URGENT: CHRISTMAS ISLAND DETENTION CENTRE IN CRISIS - PROTESTS OVERNIGHT, TEARGAS. MENTAL HEALTH DISASTER. Prime Minister Gillard & Minister Bowen responsible.

URGENT HUMAN RIGHTS ALLIANCE MEDIA RELEASE:

Tear gas used from about 10pm at the Christmas Island Detention Centre. The tear gas has affected many people including people not involved. Protestors are frustrated with issues relating to waiting periods of hearings and appeals and they are frustrated in the ways they have been treated.

Asylum Seekers feel that they are in a war zone, they feel persecuted and do not know who they can turn to. They are prepared to hurt themselves to be heard.

United Nations Observers need to be stationed at Christmas Island Detention Centre.

Protestors have been injured.

Their state of mind is in an acute crisis and they feel dishevelled, disoriented and there is no trust, they feel victimised. It is urgent that mental health professionals and counsellors be flown in, en masse, and with unfettered access to our Asylum Seekers before the majority suffer irreparable mental damage. Asylum Seekers are threatening suicide, and staff are tragically inadequately trained.

Comments by the Prime Minister and the Immigration Minister, Gillard and Bowen, in that 'protestors and poor behaviour' will work against them are exacerbating their distrust and poor state of mind and escalating the crises, and underplaying the issues at hand. The comments of Gillard and Bowen neglect the humanity and manifest a vacuum of inhumanity.

Tear gas and other violence are only exacerbating the trauma, multiple trauma, clinical disorders, depressions acute and abject, suicide and multiple suicide attempts, the rise in self harm, mental and physical breakdowns, the likelihood of detention centre deaths. They are screaming out to the world by harming themselves before damaging any property. We have long warned of these events and of the inevitability of more detention centre deaths if the common good shall not be pursued, and the root causes are not humanely addressed. There is no propriety at this time by our government, only cruelty, racism and the worst forms of the most outdated prison like abuses.

The protests will continue, worsen as they persist - people will die, and for both our Asylum Seekers and guards/police there is incalculable and irreparable trauma at risk. The government has allowed for war zone like crises at Christmas Island and with the immediate legacy of a mental crisis.

None of us should have to spend our nights hearing of violence and inhumanity by the Australian Government on our shores.

The Australian Media can intervene to remedy the disaster at Christmas Island and also at Darwin.

Gerry Georgatos, Human Rights Alliance
0430 657 309
gerry_georgatos@yahoo.com.au