Six hangings at Baxter detention centre

"Reports from refugee advocates indicate that six people at the Baxter detention centre have attempted to end their lives in separate incidents over the last four days by hanging", WA group Project SafeCom announced on December 12. "Some of them have also slashed themselves with broken glass and mirrors."

"Contacts inside the Baxter detention centre also report that the Commonwealth Ombudsman John McMillan visited the Baxter detention centre yesterday", spokesperson Jack Smit said.

Smit added: "As long as we lock up people in direct contravention of international conventions ... we will plunge people's lives in despair and depression and they will sink into the lowest depths of dark gloom, and they will have plenty of reasons to kill themselves ...

"Mandatory detention is a bankrupt policy and these incidents form yet another layer in the hundreds of stories that affirm this."

From GLW issue 693