BY SARAH STEPHEN
A five-day fact-finding mission to the Woomera detention centre,
conducted by Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) officers,
has produced a damning report.
The February 6 report, produced as part of a national inquiry into children
in detention, found that the Australian government is in breach of the
convention on the rights of the child.
HREOC officers interviewed 11 families, including 20 children, as well
as Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) staff and management, and
the resident psychologist.
The report lists the incidents of self-harm that children participated
in during a two-week period. It concluded that children were “responding
to the atmosphere of despair in which they live”. The report found that
nine children have been in the Woomera centre for more than a year and
70 for more than six months. Families who spent more than six months in
detention became dysfunctional, HREOC found.
Significantly, the report stated that there was no evidence for the
government's assertion that parents had sewed children's lips together
during the hunger strike.
“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”, a 12-year-old girl told the
investigators.
A 13-year-old boy's family members told the HREOC visitors that “while
he sleeps, he talks and screams, `Fire, fire, fire!', and jumps up from
sleep in nightmares”.
Schooling in the centre is only provided to children aged 12 and under.
It “is not comparable in any way to the education received by Australian
12-year-olds”. School is for two hours a day, four days a week.
“This is contrary to Australia's obligations under Article 28 of the
convention on the rights of the child to provide educational opportunities
to all children within its jurisdiction”, HREOC noted in a media statement.
HREOC said that other sections of the convention being breached at the
Woomera refugee jail include the obligation to “protect the children from
all forms of physical and mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or
negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation”.
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock on February 7 branded the HREOC's
findings a “coloured report” which had the aim of winding back mandatory
detention of asylum seekers.
HREOC has no power to enforce its recommendations, but the report will
add to the mounting political pressure on the federal government to end
the detention of asylum seekers.
From Green Left Weekly, February 13, 2002.
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