Afghan refugees detained in Australia are so desperate that some havestitched their lips together in a fasting protest, reports Conor Lally
A group of more than 200 mainly Afghan refugees are now in their ninth day of hunger strike at South Australia's Woomera Detention Centre with 62 among the group, including four children, having sewn their lips together in protest at the Australian government's refusal to speed up the visa processing system or release them.
Details of the protest filtered through to the Australian media in the past few days. And in the days that followed fresh stories of mass suicide attempts by detainees at Woomera were splashed across the front pages of every Australian newspaper.
Groups of up to 20 refugees at a time swallowed poisons in desperate attempts to end their lives at least three times this week.
Other stories have emerged of around 50 unaccompanied youngsters being detained at Woomera.
And detainees at the Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia this week went on the rampage, burning down part of the complex after the authorities confirmed they are investigating the gang rape of a five-year-old boy by three adult detainees at the centre.
No sooner had those details emerged than 35 detainees at Melbourne's Maribyrnong Detention Centre began a hunger strike in an act of solidarity with the Woomera asylum-seekers.
Australia's Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock's reaction was predictable.
He said Australia would not be held to ransom by the protesters, insisting his government would decide who would be granted visas and under what terms. The rape allegations would be fully investigated, he said.
In a characteristically cold move he also dispatched negotiators to Woomera to tell the hunger striking refugees their protests were futile.
And yesterday Prime Minister John Howard reiterated the country's commitment to detaining asylum-seekers, insisting he would not be morally blackmailed by the protesters.
It seemed clear that the barrage of damning stories revealing the gruesome nature of life at the detention centres had done nothing to soften the government's draconian and clearly cruel approach.
But behind the steadfast public face this week, real cracks have emerged in the Howard government's handling of the refugee issue.
The first inkling that differences are emerging within the ranks of the government came on Wednesday with news that one of Minister Ruddock's most senior advisers had abruptly quit. He cited the lack of compassion shown for those at Woomera who had resorted to sewing their lips together, Afghans who fled the Taliban regime long before September 11th and the ensuing war on terrorism.
Neville Roach, appointed by Minister Ruddock to chair the Council for Multicultural Australia, said he found it impossible to continue to support the government because of its policies, which he claims are "tearing at Australia's multicultural fabric".
And for the first time Mr Roach hinted at unease within the government at Mr Howard's handling of the Tampa affair last year.
"Every time a humanitarian issue is raised in relation to the asylum-seekers, their deviousness and even criminal intent is proclaimed," he said.
"I think the way in which the government has handled these issues beginning with Tampa has tended to give comfort to the prejudiced side of human nature."
There was more to come later in the day when Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, Mr Sev Ozdowski, said the government may have breached human rights conventions concerning the treatment of children in detention centres.
The Australian newspaper had a field day with the story. "Woomera's children now the new Tampa" ran its front-page headline on Thursday.
But even before that, and perhaps most damning of all, was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Dr Michael Dudley the chairman of Suicide Prevention Australia, and Dr Sarah Mares, one of the country's leading child and adolescent psychiatrists.
Both have recently visited the centre.
"Does any other country lock children and families behind walls of razor wire in the desert?" they asked.
"At Woomera, people were introduced to us by number rather than their name. There was evidence of violence and despair in the filthy and bloodstained toilets the detainees use . . . Keeping children in conditions akin to concentration camps is medically and morally wrong."
But in the face of all of this John Howard insists he is not for turning.
"I don't enjoy and Philip Ruddock doesn't enjoy the present situation, but nobody should think that we're going to abandon the policy because we're getting a few bad headlines," he said yesterday, dismissing the week's revelations.
"In the end, headlines are the products of the personal views of journalists, they don't necessarily represent distilled public opinion, and they don't necessarily carry any more veracity or moral clout than the views that you or I or anybody else in the community may have. We don't like having to detain people but there is no alternative if we are to keep control of the flow of people into this country."
But fewer than 8,000 have come to Australia in the past two years. In a country whose land mass is bigger than Europe that represents a trickle, not a flood.