ZACHARY STEEL is a clinical psychiatrist who has been working with asylum seekers for 10 years and is documenting the impact of government policies on their mental health. Steel has spoken at numerous public forums, and on radio and television in defence of refugees' rights. On July 12, he spoke to 120 people at a public meeting organised by the Darwin Refugee Health Network. He was interviewed by 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's RUTH RACTLIFFE and Radio Larrakia's JURGEN MULZER.
What is going on in refugee detention centres in Australia?
There is a systematic campaign by the federal government to reassure us that everything is going well in detention centres. The reality is the opposite. We have evidence from detainees, and [others], of systematic human rights abuses.
Women and children are being handcuffed and tear-gassed. There was one particular incident in which children were tear-gassed and vomited. We've seen cases of children as young as two being placed in solitary confinement.
In this country, we are seeing some of the most horrific human rights abuses that we've seen for a very long time. These abuses are being perpetrated against probably the most vulnerable population in the world today. It's a great shame for Australia.
The people arriving on our shores seeking asylum are fleeing torture and persecution. Do they really escape persecution or does it continue in the detention centres?
Let me answer that by telling you the story of a man I recently assessed. He had fled from Iraq, where he had been in jail for two years. He had been systematically tortured each day in the most horrific ways. He came to Australia and has now been in detention for two and a half years.
This man told me that in Iraq he was at least able to keep his sanity but here he lost it. What happened to him here was more of a betrayal, more of a profound injury than anything the Iraqi government did to him. We've broken a man who survived some of the worst torture and we've done this to people over and over and over again.
Allegations such as these are being made regularly. Why are the operators of these centres, such as Australasian Correctional Management (ACM), still getting away with abuses?
Officials are able to act with impunity in these centres. Officers defend each other and deny that these [abuses] are taking place. There's no access for journalists to the detention centres, essentially these are closed environments, closed to Australian citizens.
During the recent hunger strike at Woomera, all phones into the centre were suddenly shut down. The result is that there's no independent verification of what's going on. When the asylum seekers say this is happening to them the [minister for immigration Philip Ruddock] simply accuses them of lying.
Fortunately, we now have a few brave individuals within ACM who have spoken up. We've got lots of testimony from health professionals who are devastated by the way they've seen refugees treated within these concentration camps.
Do you often meet people who defend mandatory detention?
Australian governments have spent the last 10 years cultivating a culture of fear in the community — cultivating the idea that asylum seekers are dangerous and are a threat to the community.
This is a standard ploy. It's exactly the ploy that the Nazis used against the Jews: you isolate them, you say that they're evil and a threat to society, and then it allows you to act with impunity.
The government has been very effective in this. Most people have had the wool pulled over their eyes and they are allowing the government to perpetrate human rights abuses in their name. Fortunately, there's now an increasing number of Australians saying: "You're not doing this in my name any more.
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Some 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the refugees' rights movement have begun to question the legitimacy of national borders and started to raise demands such as "Open the borders". What is your opinion on this?
The whole Western position [of closing borders to asylum seekers from the Third World] is built on hypocrisy. You only have to look back at history of how the West raided the developing world to take slave labour [and later built their economies on the backs of exploited immigrant labour].
As soon as it becomes inconvenient for the Western countries, they close their borders. The whole trend towards globalisation is the trend towards the [greater] exploitation of Third World countries. [The West] wants the freedom of exploitation but not the freedom of movement.
The policy of deterrence is forcing people to remain trapped in countries where they're dying. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been quite clear about this: the effect of the policy of deterrence has resulted in the loss of life. Also the UNHCR is completely underfunded.
There's virtually no attempt by Western governments to prevent human rights abuses which are happening [around the world]. Most of the human rights abuses — and the severity and intensity of them — flow directly from the fact that Western governments have sold arms to [the human rights abusers] in the first place.
One of the biggest industries in the world is the arms industry and almost all of those arms are going to Third World tin-pot dictatorships.
So Western countries have created the problem and aren't prepared to face it. They resort to the hypocrisy of a "law and order" discourse [to keep refugees out]. [The West] is responsible for the refugee problem, responsible for the fact that people in Third World countries are being brutalised, and the West is not doing anything about it
The Australian Labor Party introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers and the Coalition government is continuing the policy. Is there any hope for a change in policy?
I can understand people feeling a sense of helplessness, but there's a wonderful movement building among the community. We've had a complete lack of leadership. Politicians are prepared to sell the lives of asylum seekers for cheap political gain.
But we are now seeing a broad community response to these policies, which is starting to tear the fabric of the Labor Party. There's a movement called Labor for Refugees which has moved motions against the leadership in support of refugees. When we get to the ALP national conference next year, there's every chance — whether federal Labor leader Simon Crean likes it or not — that Labor is going to be forced for the first time to stand up and defend refugees.
Regardless of what happens within the ALP — and our experience is that many of them aren't worth having anything to do with — this is a fight that has to be taken up by the people. That fight is going very well at the moment. You can be sure that things are building and we're not going to lose this battle.
There are lots of refugees' rights groups developing. Do you have any advice for the movement or a vision for how the movement will develop?
Within the movement, there are claims that you should do it this way, or you shouldn't do it that way. There's been some criticism of some of the people who helped individuals escape from Woomera [detention centre].
We need to see the campaign as a broad church. The only illegal action that's really taking place is the treatment of the refugees. These people are being immorally held in detention. By any just law, they are being held unlawfully. We should all be collectively shaming the government for what they're doing.
Some people will decide to take more pro-active steps. I think we need to hang in there together. There are many different organisations and there should be something for everyone.
So what can people do if they want to join the campaign?
There's multiple ways to get involved. Within your own community there are many organisations people can join which are advocating for refugees.
You can make contact with the detainees — these people have been told by ACM officers that they're not wanted here, that they're scum of the Earth. The national letter-writing campaign has shown the detained refugees that not all Australians hold such views.
The worst thing we can do is feel powerless — we're not. Collectively, we're very strong, don't forget that.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 31, 2002.
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