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Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention from
Coalition for Justice for Refugees
Ausnews Global Network, Justice for Refugees and Global Concerns Research Centre http://www.angelfire.com/film/ausnews
C/- Edmund Rice Centre
for Justice & Community Education
90 Underwood Rd, Homebush NSW 2140.
Tel: 02 9764 1330, Fax: 029764 1743
To the committee for the Inquiry into children in detention,
We at the coalition for Justice for Refugees, make our submission on the belief that every child in Australia has the right to survival, participation and development and it is in the interest of the child and the rest of Australia that these basic needs are meet.
We are concerned that the psychological damage being inflicted upon these particular children whom we have interviewed and other children in detention centres demands serious investigation and new strategies need to be put in place to rectify the problem immediately. Children in detention DO face extreme humiliation and their basic human rights ARE being violated. The children are not properly protected, nor given appropriate medical assistance, education, nutritional food or provided acceptable living quarters. There basic needs are not being met and the Australian government is failing to meet the laws, which govern the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which Australia is legally bound to.
The Coalition for Justice for Refugees brings together over 42 mainstream human rights advocacy organisations from all over the nation to further promote human rights in the current global context.
We hope our contribution to the Inquiry will offer some insight into the current situation and that the Inquiry will be a strong force for change within Australian detention centres.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require further evidence.
Yours Sincerely,
Masqood
Alshams and Nicole Woodfield
(On behalf of the Coalition for Justice for Refugees.)
Submission by the Coalition For Justice For Refugees
As Australia agreed to be bound by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) in December 1990 it is the Australian governments responsibility to insure the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity abides by its rules.
The Convention applies to every child in Australia regardless of nationality or immigration status and regardless of how the child arrived in Australia. Therefore our submission will focus on the violations of children in Australia immigration detention centres according to the law of the Convention.
The children we have interviewed for the purpose of our submission were released this year from the Curtin Detention centre on a temporary protection visa. They arrived at Christmas Island in December 1999 and spent twenty months in the Curtin Detention centre. The family wish for their names to remain anonymous and for the purpose of this submission we will use the terms X and Y.
X is male and was 17-18 whilst in detention. He is now in year 11 and missed two years of education whilst in detention. Y is female and was 14-15 whilst in detention. Their family are Christian and left Iran for fear of persecution. DIMA refused their initial application and so they applied to the refugee tribunal. There were granted refugee status within 2 months of applying but remained in detention for a further 5 months.
The following points illustrate the violations of this Convention, which are currently occurring.
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
1-The highest attainable standard of health.
Q-What medical professionals and facilities were at the centre and did they meet your needs?
X says- "There was one doctor but you could only go if you were dying. There is just one bed; if you were dying you can lie on that bed too.
There were a few nurses. Most of them a nice only a few bad ones that would say, "you are cue jumpers, you don't deserve any more." Sometimes they said you could drink water. Maybe water can help but not for everything. 9 months after arriving to the camp there was councillors".
Y says- "There were three children born while I was there. At nine months the baby was so sick and they would only give her water to drink. Water would not do anything but they didn't care. I was really sick so much that I couldn't even walk. But I had to go there and collect my medication. I had to get up and go to the centre they wouldn't come. I got a virus along with all the other kids with my brother and sister."
Q-What was the food like?
Y says - "The food is bad, it gives you no energy and all the bad thinking makes you sick. Even if you were sick and couldn't move you had to line up for food. In a week we would eat two times chicken and that's all the good food we would eat. After three months they changed the kids food. Like under 14 they would give us fish and chips and when it was my birthday I turned 14 the lady said "why are you here your now 14 your not allowed to eat this food" I said Ok I'll take my ticket I'll eat over there. I'm not going to beg you please give me. They wouldn't care. You know I was a kid I needed kids food. There were pregnant ladies who needed more and they had to eat really bad food. It was so hard and when you were hungry you had to wait for 7 hours after lunch for dinner and then you had to wait 3 hours for milk it was terrible we were so hungry."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
2-Primary education, and different forms of secondary education should be available and accessible to every child.
Q-What education was provided at detention?
X says - "There was a small school with 1-2 teachers. Not for me but for the younger ones. There was just one group , 8, 9 years old to learn some English. But they said because I was too old I couldn't attend those classes, I was 17. After a few months they said they could get detainees to teach. They use to pay them 28 points each week. To give you an example of what 28 points is a little more than a packet of cigarettes. It is a small amount of money $28 for one week teaching."
Y says - "At first there was one class and then after a few months there were about three classes. There were all kids of all levels some who didn't know the ABC and I had to sit there and I asked, 'Why do I have to stay here? I know all of this' and they said 'I don't care you can go if you don't like it.' We went to these classes for one and a half years. And then my mum started working in Welfare and pleaded with the manager of camp to let us go. And then three of us out of about fifty were allowed to go. We were there for a long time and they didn't want us to get angry and so they just wanted us to go somewhere so we get happier. It felt good but when we cam back from school all the kids wanted to know "what happened" but I felt really sad for them and I was embarrassed and I really wanted them to come with us. But they said they couldn't because they didn't speak English but they did speak English."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
3-Protection from all forms of physical or mental violence, sexual abuse and exploitation
Q-Did you ever see or experience any form of abuse while in detention?
Y says- "We had to live with another family and us and 4-5 single men and they wouldn't mind sleeping whenever they liked and they stayed up playing cards till 3-4 in the morning. Two of the detainee was sexually harassed. It was one girl and one boy and an adult man. The man was sent to jail".
X says- "The man knew the victims father and one night she went to a friends and she saw a man always walking close by so she came back to her brother and she told us he came in and said. "Hey you got nice hair, can you buy you a rubber band" and that sort of stuff and touch her and he goes to her brother "go and get us some water" and she said " No, no I'll go" And started to cry and the man ran away and straight after that he went to her father and said, "Your daughter was crying I want to talk to her but she didn't stop crying" He lied. But then after that he had to go to prison for 2-3 years. They took the child victim to Broome to see a councillor once, that was all."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
4-Practise their culture, language and religion.
X says -"After a few months we asked to get a minister in our camp to baptise us. And it wasn't until the church minister came the manager of detention said there were a few people who wanted to see you. He wouldn't have called the church to bring a minister. We weren't even allowed to get baptised. They said you have to get permission from Canberra. I think that's a bit silly."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
5-Rest and play.
Q-What activities were offered at the centre?
X says - "First when we went there were 15 children then after that there became more and more and they just had to play with anything they wanted. Like breaking sticks and follow each other. There was a basketball ground with broken rings and damaged fences and flat balls. There were 3 balls in the camp and we had to give the officers an ID card for a ball. After 9 months they set up a recreation centre and I worked there organising things for kids."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
6-Be treated with humanity and respect for their inherent dignity and in a manner, which takes into account their age.
Q-How were you treated by ACM staff and others working in the centre?
Y says - "As I know a refugee is not meant to be in detention centres. But the officer says you are cue jumpers, you are illegal immigrants. They didn't like us. We tried to make them understand, but they don't believe us. I was 17."
X says -"I felt really bad. I never lived like that in my life nor did I expect to be treated like that. We were cleaning the floor in our room and the officers use to come in with their dirty boots all over where we were going to sleep. But they wouldn't care. They would knock on the door really loud while there were little babies sleeping. They should have been quiet, but they didn't care. The first day we didn't have shampoo to wash our hair with after 36 hours at sea. You had to wash with the same thing as our clothes. And then some of the nicer officers use to bring us shampoos and special soaps secretly."
X says - "When my friend needed to go to the medical centre I use to go with her cause she didn't speak very good English. And she said to the nurse "I don't like it here" and the nurses and officers use to say "what do you say that? You like it here. We make money when you come here. You get food, you don't have to work, and you don't have to worry about anything at all". And that 'there' making money off 'you'. It was horrible when they use to say that. It seems they are building detention to protect jobs and make lots of money inside, not to protect people. It was embarrassing. We did have a problem and that's why we come to Australia. We were told by the nice officers to ignore those people. They said that were jealous. And I said you know they have their citizenship, they have everything in Australia. They can go for so much more than us.
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
7- Not be deprived of their liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily, with detention only in conformity with the law, as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.
Q-How long did you stay in detention was there a process and how did it make you feel?
Y says- "At first month the people said it's going to be all right and people had a bit of hope. After 3 months we had a hunger strike and we lost our hope. They said we are all going to be here forever because they are not responding. There were 1200 people in detention without responding. They all fill put applications but there was still no reply. And no body left for 7 months. After 9 months they started processing visas. I think it was because there were more people arriving and they had to make room. Then after we were accepted we had to stay in the detention centre for 5 months. The judge accepted our case within about 2 months of applying to the refugee tribunal."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
8- A standard of living adequate for physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.
Q-What were the living conditions like?
X says - "We lived in containers they didn't care if we were family or not because there were 1200 in the camp and they said that this camp could get 2000 people in there so we were all put together. The rooms were 5 metres by 5 meters for four people. And I was so tall I couldn't fit on the floor so sometimes the girls had to sleep on the ground. We didn't even have blankets. We had to towels on ourselves to make ourselves warm because we had no clothes. After they gave us second hand clothes and we had to line up in the sun for hours and we were told not to complain that we were cue jumpers and didn't deserve even this".
Y says - "20 people were in one dorm to live .Man and woman. We had to share another dorm with another family with 4 men. Then after a few months we had a single room. With bunks and sometimes we had to sleep on the floor. And the officers would knock on our door at 6.30 in the morning and they want us to say the number that we are here. And they use to check the numbers in the morning, at lunch and at night-time."
Under the Convention, children in detention have the right to:
9-The right of all children to enjoy all the rights of the Convention without discrimination of any kind.
Q-Did you fell that you have been discriminated against?
X says- "it was sad when you could see that everyone was being released and got his or her visa. Some Afghani families where at camp for 2 weeks and they just got there visa and just when. And we were there for 15 months and it was just horrible".
X says- "I'd never tell my friends that I'm a refugee, never. Cause if you tell them that you have been in detention. They'll look at you in another way. If they think that you arrived by aeroplane. You just arrived. I'm just saying that I lye to my friends and its really hard. I say I arrived in Perth and that's it. They can't understand. I'll never say that to Australian. I think that they don't like us."
Y says- "Refugees aren't given a chance, its just bad media but I think that a lot of Australians do understand and welcome us. The politicians say bad things and this reflects in the community. And so do the ACM officers in the detention camps. When I was in Perth there was a youth group and they people always said ' we love you and you are always welcome here'. It was really nice there."
Conclusion
We at the coalition
for Justice for Refugees are concerned that the psychological damage being
inflicted upon these particular children and other children in detention
centres needs serious investigation and new strategies need to be put
in place to help rectify the problem immediately. Children in detention
DO face extreme humiliation and their basic human rights ARE being violated.
The children are not properly protected, nor given appropriate medical
assistance, education, nutritional food or provided acceptable living
quarters. There basic needs are not being met and the Australian government
is failing to meet the laws, which govern the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (1989), which Australia is legally bound to. Every child
in Australia has the right to survival and development and it is in the
interest of the child and the rest of Australia that these basic needs
are meet before more violations occur.
