The last fortnight has seen protests by asylum seekers erupt at a number of detention centres, including Christmas Island, Darwin in the NT, Scherger in Queensland and Broadmeadows in Melbourne. Australia has 23 such centres which would be more aptly described as concentration camps. Asylum seekers took to the roof in Darwin for days before being forcibly removed. A solidarity rooftop protest occurred at Monash University. A hunger strike continued for six days at Scherger. A protest at Christmas Island was again violently suppressed by the AFP with tear gas and synthetic bullets. Detainees at Christmas Island dug buried themselves in shallow graves to symbolize their despair. Unfortunately threats to self-harm are not just threats with five detainees taking their own lives in the last ten months in detention. In Broadmeadows a number of boys sewed their lips together. All of this occurred at the same time the Gillard ALP government hardened its policies towards asylum seekers even further by signing off on the Malaysian solution.
Comments
The Jakarta Post
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/08/01/letter-fate-asylum-seekers...
The minimum statistics.
These are the minimal numbers affirmed to the Australian Senate upon investigation, the numbers are in fact much higher and the truths layered by a heap of inadequate training, a lack of expertise, poor reporting mechanisms, by bureaucratic bungling, by various prejudices and discrimination, by many veils of racism and finally clouded by the clandestine.
* 1507 detainees hospitalised in the first 6 months of this year
* 213 injuries from self-harm
* 723 treated for 'voluntary starvation'
* 620 self harm cases on Xmas island alone
* 301 days - average processing time for Afghans
There have been six Detention Centre Deaths in the last ten months, five by suicide, there have been more than 1,000 suicide attempts, thousands of self harms, hundreds of folk who have collapsed from starvation, thousands who have gone on hunger strikes and protests. People, if they survive the Australian Detention Centre experience, are leaving Detention worse than came in. Some of the poor folk deported back to Afghanistan or Sri Lanka have been found dead, killed. As the Hazara peoples often state, they have no country to return to, they are persecuted by everyone, by the Taliban, by the Pashtun, and they are not protected by the Afghani Government, and our Government should stop telling them what is like in Afghanistan. They know what it is like for a Hazara, that's why they fled.
Gerry.