Asia-Pacific

Suicides, depression plague Australia detainees

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-26 16:09

SYDNEY - Australia's human rights commission on Thursday called for an end to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, citing suicides, self-harm such as lip-sewing and swallowing chemicals, riots and widespread depression in the country's detention centres.

Its report comes a day after UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay attacked Australia's tough refugee policies and the treatment of outback Aborigines, saying there was a strong undercurrent of racism in the country.

In releasing a report on Sydney's Villawood detention centre, the Australian Human Rights Commission said prolonged detention, sometimes for years, was detrimental to detainees and that the situation had worsened in the past 12 months.

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Commission President Catherine Branson, who inspected Villawood, said some detainees thought constantly of suicide and self-harm and some had swallowed detergent and chemicals.

"You get the sense, walking in, of disturbed people, depressed people, agitated people. There is not a sense of normality around you," she said.

But there is little chance Australia will drop the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers as both the Labor government and conservative opposition support the policy under the banner of border security.

Border security became a hot issue with Australians in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack in the United States, despite the small number of boatpeople arrivals compared with those in Europe.

More than 900 asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka, have arrived in Australia by boat this year, while 134 boats carrying 6,535 people arrived last year, prompting the government to harden immigration policy.

Australia and Malaysia struck a deal this month which would see future boatpeople sent to Malaysia for processing in return for Australia accepting thousands of refugees from Malaysia.

The Commission said three suicides at Villawood in three months, six deaths in the last nine months in the detention centre network, of which five appeared to be suicide, high rates of self-harm incidents, including lip-sewing, and riots should set alarm bells ringing for the government.

"It is time for the government...to end the current system of mandatory and indefinite detention," said Branson, citing the government's failure to implement a 2008 policy which would see greater use of community-based detention.

The Commission said that as of March, more than half of all asylum seekers had been detained for longer than six months, while 750 people had been detained for more than a year.

Australia's detention network was under serious strain because thousands of people were being held for long periods of time, said the report.

"Australia continues to have one of the strictest immigration detention systems in the world. It leads to breaches of Australia's human rights obligations," it said.