Transcript
28/01/2002
Afghan youths threaten suicide at the Woomera Detention Centre

After almost two weeks, there is still no sign of an end to the hunger strike by detainees at the Woomera Detention Centre. Authorities put the number of hunger strikers, including men, women and children, at 259.

Lawyers representing the detainees claim the number is more like 370.

There are reports today that 11 unaccompanied Afghan youths are threatening suicide unless they are removed from Woomera.

Meanwhile, the Australian Red Cross and the Catholic bishops have joined the ranks of those expressing grave concern at the plight of the detainees.

Despite the mounting pressure, neither PM John Howard nor Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock show any signs of backing down.

Anne Barker reports on two doctors who have decided to speak publicly about the conditions they witnessed inside Woomera.

ANNIE SPARROW, PAEDIATRIC REGISTRAR: I've never seen so many depressed and traumatised and disturbed children as I have in the two weeks that I spent there just now.

ANNE BARKER: Annie Sparrow spent last weekend in tears, tears shed for the hundreds of children detained at Woomera, where, until just over a week ago, she was employed to look after them and tears for the wretched conditions she said she witnessed inside.

ANNIE SPARROW: I saw a 16-year-old who attempted to hang himself and a 14-year-old girl who cut her wrists and I saw another 14-year-old boy who tried to choke himself.

PAUL CARROLL, GENERAL PRACTITIONER: When you walk through those barbed wire gates, you are sort of overwhelmed by this atmosphere, this aura of foreboding.

There is this sense of oppression and of people being essentially just locked up in this incongruous place in the middle of the desert.

ANNE BARKER: Annie Sparrow, a paediatric registrar and GP (general practitioner) Paul Carroll spent only short periods working at Woomera, but it was long enough to convince both of them it is no place for asylum seekers, least of all children.

Now they are speaking publicly for the first time.

ANNIE SPARROW: I've never been to a more miserable place.

When I went inside the compounds and looked at the rooms in which they live, which are very small and cramped, there are no facilities for the children to play on and no basic grass for the children who are born in detention to learn to crawl or even walk on.

PAUL CARROLL: It is difficult to understand why we have to make their conditions so unpleasant and from what I saw from the people that I looked after while I was there, their health deteriorates while they are there.

PHILIP RUDDOCK, IMMIGRATION MINISTER: I think when people speak about women and children in detention, there are fairly simplistic views which are developed in relation to how you might deal with those questions.

None of us like to see women and particularly children, particularly very young children, in a detention environment.

And the fact is that we do put in place very careful management plans in relation not only to families but also in relation to unaccompanied minors of which there are 40 in detention at the moment.

ANNE BARKER: Last week, members of a Federal Government advisory committee visited Woomera to see first-hand conditions inside.

They gave the centre a tick and found that detainees have good food, plenty of clothing and air-conditioned accommodation, claims that Annie Sparrow and Paul Carroll dispute.

PAUL CARROLL: I'm not sure how they came to those conclusions because that certainly was not the conclusions I came to when I was there.

My understanding is that things are worse, if anything, than they were when I was there.

I did not agree with any of the comments I read of their assessment of the way these people were treated.

ANNIE SPARROW: It is not until you go inside the compounds and see how they live, and eat with them in the mess as I have done and eat their food, which I think is far from adequate, and see their quarters, which are degrading places to live in and understand that they really have -

They really have a simply desperate way of living there.

JOHN HOWARD, PM: Those in the detention centres are well-fed, they are properly housed, given the circumstances and clothed.

There is very high-quality medical attention available to them and in those circumstances, we are clearly discharging our humanitarian obligations and any suggestion that we are not, those suggestions are wrong.

ANNE BARKER: The volatile situation inside Woomera escalated even further at the weekend with claims that as many as 370 detainees are on a hunger strike.

A situation so serious that even the Red Cross, a strictly neutral and apolitical organisation, broke its usual silence to voice its concern.

MARTINE LETTS, RED CROSS AUSTRALIA, SECRETARY-GENERAL: We have considerable concerns for the welfare of people who are clearly very vulnerable in those centres right now.

We make no judgment as to the whys or the wherefores – that is not Red Cross's job, that is not our international mandate either.

JOHN HOWARD: I thought the advertisement from the Red Cross conspicuously fell short of expressing a view on the veracity or otherwise of the policy.

There are a variety of views in the Australian community on this issue.

I noted in the Australian newspaper today a former chief justice of the High Court of Australia very strongly supporting the Government's policy.

ANNE BARKER: For all the distress they have witnessed at Woomera, Paul Carroll and Annie Sparrow will not rule out going back.

But for now their main concern is to correct what they say are negative misconceptions about asylum seekers in the border community.

PAUL CARROLL: Most of them are normal people like you and me and just under extraordinary circumstances.

ANNIE SPARROW: I do not think if you put a subset of Australian children in detention they would do as well on the whole as these children have done they would do as well on the whole as these children have done.