Children in detention : IMC Print

CHILDREN IN DETENTION
WE FAILED TO PROTECT YOU

What would a child have to do, or be, to deserve being kept in detention for years? I have yet to hear a credible answer to this question. People ask “Do we really do that?” Children say “What would you want to do that for?” The policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers deeply disturbs my sense of Australian decency. Don’t Australians love children? And value families?

Yes we do detain innocent children, as a deterrent. The facts are detailed in the report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission tabled in Parliament during Budget week. Since July 1999, almost 2 200 children were detained. Significantly, most were released into our community as genuine refugees, but over 100 still languish in detention, including 70 on Nauru and 16 on Christmas Island. Another 150 or so live in “short term detention” or in low security or foster care, still under surveillance.

What is detention and how bad is it really? Experts describe living conditions behind the razor wire as toxic and irrevocably damaging, and particularly to children in their formative years. Working there has also brutalised thousands of public servants, servicemen and women, teachers, doctors, psychologists, nurses and detention guards. I wish more would blow the whistle on human rights abuses they have witnessed.

Detention is an unjust denial of personal freedom. Most Australians haven’t given much thought or imagination to what it means to be detained without charge. What it is to be an asylum seeker, subjected to the harsh authority of guards who control every aspect of “life” in prison-like conditions. “Worse than prison”, refugees say, because there is no end date. The detention is indefinite. It is the absence of freedom and hope that is so destructive. Having hope and having a future is part of being human. Indefinite detention becomes a vacuum in which the soul begins to unravel. Suffering is intense and the despair immeasurable. Even after release, the memory does not go away. Good, therefore that refugees are eligible for federally funded torture and trauma counselling. Immigration detention has undoubtedly added to their trauma. The average time in detention for children was over a year, and some men in Baxter Detention are into their sixth year.

Fifty eight such Afghan boys under 18 years came to Brisbane. Those who stayed here benefited profoundly from a safety net of incredible community support through a soccer team, the Tiger Eleven. Three years later six are at university and others at TAFE or employed. They have been the human face of the much persecuted Hazara people who fled the atrocities in Afghanistan. They do not inspire fear. On the contrary, they are loved and fully accepted.

“Ali” came with his family. I doubt that he can ever erase the anguish of leaving his friends behind after 8 months in the Woomera hell hole. Highly intelligent and thoroughly politicised by the dysfunctional adult prison environment, he was overcome by the dark despair that leads to self harm. His Dad watched over him closely, to prevent another suicide attempt. It was incarceration that robbed him of his childhood and the sense that life is worth living. He begged help to tell his story. “How can I be happy here? My friends are still in the cage. We must get them out. We are not animals! We are people, not animals!” His passionate cry haunts me. As does the voice of a two year old Iraqi marching up and down the length of the Romero Centre, shouting “DIMA! FREEDOM! DIMA! FREEDOM!” Poignant. Ironic Probably the first and only English words of this refugee child was a cry for freedom. In our Australia, where it is a birthright.

I hold our Government responsible for knowingly adding to the torment and suffering of asylum seekers in detention, including the suffering of 1058 Iraqi children, 870 Afghan children, and 211 Iranian children. To all in positions of leadership who have said nothing, I say, silence condones. Ignorance is not much of an excuse either. The facts have been “out there”. It is time to get it right. Asylum seekers are not “illegal immigrants” and the Government’s active and passive perpetuation of this myth and falsehood must stop. The innuendo and vilification of them as law breakers and people who somehow threaten our security, must stop. They came seeking protection from further persecution.

Many Australian migrants, refugees and humanitarian entrants have personally experienced persecution and the dislocation of war and totalitarian regimes. Former prisoners of war – military and civilian- know in graphic detail what it is like to be unjustly and inhumanely imprisoned. I am sad that that not more have spoken out in support of this latest wave of asylum seekers, to tell us all what freedom and peace means to them and to remind us what it means to anyone who has to flee persecution.

I am ashamed that my country blatantly breaches the international convention on the rights of the child, violates the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees, torments proven refugees with the insecurity of three or five years of temporary protection and fear of deportation to the scene of their persecution. These are not the values and the acts of civilised, compassionate people. The HROEC Report must be acted upon immediately, or our human rights record will be permanently blackened in the world community.

I expect that future generations will see this period in our short history as one where the forces of darkness prevailed, and the majority of us forgot our history and origins as the descendants of the First Fleet and other boat people. We were unnecessarily fearful of strangers and repelled and excluded them when we could have welcomed them as men women and children fleeing unbelievable suffering and persecution.

Frederika Steen was awarded the AUSTARE Paul Cullen Humanitarian Award for Queensland in 2003. A former Canberran of the Year (1984), and Centenary Medal winner, she has been actively involved in community refugee, multicultural and human rights activities for thirty years. She retired from the Department of Immigration in 2001 after a distinguished career in settlement services and three years’ service as the Chief Migration Officer, Australian Embassy in Germany. Today she is a volunteer worker at the Romero Centre in Brisbane, a group of Australians supporting refugees on temporary visas.

The Centre receives some small grants from the Queensland Government. Nothing from the Commonwealth Government. It has been sustained for more than three years by generous donations from individuals and some Christian religious orders. Romero Centre, PO Box 6115, Buranda Q 4102