Christmas Island child detainees: Australia's cruelty and inhumanity
Paediatrics Professor Elizabeth Elliott was
invited by the Human Rights Commission to examine the health and well
being of children on Christmas Island after a year in detention — and
the results are chilling.
IF A VISIT TO CHRISTMAS ISLAND sounds like fun, think again. A remote
tropical island in the Indian Ocean – billed as a birdwatcher’s
paradise and a haven for snorkelling – has a dark side.
It is “home” to 1102 detainees seeking asylum, including 174 children; many are infants and 26 boys are unaccompanied minors.
Having attempted to travel to Australia by boat and been intercepted after July 19, 2013 (the date of a change in immigration policy), these people are being forcibly detained in one of Australia’s immigration detention centres, with the promise that they will never be settled on the Australian mainland. Following the anniversary of one year in detention, tensions are soaring.
I was invited to accompany the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) president, Professor Gillian Triggs, and her team to the Immigration Detention Centre on Christmas Island in July.
The visit was part of the 2014 National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention.. It was prompted by increasing reports of self-harm by mothers with young children.
Mental and physical symptoms of distress
As a paediatrician, my role was to interview children and families,
to visit their accommodation and to give an opinion about the impact of
detention on their lives – their health and their mental health. Parents
described their children as being “always sick”. Certainly most had a
respiratory virus during our visit.
Young children are vulnerable to infection and the cramped living
conditions on the island promote the spread of infection both within and
between families. Many reported ongoing wheeze – asthma – likely
exacerbated by both recurrent infections and the constant
air-conditioned environment. Some children had waited months for
transfer to the mainland for specialist care, including surgery.
Most distressing, however, was people’s heightened emotional state.
We interviewed more than 200 people and two weeks later I am haunted by their words.
'My life is really deth' wrote one 12-year-old girl who had
been physically abused in her homeland and whose mother had self-harmed
in detention. She had not eaten or spoken for three days and was
threatening self-harm.
'I wont to die becous in deth I know I can’t live in here any
more. If I go back to xxxxx I know they wil kell me and kell my family.'
Intent to self-harm is of great concern. Immigration department data confirm that 128 children engaged in actual self-harm in the “onshore” detention network, which includes Christmas Island and the mainland detention centres, between January 1, 2013, and March 31, 2014.
Many of the children we met were anxious and had signs of both
post-traumatic stress disorder and current distress. We saw children who
described intrusive flashbacks and nightmares, children who had started
bed-wetting or stuttering, children who were refusing to eat and drink
and children who had stopped talking.
Some expressed their mood through their drawings. In the drawing
below this five-year-old girl, whose mother had self-harmed, described
(from left):
'My Mum only crying, me crying because I don’t have friends and I don’t like staying in Christmas Island, and Daddy.'
Children often described traumatic situations in the country they had
fled (see drawing below by a 16-year-old unaccompanied minor).
Many described their situation as “hopeless”, claiming they saw “no future". In the words of one unaccompanied minor, aged 17:
'We are very sad because of I’m in detention. Is there anybody in Australia who can help us. Please help us.'
During our visit the distress among detainees was palpable. It was
expressed as overwhelming sadness and hopelessness, and manifest most
dramatically by the high prevalence of self-harm in young mothers and
psychological symptoms in their children.
Although this was my first visit to Christmas Island, colleagues who
had visited previously were shocked by this change in mood, which Triggs
described as a “very significant deterioration”.
Only release from incarceration can ease the harm
We did witness some change on the horizon: a playground under
construction, a playroom equipped with toys (this had not yet been used
and because of the large number of children on the island access will be
rationed), a shade cloth over a play area, and a school soon to be
opened. Perhaps these improvements are too little, too late.
Forced detention of children on Christmas Island is no longer a humane option. It is time to move families with children and unaccompanied minors into community detention on the mainland, where they will have freedom of movement and ready access to the services that are their right. These include specialised health and mental health care and education. We cannot keep these people in limbo any longer.
As dictated by international law, we are obliged to make an
assessment of their claims for refugee status. We will not curb the
escalating rates of mental ill health until assessment of their refugee
status is expedited. Under international law we cannot return them to
the country from which they have fled persecution and regardless of the
result of their assessments they must be given some certainty of their
fate.
Life without certainty – wherever that might be – is intolerable.
Prof
ElizabethElliott presented the findings of her visit to Christmas Island in a
submission to a hearing in Sydney yesterday of the Australian Human
Rights Commission National Inquiry into Children in Immigration
Detention. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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