Seventh detention centre suicide

January 23, 2002
Issue 

BY MICHELLE BREAR

SYDNEY — The suicide of Lee Hanh in Villawood detention centre on January 8 brings to seven the number of deaths in Australian detention centres in the past three years. Four of those occured at Villawood.

Hanh was taken to Villawood detention centre in September for overstaying her student visa. She pleaded to be sent back to Vietnam, but her request was ignored by the immigration department.

She had attempted suicide twice before, once cutting her wrists and once throwing herself off the second floor of a detention centre building.

Hanh had been moved to Liverpool district hospital following her most recent suicide attempt, only a week before her death. She had spent time in Bankstown mental health unit and should have been under constant supervision to ensure she did not attempt to take her own life again.

Her third attempt at suicide, jumping off a first floor balcony, left her in Liverpool district hospital where she died three days later.

Information about the suicide is difficult to obtain. Detainees told Green Left Weekly that Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) staff cleaned up blood from the site before taking photographs. They later instructed everyone to say that the suicide was an accident and not related to conditions in the detention centre.

Detainees also reported that when 12 police visited the detention centre on the night of Hanh's fall to investigate the suicide, an Iranian woman was prevented by ACM staff from talking to police, and the rest of the detainees were locked in their rooms.

On January 15, Free the Refugees Campaign (FRC) held a picket outside Liverpool hospital to protest against mandatory detention.

Protester Andy Giannotis told GLW: "[Immigration minister Philip] Ruddock says that detention is humane. But why are people in detention killing themselves? Why are they sewing their lips shut? Why do so many detainees suffer mental illness? This is just more evidence that we need a Royal Commission to find out how refugees in Australia are really treated."

FRC spokesperson Arsalan Nazarien said that the suicide showed there was a "feeling of hopelessness" in detention centres.

Immigration minister Philip Ruddock has described the suicide as an "operational matter" for ACM to deal with and has refused to discuss it.

There will be a coronial inquiry into Hanh's death.

From Green Left Weekly, January 23, 2002.
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