Human Rights Alliance media release - Christmas Island, Scherger, the facts

MEDIA RELEASE: HUMAN RIGHTS ALLIANCE

Christmas Island Detention Centre - the facts have not come out. UN Observers must be stationed there. We have written to the UN Special Rapporteurs.

The facts about the protests, the police raids, the state of Asylum Seekers have not been fully and accurately reported to the Australian media. Reports conflict with what is coming out from 'personnel' and Asylum Seekers at this ill fated Detention Centre.

The Australian Government is not being honest in admitting that the ill conceived "Malaysian Solution" is not the only means by which it is brutally seeking to discourage the lawful seeking of Asylum by those who legally arrive by boat. What is happening in detention centres is that there is an unwritten policy to treat Asylum Seekers more harshly, to take longer in reviewing applications, to find more reasons to reject their rightful applications, to send more back, this is why there are forced deportation crews present. This is inhumane and illegal - people who one or two years ago would have had rightly succeeded in their applications, even after a cruelly long detention, are now wrongly being rejected. This misguided and cruel impost of suffering is hoped may further discourage the seeking Asylum. People have risked their lives on the high seas to be persecuted in our Detention System and by our Authorities, and they know it, and they are crying out in pain.

We need an investigation of what has happened at Christmas Island.

We need an investigation of the Australian Government and its practices.

We need an investigation of why there are increased rates of application rejections.

At Scherger Detention Centre there are 100 on hunger strike, and guards are involved in forced separations of hunger strikers and other Asylum Seekers.

People at Scherger are at risk from the hunger strikes and the lack of pro-social care from the authorities.

We know that authorities mislead and are not transparent or honest. We were at Curtin Detention Centre in April, when on April 26 there were more than 300 hunger strikers, when 1000 Asylum Seekers were petitioning or in solidarity, we know that more than 30 collapsed from heat exhaustion and dehydration, we know that people were taken to hospital and a secret medical clinic was set up inside the compound and yet authorities denied all of this at one time and most of it most of the time with only eventual piecemeal admissions. It is a disgrace that no investigation into Curtin Detention Centre has taken place.

We need an investigation of the Scherger Detention Centre.

We must understand that our Asylum Seekers are lawful claimants when they present themselves to our shores, everything they have done all the way is lawful, and rather it is the actions and language of the Australian Government that is unlawful and criminal.

There have been deaths in Immigration Custody, in detention centres - we have had five suicides in the last ten months. We had multiple suicide attempts. At Christmas Island Detention Centre alone we exposed, with hard copy evidence, that as recent as May 12 55 Asylum Seekers were on suicide watch. We found out that in the month of April there were 241 medical incidents, most of them self-harm. We exposed that SERCO guards are issued with knives purpose made to cut down those who hang themselves, we exposed that in their group training that there would be at least four attempting hangings that they would be cutting down each month. That's at least 36 attempted hangings, on average per annum by their statistics!, at Christmas Island alone, and there are 24 Detention Centres.

The brutality of the Detention Centre is so traumatic that people suffer long after release. I am PhD Law researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody and Australia has one of the world's worst deaths in custody records, however post release more people die in the first year (of release) than do in the equivalent period in prison, and in Australia 63% of all custodial deaths are in prisons. People come out of the prison experience worse than what they came in. Many people are coming out of the Detention Centre experience worse than what they went in - there are high rates of unemployment, high rates of clinical disorders, depressions, physical ailments and attempted suicides. If you want to know a nation's heart you look into its prisons, and mandatory detention centres are prisons!

Gerry Georgatos

Convener, Human Rights Alliance - 0430 657 309

'Go tell the Spartans, Passerby, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.' Molwn labe

"A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, 'If the council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.' I replied to him: 'Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.'" (Karel Kosik, Czech philosopher and victim)

"When enough rise, change happens."