Powerful proof that children don’t belong in detention.
“I have never seen happiness in my life,” one 17-year-old says.
“I feel like I’m in prison. I am so bored and sometimes I think of killing myself,” a 12-year-old girl says.
“My father and brother were killed. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” an unaccompanied child adds.
These are not fictional statements. These are the real words from children living in immigration detention centres under the control of the Australian government.
The powerful accounts, which were first presented in last year’s The Forgotten Children report, feature in a stirring new video produced by student activist group Kidz4Kids.
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Because child detainees’ faces cannot be shown, the clever video shows Australian children reading out detainees’ devastating descriptions of life in detention instead.
The resulting two-minute clip is so chilling, it has been shared more than 1,800 times online in just two days.
Australia currently holds about 800 children in closed immigration detention for indefinite periods, including 88 children on Nauru.
Between January 2013 and March 2014 alone, there were 233 assaults in detention involving children and 33 incidents of reported sexual assault — with the majority involving children. During the same period, 128 children who harmed themselves, The Forgotten Children report found.
Related: The horrific effect of keeping children in detention.
The report also revealed that more than a staggering one-third of children who were in detention in the first half of 2014 were found to have serious mental health disorders.
In April this year, a number of former Nauru workers signed an open letter saying the Immigration Department was aware of child abuse allegations in detention centres on the island for 17 months and did not respond adequately.
Read more about that here: Former Nauru workers speak out.
The video is a powerful reminder of a fact all Australians, of all political persuasions, should be able to agree on: Children do not belong in detention.
You can take action to help get kids out of detention at the ChilOut website here or the Kidz4Kidz Facebook page here.
The following images were drawn by children in detention centres and obtained as part of an inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention by the Human Rights Commission:
If you need support, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
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The horrific effect of keeping children in detention.
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