Aust Church groups condemn govt over child detention
Catholic social justice groups have condemned the Australian government over the report released by the Australian Human Rights Commission into the mandatory detention of refugee children.
The Edmund Rice Centre called for the ending of mandatory detention and Catholic mission said it found the report, released last Thurday, "extremely disturbing."
THe ERC joined with 201 other Australian organisations and community groups to sign a joint statement calling all members of the Australian Parliament to take action to end the detention of children.
“Coordinated by the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA), the statement is a timely and necessary response to the report, and urges the Australian Parliament to introduce legislation to prevent children from being detained for immigration purposes in the future,” ERC Director and President of the Refugee Council of Australia, Phil Glendenning, said.
“Today, we are calling for the release of children and families detained in Australian and Nauru, and for allegations of child sexual abuse in Australian-funded detention centres to be referred to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.”
Catholic Mission expressed "deep concern" over the findings of the report. “We are very concerned about the findings of this report – particularly the insurmountable psychological damage that is being done to children who are still in detention,” said Catholic Mission National Director, Martin Teulan.
“This is an evidence-based, rigorous, and reliable report that highlights the lamentable conditions of immigration detention of children and the impact of these conditions on children in the long-term. The key human rights concern here is the prolonged damage that immigration detention does—and is doing—to these children, especially on Nauru where 119 children remain with an uncertain future.
“We strongly believe that immigration detention is never, under any circumstance, in the best interests of the child. We therefore request the immediate release of these remaining children” Mr Teulan said.
