Inhumane detention

There is much to criticise in the Australian Government's proposal to swap 800 asylum seekers with 4,000 refugees in Malaysia.

Media reports continue to outline the disturbing treatment of refugees in Malaysia. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has announced that he will have the final say over which children will be included in the asylum seekers to be sent to Malaysia. This is yet another example of how far a concern for human rights has fallen from the Government's radar. But it should not be forgotten that this policy will not only affect children, it will also have a devastating impact on families who arrive to Australia seeking asylum, and the lives of men who arrive alone.

A concern for human rights is similarly absent from the Government's mandatory detention policy. Reports of the Malaysia solution hide the fact that many men, women and children in Australia's immigration detention centres continue to suffer. For anyone who has visited an immigration detention centre in this country, the effects of mandatory detention are harrowing and obvious. I have just returned from visiting the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in remote north-west Australia where the effects of isolation combined with mandatory detention make a despairing combination. Our leaders need to visit these centres to see the misery their bipartisan policy creates.

Just as both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott should accept the invitations of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to sit with them and ask about the impacts of government policy, they should be doing the same with those who are subjected to mandatory detention. They should ask those detained what the impact of indefinite detention is having on their lives and those of their families.

They would hear what many of us who visit detention centres hear – stories of absolute despair of the days that have turned into weeks, and then into months, and for some, now more than a year of waiting for news of their refugee claims. For people in detention with no idea of when they will be released, every day feels like a year as they try to cope with the uncertainty of what will happen to them and their families.

If our political leaders talked to the men, women and children we detain, they would hear how they try to cope with their despair and how they care for each other. Many of them are extraordinarily resilient but have had to accept anti-depressant medication in order to survive. Others can no longer bear it – incidences of self-harm and suicide attempts continue in our detention centres. And over the past year five men have taken their lives, one of them in Curtin.

The suffering that accompanies mandatory detention is so needless. Recent Department of Immigration statistics show that the majority of asylum seekers arriving by boat, and subject to mandatory detention, are still found to be refugees. These figures indicate that most of the men, women and children in our detention centres will eventually be released into our communities. What a futile exercise mandatory detention is. All we are doing is greatly intensifying the suffering of many who arrive at our shores asking for refuge from the violence they have fled. And there are alternatives to detention. United Nations research continues to show that allowing people to live in the community until their refugee claims have been finalised is more humane, a lot cheaper, and very few people do not comply with release conditions.

Prime Minister Gillard's declaration prior to her Beijing visit in April that she would 'of course be raising human rights' with China suggests that her government has some expertise on the matter. For the Government to continue mandatory detention, and negotiate for the removal of asylum seekers to Malaysia, this claim is clearly wrong. For the Opposition to consider that detention on Nauru is acceptable policy is also to ignore the human rights of asylum seekers. We should 'of course be raising human rights' with own political leaders.

Caroline Fleay is a lecturer at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University. She is the author of Australia and Human Rights: Situating the Howard Government (2010).