May 24, 2005

the camp

The photo below is of a child riding a trike at the Woomera Detention Centre in South Australia:

CampWaphC.jpg The detention camp is a place where the refugees are not free to communicate with the outside world that can only assemble at the perimeters of their prison in the desert.

Kids should not belong in detention centres. Many Australian citizens would hold that.

Yet we have the mandatory immigration detention of children in Australia despite it being widely accepted in the national community that children held in immigration detention for long periods of time are at a high risk of suffering from serious mental harm.

The Commonwealth's failure to implement the repeated recommendations by mental health professionals that certain children be removed from the detention environment with their parents amounts to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of those children in detention.

"How can I describe this place? It is a place where no human being can ever forget. A place full of agony, deprivation, despair and sorrow. Everyone that came to me at Port Hedland said I deserved to suffer because I chose Australia as a country of freedom to live. Australia for me is a country of torture".
Miriam. Samira, Amal, Mariam, Amani and Paula Abood, "Seeing Through the Darkness: Testimonials of Refugee Women", presented at the forum Imprison and Detain: Racialised Punishment in Australia Today, University of Technology in Sydney on 24 May 2001.(The above names are fictitious to protect the futures of the women who have spoken of the trauma and abuse they have experienced, whilst being falsely imprisoned because they have sought asylum in Australia).


The Australian security state's legislation produces the violence and barbarism that it proclaims to abhor. The very legislative acts and practices that incarcerate the refugee and asylum seeker produce a violation of the rights of the refugee and asylum seeker: Our border protection says that there is no refuge or asylum for you who flee trauma, war and hostile oppressive states.

Are children in the detention camps another example of the figure of homo sacer?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 24, 2005 11:54 PM | TrackBack
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