Asylum seekers and healthcare

In reply: The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Mr Philip Ruddock, claims that our article contains several errors of fact and distortions. He does not comment on the substantive concerns of the article, but implies that the errors undermine the credibility of our finding — that prolonged detention of asylum seekers appears to cause serious psychological harm. In response, we will address the alleged errors of fact and then the credibility of the observations made in our article.

The Minister states that we failed to identify the factors leading to long periods of detention for some asylum seekers. It is clearly stated in the article that "lengthier detention is particularly common for detainees who appeal against adverse decisions about their refugee status". The Minister's response adds nothing of substance to this and fails to identify the other major factor accounting for prolonged detention, namely the difficulties in removing individuals who are stateless or from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Minister states that nightly head counts at Villawood occur only after escapes. Unfortunately, the Minister has not been accurately briefed on this matter. Nightly head counts have been a regular practice at Villawood. One of us (A S) has documented proof from the minutes of both the Community Reference Committee and the Centre Manager's detainee meetings held at Villawood, which record the concerns of the detainees and the refusal of management to discontinue the practice. Moreover, this practice was openly acknowledged by the operators of Villawood to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee which visited the centre in February 2001.1 It is pleasing to note that, after the publication of our article, nightly head counts have been discontinued in the Stage Two section of Villawood.

There are conflicting accounts between detainees and management regarding the events surrounding the hunger strike referred to by the Minister. One of us (A S) sent a complaint about this incident to the Commonwealth Ombudsman. In his reply, the Ombudsman quoted a letter from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs dated 27 October 2000, which states: "I can confirm that power to the recreation room was cut-off for a short period of time to ensure the safety of the detainees participating in the protest action who had been threatening self harm". There is no mention of attempts by detainees to electrocute staff, as suggested by the Minister, and one of us (A S) has spoken to some of the detainees involved in the protest, who have categorically denied this. Many detainees remain highly sceptical of the official explanation offered regarding the lack of water to the block where the hunger strikers were being held. The very existence of the mass hunger strike and the conflicting accounts of the incident all attest to the emotionally charged environment that has at times existed at Villawood, which was the major point of discussing this incident in our article.

We made it quite clear that there have been recent improvements in recreational resources at Villawood. However, as stated in our article, there had been a long history of neglect of this issue. This was confirmed by the statement of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 1998 that "the recreation facilities at Villawood are inadequate for the number of detainees being held there".2 Moreover, despite recent improvements, our statement that detainees face long periods of unstructured time remains true.

Although we did not discuss the issue of whether mandatory detention was arbitrary, it is worth noting in response to the Minister's claim that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission concluded that "In some instances, individuals . . . have been held for more than five years. This is arbitrary detention and cannot be justified on any grounds".2

The failure of the Minister to consider the substantive issues we raised, namely the negative psychological effects that long-term detention appears to be having on asylum seekers, was disappointing. As we stated, we attempted to report our observations in what we consider to be an objective and truthful manner. Nothing in the Minister's response suggests that we have failed to do this. Even if the findings in our report were to be entirely dismissed, Steel and Silove (in the same issue of the Journal)1 document compelling evidence of the serious psychological symptoms observed among long-term detainees.

In conclusion, we can only offer a continued exhortation for the Minister to attend to the collective weight of evidence indicating a mental health crisis within Australian detention centres.