Ruddock wants families split
The Australian
22jan02
THE federal Government may split asylum-seekers' families to protect the children, following the reported involvement of detained children in life-threatening behaviour.
It is alleged children in Woomera detention centre have sewn their lips together, or had them sewn, as part of a mass hunger strike; that one boy drank detergent; another eight drank shampoo and an 18-year-old slashed his chest.
Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock yesterday asked the Government's Independent Detention Advisory Committee -- of former immigration ministers, psychiatrists, academics and others from community organisations -- to tell protesting detainees their behaviour would not sway the Government.
Mr Ruddock said the Government had "some responsibility to act" if "parents are behaving in ways which put the lives of children at risk".
Under a memorandum of understanding between the federal and South Australian governments, detention centre management can call in state Family and Youth Services officials to investigate whether children are at risk and in need of removal.
A spokesman for South Australian Human Services Minister Dean Brown said last night the state had not received a request to go into Woomera to investigate the welfare of detained children.
Human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski expressed "deep concern" yesterday for children at Woomera "witnessing horrific incidents in detention such as mouth-sewing and hunger strikes". He also was alarmed by reports of children harming themselves.
Dr Ozdowski has asked commission staff to visit Woomera urgently. He will incorporate their findings into his National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention report.
Mr Ruddock said the Government would not allow detainees to die from hunger and repeated that the lip-stitching protest would not affect the processing or outcome of asylum applications.
He believed the protest stemmed from Afghan asylum-seekers' frustration over the Government's view that Afghanistan offered a friendlier political landscape now the Taliban had been overthrown.
"You have a new Government which is pledged to uphold the rule of law, which recognises that women do have particular rights and entitlements, and that is a marked change in the form of government that was there before under the Taliban," Mr Ruddock said.
Centacare family services director Dale West described this view as "ignorant". "It completely misunderstands that there's been persecution of some groups over hundreds of years, not just the last five minutes," he said.
"Mr Ruddock is in a corner. He's completely lost the direction of what this is about. He has no exit plan and the current strategy isn't working."
Mr West said self-harm was a common cry for help and that Mr Ruddock had insensitively belittled and diminished the plight of asylum-seekers.
Mr West called for the immediate release of all children.
Statements handed to reporters in Woomera yesterday on behalf of detainees said they were "fed up with the barbaric immigration policy in Australia" and that they wanted freedom or death.
"This protest is about freedom and basic human rights," they wrote. "It is no longer about visas. If the Australian Government are not willing to accept us as refugees we request to be handed over to the UN as soon as possible. We will maintain our protest until we achieve our goals."