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RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Children Take Brunt of Immigration Detention Policy
By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Jul 26 (IPS) - Forcibly removed from classes, 12-year-old Ian
Hwang and his six-year-old Australian-born sister, Janie are now back at
school from the Villawood immigration detention centre where they were
taken four months ago because their mother had overstayed her visa.
This South Korean family's saga is one among many that has brought to
light the failures, errors and inadequacies of the Australian
Immigration Department and its policy of mandatory detention.
Ironically, for a nation of migrants, Australia has one of the most
stringent policies against illegal immigration in the world. Refugees or
asylum-seekers without inadequate documentation are put into mandatory
detention under the Migration Act, 1958.
Since July 1999, at least 10,000 people, including 3,899 children, have
been through the immigration detention centres. There are 43 infants and
children still in various immigration detention centres across the
country in Villawood (New South Wales), Port Augusta and Baxter (South
Australia), Maribyrnong (Victoria) and Christmas Island.
While Ian and Janie have been given bridging visas, their mother has
been put under ''community detention''. Children like them often suffer
emotional and psychological trauma and stress suffered in detention with
life-long impacts on them and their families.
As the South Korean family's lawyer Michaela Byers said Ian had
witnessed three attempted suicides in detention and was ''traumatised by
the horrors''. Some children need intensive treatment, psychological
support and remedial education to lead a normal life.
Young Shayan suffered nightmares and would wake up crying at night. He
repeatedly drew pictures of fences with himself and his family confined
inside them. Though his family was recognised as refugees and released
three years ago, at the age of seven, he was diagnosed with acute and
chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The Australian Medical Association has warned that children in detention
were especially vulnerable to mental illness and should be released as
these young detainees were being subjected to what is in effect child
abuse.
Banging her head against the wall, 16-year-old Valentia Gythalovesa
wants to get out from the Villawood detention centre. She had lived in
Australia for nine years and was studying in class 11, when immigration
officials came to her family home a few months ago and took away her
parents and younger brother because her mother had overstayed her visa.
Brought up in a prison environment, these children are frightened and
suffer separation anxiety. As Alanna Sherry, coordinator for the
humanitarian non-political action group Chilout (Children Out of
Detention) says, ''Young people quickly begin to exhibit the same
depression symptoms as adults''.
An 11-year-old was acting the man and trying to cut his wrists,
imitating the distressed adults around him while some children were on
anti-depressants and others have been on hunger strikes.
In 2003, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMIA)
informed parliament that five children had sewn their lips together,
three had slashed their arms, two had swallowed shampoo. One child tried
suicide by hanging and 13 had threatened to hurt themselves.
Amnesty International's report, 'Australia: The impact of indefinite
detention - the case to change Australia's mandatory detention
regime', includes examples of trauma experienced by detained children,
including teargas and late night spot checks by guards, and witnessing
their parents being abused.
The report described how they lived in cramped conditions among people
who were suffering depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. There
was no consistent full-time education system, no play and leisure areas,
and limited contact with the outside world.
Michael Andrew Tran was born in detention to Vietnamese asylum- seeker
parents and so was 11-month-old Tina, whose parents came to Australia in
1996 seeking asylum from China and were put in detention along with her
three-year-old brother in August 2003.
Most of these children's photographs appear in security mug shots with a
barcode and for many the picture on the fluorescent yellow ID cards is
their very first photograph. Growing up behind a razor-wire fence, one
mother described the burden of disgrace these children felt.
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) has stated that
refugees who are most at risk of sexual violence are children in
detention, particularly girls and unaccompanied minors.
Earlier this week, yet another immigration scandal, involving
allegations that a woman was sexually abused while her young daughter
watched, was made public.
An Iranian refugee was placed at the Curtin Detention Centre compound
in Western Australia, where she was the only woman among 50 men. There
were allegations later that a man had tried to rape her while her nine-
year-old daughter looked on.
Mandatory detention for unlawful non-citizens was introduced in
Australia in 1992 and while many countries detain illegal immigrants,
Australia is probably the only country where detention is mandatory for
adults and children during case process.
In the absence of any maximum statutory time limit for detention, the
number of years in detention may vary, depending on each case and may
continue indefinitely.
Factors contributing to extended detention periods for children include
difficulty in establishing identity, litigation and obtaining travel
documentation. Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
reports that average period for a child in immigration detention is one
year, eight months and 11 days.
After Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) were introduced in 1999, family
reunion was no longer possible and wives and children, wanting to join
husbands and fathers in Australia, became easy prey to people smugglers.
This led to a steady rise in the proportion of children on asylum seeker
boats, reaching 40 percent in 2001, when 146 children died in the
infamous SIEV X Indonesian refugee boat tragedy.
For 13 years since this brutal policy of mandatory
detention was introduced, human and refugee rights activists have been
campaigning to get Australia to honour its many international legal
obligations.
Australia is a signatory to the United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967
Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. It has also ratified the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner, Sev
Ozdowski has said, ''We must all bear the responsibility for ensuring
that all those genuinely in need of international protection receive it.
They should not be demonised or punished by being locked up indefinitely
behind barbed wire, but should be saluted for their courage and their
will.''
Refugee activists are urging the government to abandon community
detention and replace it with whole-of-family bridging visas, with
study, work and health-care rights.
(END/2005)
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