It turns out that over 92% of the people detained as illegal immigrants to Australia end up being accepted as genuine refugees.

So we lock up the 92% for years in some cases, in prison conditions, in order to catch out the 8% and provide some sort of deterrent to people coming here as fake refugees.

Surely, with our high level of civilisation, we can work out some better deterrent than this. Punishing the huge majority of genuine refugees that have already suffered an awful lot.

And some of the 92% are children.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has just released their National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention Report – A Last Resort? To quote from the news release:

In its National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention Report- A Last Resort?, tabled in Federal Parliament today [May 13th], the Commission found Australia’s immigration detention policy has failed to protect the mental health of children, failed to provide adequate health care and education and failed to protect unaccompanied children and those with disabilities.

The two-year, comprehensive Inquiry also found that the mandatory detention system breached the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It failed, as required by the Convention, to make detention a measure of “last resort”, for the “shortest appropriate period of time” and subject to independent review.

The system failed to make the “best interests of the child” a primary consideration in detaining them and it failed to treat them with humanity and respect.

Furthermore, the Government’s failure to implement repeated recommendations by mental health professionals to remove children with their parents from detention amounted to “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”.

Cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Why is this happening in my country. Does this make you sad and angry, like it does me?

To do something about it, have a look at: A Just Australia or Amnesty International Australia.