Letter to the editor.
As Christmas approaches, we might spare a thought for all the children who are indefinitely detained by our government in immigration centres on mainland Australia and on the remote, tiny island of Nauru. There are currently 112 children being held in detention on the mainland. For them, Christmas will be even more bleak than usual this year, given that our new Border Protection regime has recently decreed that the activities normally organised for them outside the centres by voluntary groups like the Brigidine Order of nuns can no longer take place, in spite of the fact that they have been run successfully, without incident, for a number of years.
Meanwhile on Nauru, 95 children will spend Christmas in the dreadful tented detention centre in the tropical heat. For many of these traumatised children, this will be their second Christmas in this terrible place. International law, to which Australia is a signatory, states that governments should only detain children for as long as it takes to carry out health and identity checks. This should take days, not years!
We should not be fooled by statements by the government and by our local Nationals MP Luke Hartsuyker, that life has suddenly been transformed for these children, simply because the gates of the detention centre are now open during the day. Life has not changed. These children, and their parents, live in an open prison, where they are held indefinitely, with no hope for the future. They have committed no crime, yet we continue to cruelly punish them for having fled from danger in their homeland to seek a place of safety.
All people of good will should call on the government and on our local member of parliament, to put an end to this cruel, inhumane, unlawful and hugely expensive treatment of legitimate asylum seekers. The government may be keeping our asylum seekers out of sight, but we should remind them that they are not out of mind, and that we care about what is being done in our name.
Mike
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