Refugees: 'A mental health crisis'

Issue 

BY KERRYN WILLIAMS

CANBERRA — More than 350 people packed into the Labor Club on January 29 to express their concern about the treatment of refugees in Australia's detention centres.

The meeting was convened be the Refugee Action Committee (RAC) and was addressed by Zachary Steel, a clinical psychologist from the University of New South Wales who was featured in the ABC-TV Four Corners report about the Villawood Detention Centre titled "The Inside Story".

Steel described the situation in detention centres as a mental health crisis in which nearly all of those detained suffer some form of trauma. He pointed out that countries with the most humane refugee policies also had the least problems with refugee mental health.

Jacquie Everitt, a Sydney lawyer campaigning to have children released from detention, had also been scheduled to address the meeting. She could not attend because two of the children she represents sewed their lips together.

The meeting unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal government to immediately close all refugee detention centres.

In a planning meeting held after discussion, numerous ideas were raised for the protest actions to coincide with the reconvening of federal parliament on February 12.

For more information about the February 12 national convergence on Canberra, see the advertisement on page 5.

From Green Left Weekly, February 6, 2002.
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