.
Cara Minns, Penshurst, May 18, 2004. Letter in the Sydney Morning Herald.
A young refugee's plea for a better future
[...] A refugee is a kneeling person, kneeling in front of the captain of a ship to ask for a reduction in his escape price, kneeling to pirates to ask for mercy, kneeling in front of an international organisation to ask for its help, kneeling in front of the police to ask for permission to go to the market, kneeling in front of a foreign delegation to ask to be accepted in their country.
Children are our future and they are precious. They should be out of detention centres and be in schools, colleges, TAFEs and universities. Imprisoning them is not protecting Australia; this is disgracing Australia.
Nooria Wazefadost, 21 June 2004, SMH.
National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention
I am like a bird in a cage. My friends who went to other countries are free. [One of his drawings was of an egg with a boot hovering above it ready to crush it. Pointing to the egg he said,] These are the babies in detention centres.
16-year-old detainee who had spent three birthdays in detention
I think that the children should be free and when they are there for one year or two years they are just wasting their time, they could go to school and they could learn something. They could be free. Instead they are like a bird in a cage.10-year-old Afghan girl found to be a refugee
I have very bad impressions from the detention centre. When I was in detention centre I really did not think that it is going on and you know, I understood, I was like animal in detention centre, and because. Australian police they captured us and they put in prison. This is not like a detention centre, I can't say it's a detention centre, it's prison, it's gaol, and no one has freedom and we cannot go outside and we cannot do things. And also there it is very hot. If you go outside the sun will burn, and there's many insects, reptiles and if you go outside, the insects bite us. Reptiles, I saw many reptiles around. we couldn't tell any things to officers or other people because we were afraid of them because maybe if we say something, something might happen. Unaccompanied Afghan boy found to be a refugee
I know what most of the people don't know about the detention centre, like how it is, but I think every Australian knows what a prison is, what a prison looks like and what happens in a prison. All the people, even in prison, like the prisoners they know when they're gonna be released, when they're sentenced they know that for this long they're in prison and at that date they're gonna get their freedom.
So even they know, like for six months, for ten years or for twenty years sothey are there and after that they're gonna get their freedom. But in detention centre, like no one knows when they're gonna be released. Tomorrow, day after tomorrow, for two years like, you know, waiting how much hard it is, only if it is only 15 minutes [and] they're under 18, they've been there for two years, [those] who came before us, they're still there. So just imagine how they would be. Teenage boy found to be a refugee
I can tell you that things are very, very difficult for us. I can say that you can never call that place a detention centre. It was of course a prison and a gaol. Even in prison you know at least for how long you will be in prison, but in a situation like that we did not know what was happening next. We did not know how long we would be spending in this place. And most of the time our roommates and the people who used to live with us, they were getting changed every three weeks or every two weeks, the people that we were getting around for a while they used to go and then some new people would replace them. And sometimes they would put the new arrivals with the people who have been there for a quite a long time who have completely lost their minds and their ability to think and when you spend some time with people like that who have been out of their minds so of course you lose your mentality, and you lose your thoughts as well and this is what was happening to us. Sometimes I was looking at those people I was thinking that we'll all end up in the same place so in short, I can say life was very horrible. Unaccompanied Afghan boy found to be a refugee
A teenager who had been detained at several different detention centres said of Woomera: It's really a hell hole, the worst one of all. [Why?] I've never seen anything that's the same as that in my life. I've been in the gaol, the gaol is better than Woomera. Detainee boy, Villawood
At the new Baxter detention centre at Port Augusta, the Inquiry heard:
The officers tell me how good it is here because we have two toilets, two showers. But [my son] says 'we don't need that, we need stimulation. We need that more than water'. Detainee mother, Baxter
We came here because we wanted freedom. We did not come to be imprisoned for three years. Nothing will help us, only freedom will help us. We want to be free that is all. Detainee boy, Baxter
An Afghan father in detention asked the Human Rights Commissioner the following questions about the future of children in detention:
I have a request. What will happen with the future of these children, that they see in front of them people cutting themselves and hanging themselves? What is the effect on their minds? What can they get? They are the future.We do not want anything. We did not come here for a visa. [We would be happy] if we could be let out in some poor third world country. Just send my children to school and let them be in freedom. They should live in a human good atmosphere, they should learn something good, and not the things they are learning here. Afghan father
Many children were at pains to explain that they were not criminals:
They should keep us out of detention because the children have nothing, they are not criminals, they are just born, they want to be free, they are like birds. If we keep birds like this, we are the same ... We want to be one hand of Australia, like shoulder by shoulder, but I don't know what Mr Philip Ruddock thinks, he thinks we are criminals, it is impossible - how can we be criminals? We are just new, new generation. We have seen war a lot.Unaccompanied Afghan asylum seeker teenage boy in home-based detention
One boy said that he tried to hide his past from his new friends because he felt that his detention branded him as a criminal: While I was in detention centre there was a lot of violence and I was treated like a criminal. The impact that I got out, when I got out of the detention centre, I still feel that I'm a criminal in Australia . I was in detention centre about seven months while I haven't done anything, so now, when I got out I got friends but I'm by myself. They asked me, 'where are you from?' I say I'm from Spain because I can't face to say that I'm from Afghanistan because now the media is there . now everybody knows about detention centres. Everybody, if you come from Afghanistan, if you say 'I'm from Afghanistan' then it's true that you are the person in detention centre and the way the media should ask, like, wants to come in Australia, like in search of food or like, they maybe, they want to come here to make a good life. But why should we, when we have got a country, if there is, if there is peace why should we flee our country? I mean, let's ask you a question, 'if in Australia now, do you want to go in any country?' In any other country like, you've got the working here. Of course not, you've been living here, you know everything about. The thing is our country, the problem is that there is no rule, no law, everybody kills each other, so we have come here to just to seek asylum. Of course to live as a human but now, I still have [the feeling that] I'm a criminal although I haven't done anything. Teenage boy found to be a refugee
Other children also felt Australians lacked compassion or empathy for them:
They say that the people will laugh at you and make fun of you. They are going to hate you. That's why we don't give you a visa. Unaccompanied Afghan girls and boys found to be refugees
It's just that I know that I have lots and lots of negative and better stories, I cannot finish all of them, it's just that I remember in Afghanistan when I was studying as a child, our teacher used to say that people of Australia were the most human and caring and loving people among the world and I was always thinking that they were, then as soon as I came to Australia in government detention centre my idea was completely changed. I found quite the opposite and I was just thinking if I had stayed in Afghanistan of course they would have killed me maybe in an hour or two but I ended up in here so physically they are keeping me alive but emotionally and spiritually they are killing me. Afghan unaccompanied boy found to be a refugee
I am not sure how people who are out of detention could sense or feel the situation of a person who has been in detention. It is that bad. Unaccompanied teenage boy found to be a refugee
I am writing in response to the Prime minister and the DIMIA minister’s statement that what ever the HREOC report says about Human Rights violations against refugees, we have proven that this Government’s harsh measures are successful; that it has persuaded the most desperate middle eastern refugees from coming to Australia by boat, while foolishly demonstrating that this government is on an equal philosophical footing with the cruel regimes that they are fleeing.
Helen Tait, West Launceston.
Trish Highfield recently spoke to the prominent Sydney restaurateur Peter Doyle after the raid by the DIMIA Compliance team on his Watson's Bay establishment.Peter Doyle observed that: "I have to comply with more regulations about the humane treatment of lobsters than the way immigration treats these people in detention."
There must be a reckoning. Who was it, at the senior levels of the Department of Immigration, who ensured that children who were attempting suicide and other forms of self-harm should remain incarcerated, despite repeated warnings, often from lower sections in the department or others operating in detention centres, that detention was the cause?
Marc Purcell, Executive officer of the Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace. 17 February 2004, The Age
We escaped from Iran because torture, imprisonment and death are a very real threat. We escaped unimaginable brutality from our own leaders. We escaped because we are the victims of our own cruel government. Yet we cannot understand why, despite all the international condemnation of our country and our rulers, the Australian government wants to send us back to such a horrific situation. Everyday in detention we live with the stress and mental anguish driven by the prospect of being sent back. For these reasons we ask the Australian government, the different political parties in the country, and most of all the people of Australia to help us. Help us to live. Help us stop this deportation.
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A person who becomes a refugee does not always come with the hope of a better life, they come for survival, because they cannot continue to live and be alive in the country they are fleeing from. It takes desperate steps to leave in small boats to set off for a place that may never let you stay, but none of that matters because you leave your country for Freedom.
This quote is from Mai in "For the Love of a Child, Mai's Story", by Khazmira Bashah, Winner in the "Australia IS Refugees" competition for school children.
"...The ALP should abandon support for the Pacific Solution as a response to the refugee issue, and the use of detention centres as a punitive instrument of Australia's immigration policy. The first is an overbearing neo-colonial policy imposed on Australia's island neighbours. The administration of the second policy is an Australian disgrace. It punishes the victims of poverty and of tyrannical governments. No votes worth having are to be lost by by more humane administration of these centres, by speeding up processes and limiting the time for which people can be detained, perhaps on the British model of day-release schemes. The Immigration Department should be made to pull its finger out.
"..This is an issue on which the ALP should clearly distinguish its position from the opportunistic policies framed by comfortable WASP-ish lawyers in the present government....."
...The problem of refugees is not going to go away . It will only be resolved by international agreement, in which, one hopes, rigorous and more humane standards are set. Labor should commit itself to supporting the best of these standards, not the worst....."
Excerpts from "Beyond Belief: The Future of the ALP"
By former Labor Senator John Button
Quarterly Essay Issue 6 (May) 2002, p 73
Publisher: Black Inc
ISBN: 1863951474
And on July 16 2002, Prime Minister John Howard said in his address at the Alston Electorate Dinner:
"I think John Button's analysis of the Labor Party is the best thing I've read about the Labor Party for years. And if I were the Labor Party I would take a lot of notice of what he says [...]"
Witnessed the guard making a detainee beg for soap. No English did this woman speak, she had learnt the word soap from someone. To the guard she said, "soap". The soap was proffered and withdrawn when she reached for it, again and again until she said please. From nurse M-J's first-hand account of Woomera
From a Laos jail to Woomera: a very short step
I was deeply disturbed finally to come home from spending almost a year held hostage in a dirty Laos jail to find the communist "brain washing" we were subjected to on a daily basis was perhaps not totally inaccurate.
We were told repeatedly the benefits of communism, the party and politics. When I found myself asking "why does the Australian Government make a deal with the devil that urges me to sign a confession of guilt?", the commander of the prison asked me what was the difference between Australia and Laos, between democracy and communism? I had to tell him that I really didn't know except that maybe one is a little more transparent, that being communism.
Now I am even more confused when I see the refugees at Woomera and I feel the chills run down my spine like a terrible case of deja-vue. The UN are visiting only because the people force them. How lucky we are to still have a little power, but how many suffer in Woomera whose stories we will never hear before they are shipped off?
A facelift for Woomera? It sounds like something Laos would do if the UN ever got the chance to inspect its prisons. Could it be true that Australians treat people like the communists treated us? Our government tells the people "the Woomera detainees" are suspected terrorists. The Lao Government told their people we were Mafia.
It's said if you treat people like animals then don't be surprised if they begin acting like animals. When I was in solitary confinement for two months, I paced my tiny cell like a tiger, and now I understand his torment.
I believe our country has a lot to be ashamed of if we do not treat people with human decency, as seems to be the case at Woomera. How can we set an example to the rest of the world if human rights are not upheld in our own country? How can we make others accountable if we are not accountable.
Why are our refugee camps worse than our prisons? In Laos, you can be held 12 months before going to court - a direct violation of the UN Declaration for Human Rights. How long have the Woomera detainees (prisoners) been held now? "Democracy" means little when you have no freedom.
Kay Danes, Brisbane
Letters, The Age, 25 May 2002.
(Kay Danes spent time in a Laos Jail and was returned to Australia with the help of the Howard government.)
In writing about politics and the English language Orwell might have had Philip Ruddock in mind. On one occasion the minister was asked how he could justify continued detention of the family of a traumatised six-year-old boy who no longer ate or drank or spoke. He answered: "Well, I do look at these issues in the context of humanitarian considerations and there are a broad range of issues that I have to look at, firstly in terms of whether or not we give up a refugee place that could otherwise go, in this case, to four other people, whose circumstances would, I suspect, be far more compelling."
This is not an extreme version of Ruddock-speak. For him a broken child has suffered an "adverse impact"; people who go on hunger strike or sew their lips together are involved in "inappropriate behaviours"; refugees who flee to the West in terror are "queue jumpers"; those who live without hope in forlorn refugee camps are "safe and secure"; those who are dispatched to tropical prisons financed by Australia are part of the "Pacific Solution".
By teaching Australians to think and speak like this, the minister has gradually helped to reconcile a goodly part of the nation to the unspeakable cruelties enacted daily of the kind we were able to witness on Lateline last week.
From Ruddock Speak
Robert Manne, Associate professor of politics at La Trobe University.
Sydney Morning Herald, April 29 2002.
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What will you say when your grandchildren ask you: "Didn't you know that little children were kept behind razor-wire fences for two years or more?"
From Shame on us all
Hugh Mackay, Sydney Morning Herald, March 30 2002.
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The despair of some doctors who work inside these centres is palpable.
One wrote of his seven months in Woomera that: "This place truly must have one of the highest concentrations of human misery in the whole world. Never have I seen so many patients for whom I could do so little."
The following are quotes from artists appearing in Juice Magazine, Issue 111, March 2002.
There's got to be a fairer, more humane way to treat these people.
Daniel Johns, Silverchair.
For Australian overseas travelers who've at any time proudly trumpeted our country's legendary belief in the ‘fair-go' – the internationally digested images of our government's inhumanity towards desperate, displaced people is more than a mere embarrassment. It's a betrayal.
Rob Hirst, Midnight Oil.
It's time to reclaim the heart of the nation and give asylum to those who qualify now.
Peter Garrett, Midnight Oil.
"The detention centres are now a cross between a jail and a lunatic asylum"
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The following is an excerpt from Report of visit by HREOC officers to Woomera IDC January 2002
Self-harming behaviour
The official statistics provided to HREOC officers by ACM indicated the following incidents of self-harm occurred over a two week period:
Lip sewing: 5 children (one 14 year old sewed his lips twice)
Slashing: 3 children (the above child also slashed "freedom" into his forearm)
Ingestion of shampoo: 2 children
Attempted hanging: 1 child
Threats of self hurt: 13 children
This is a significant proportion of the total child population of 236 at the Centre. It would indicate that, not unsurprisingly, children are responding to the atmosphere of despair in which they live. It is self-evident that manifestations such as these are likely to permanently mark the psychological outlook of these children. HREOC officers in discussion with ACM found no evidence of parents encouraging children to engage in acts of self harm.
Interviews by HREOC officers with children produced many responses that indicated a propensity for self harm and suicidal thoughts.
Examples from three interviews:
Interview 1 (12 year old girl)
"I am getting crazy, I cut my hand. I can't talk to my mother. I can't talk to anyone and I am very tired. There is no solution for me - I just have to commit suicide - there is no choice."
Interview 2 (16 year old boy)
"Some of us, we not have anyone in here. What can we do except kill ourselves? If no-one help us, I kill myself. If I kill myself, at least I do something for the people."
Interview 3 (13 year old boy - quote from family member)
"We notice that while he sleeps he talks and screams: "fire, fire, fire", and jumps up from sleep in nightmares... We ask him to go and bring a book and he forgets about that and when he is walking he walks disordered and is not concentrating."
That children are suffering psychological trauma from these experiences would seem beyond doubt.
Mothers in Australia's detention centres cannot provide the sort of care and support to their children that we would take for granted in our community. They are, by definition, required to fit in with an institutional regime. They cannot prepare their children's food or decide when or how to feed their children. They are denied the opportunity to provide extra food and milk beyond set meal times, as most parents know is often necessary with young children. It has been reported that there is no baby food or formula provided at all in Woomera, and one mother who was having trouble breastfeeding was reportedly told to try reconstituted chicken stock.
Mothers, and fathers, cannot make the decisions we take for granted about children's sleeping arrangements; they are unable to provide a quiet and secure environment free of disturbance. Neither can they control what their children experience in the close confines of the detention centres or the relationships and values that the children are exposed to, especially if they are confined for months or even years.
Excerpt from Australia Day article by , Friday 25 January 2002.
If children were in the care of a parent who left them exposed to violence and did not provide adequate education or a place for safe play and development, we would remove those children and consider prosecuting the guardian. This is the condition of children in the Woomera Detention Centre.
The Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, is the guardian of about 50 unaccompanied children there. The remaining 240 children in Woomera who have a parent with them are little better off.
Mr Ruddock's policies make adequate parenting in immigration detention impossible. The harsh, dehumanising environment and the prolonged time in limbo undermines even the most resourceful. Asylum-seekers are already vulnerable and traumatised. Does any other country lock children and families behind walls of razor wire in the desert?
We recently visited children and families in Woomera and Villawood Detention Centres and saw their conditions of detention and the effects of these on children first-hand. At Woomera, people were introduced to us by number rather than their name. There was evidence of violence and despair in the filthy and blood-stained toilets the detainees use. There was not shade or a blade of grass in the compound, except the administration building.
Younger children asked us why there are no flowers in Australia. Keeping children in conditions akin to concentration camps is medically and morally wrong.
Dr Michael Dudley, Chair, Suicide Prevention Australia, Dr Sarah Mares, Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, RANZCP, Dr Fran Gale, Sydney, January 20.
Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 Jan 2002.
Read eyewitness accounts and affidavits of the conditions under which we condemn detainees and their children to live.
Politicians who demonise asylum seekers are playing with people’s lives.
From Don't kick refugees just to score points
By Ruud Lubbers, United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees and former Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
The Australian, Wednesday, 20 June 2001.
