Tonight, when I’m saying goodnight to my daughter, I’ll be thinking about the children in the Australian run immigration detention centre on Nauru.
Those children will be sleeping in tents, in the middle of a disused phosphate mine, surrounded by high fences and security guards. Many of them will be too scared to go to the bathroom because of what the guards may do to them.
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When I went to the camp on Nauru in 2013 and spoke with the families and children who are locked up there, I was horrified by what I saw. It was clear that these centres are kept out of sight and out of mind for a reason.
When you enter the secure compound on Nauru, the first thing you notice is the stifling heat that hangs heavy over the camp. The tents have no air-conditioning, fans are in cruelly short supply, the humidity is unbelievable and shade is sparse. The second thing you notice is the desperation in the eyes of the people who are being held there.
I knew at the time that no child should be held in these conditions but a recent report from the Australian Human Rights Commission has exposed, with forensic precision, the brutality of life in detention for hundreds of children.
It showed, beyond doubt, that locking children up in these horrific conditions destroys their mental health and makes them vulnerable to physical, sexual and psychological abuse.
There are hundreds of statistics and graphs in the report that show the ways in which children are being damaged, but there is one fact that goes a long way to explaining the situation in the detention camps: in a 15 month period, more than a hundred children were deemed to be at medium or high risk of committing suicide. Just let that sink in… more than a hundred children were so badly damaged by their incarceration in an Australian detention centre that they needed to be put on suicide watch.
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Shockingly, 10 of those children were less than 10 years old. This is a gravely serious issue and the Commission’s report shows that the harm we are inflicting on these children will last for the rest of their lives. This should be a watershed moment in Australian political history. We as Parliamentarians should use this report to come together, rise above the party politics of the day and make sure that children aren’t indefinitely incarcerated ever again. Sadly, thus far, rather than working through the harrowing evidence that this report contains, the Abbott government has chosen to shoot the messenger.
This report went to the government in November of last year and almost immediately Tony Abbott’s henchmen, both in the Liberal party room and in the media, began a campaign to undermine the Human Rights Commission and its President, Professor Gillian Triggs. It was an unfounded and politically motivated attack that the Prime Minister himself continued to prosecute today.
A good government is one that defends, not denigrates, an independent human rights watchdog.
A good government is one that accepts the evidence, admits the facts and acts to end what we all know is wrong; the institutionalised abuse of children.
There will be no chance at righting the wrongs of the past and addressing the heinous injustices that were visited upon these children while this obsession with political point scoring remains.
The Commission’s report said the abuse in immigration detention centres is so serious that a Royal Commission, the highest form of judicial inquiry in the country, is required to investigate it properly. I support that call whole-heartedly and will work with my colleagues across the Parliament to make sure that happens.
When I was on Nauru a widowed father of two told me, as his eyes filled with tears, ”My children ask me every day, when are we getting out of this prison? Every day I lie to them, but now I have no lies left.”
Right now there are more than 300 children locked up across the Australian mainland and on Nauru.
Those children need a voice and they need to be released from detention as soon as is humanly possible.
Sarah Hanson-Young is a Greens Senator for South Australia – @sarahinthesen8
Top Comments
Get real people ..... Their parents are to blame for putting these children in these detention centres . If they did not come with them in the leaking boats they would not be in this situation . They are illegal don't forget that . Australia has obligation with human rights to have a intake of refuges every year which is on a percentage per country basis . If the Australian Government take the children out of the detention centres , people will be saying the government is stealing these children or breaking the family unit . And if they are let in the community then we might as well just pay for charted planes and boats to bring them all to Australia and all you people that want them can give them a roof over their heads and three meals a day .
My goodness you are a fan of propaganda
Jeff, firstly, it is not illegal to seek asylum. The majority of people held on Nauru have been found to have legitimate refugee status. The parents who brought their children here did so because most of them lived in conditions which their lives were at risk and their children were at risk of being killed, tortured or forced into militant groups. Regardless of the situation, you don't fight fire with fire. Are we really justified in subjecting innocent children to conditions which lead them to express suicidal ideation at an age where they shouldn't even understand what suicide is? There are children under the age of 10 on suicide watch. The conditions they are living in will leave them with lifelong psychological damage. So regardless of your opinion as to how they ended up there, do you really think subjecting them to this is okay?
I love that Sarah HY says they have no air conditioning. What??? Do the children in Thailand, Vietnam, India, Ethiopia - and so many others from Tropical climates have air conditioning - let alone fans, or electricity? Talk about trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill!
and they are not allowed air conditioning because the Greens do not support cheap (coal) based power for these countries. Because coal is a no-no.
But Australians do, and they are supposed to be under Australian protection. Not punishment. Many countries also don't have access to medical treatment during birth either - should we pull that too, if we're holding ourselves to developing world standards?
I'd love to go camping with Sarah HY .... the tents must be luxurious.
Tell that to the Aborigines in the Northern Territory and Qld. Sure they haven't heard of air conditioning.