The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) in Melbourne backs the HREOC recommendation in “A Last Resort?” - Children should be released from detention centres and residential housing projects within four weeks of the tabling of this report . This deadline is June 10. The Report will be launched tonight at 383 Albert St Melbourne.
“
A
Last Resort?
detailing the abusive conditions of children of asylum seekers comes
just 5 years after the Bringing
Them Home Report
which recorded the appalling treatment
of Aboriginal children who were taken from their families.
Both the Government and Opposition must accept responsibility
and implement the recommendations of the HREOC report without delay”, said
Kon Karapanagiotidis, Coordinator of the ASRC.
“A Last Resort ?” represents two years solid investigative
work into the effects of detention on children. Implementing the
recommendations is a first step towards healing
the pain inflicted on these children by a
government which used this policy as a means of deterring
others from coming .”
“Australian
Governments have a sorry history regarding the care and protection of
children. Indigenous children were taken from their parents and locked up in
orphanages where many were abused. The children of asylum seekers are locked
up in camps surrounded by electric fences and razor wire and ruled by
guards,” says Pamela Curr, ASRC campaign coordinator. “ We must remove
all children and their families from detention, remove the legislation which
enabled this cruelty and resolve as a nation never to allow such policies
ever again.”