More than 60 Australian writers – including Nobel laureate JM Coetzee and Booker prize winners Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey – have written to the prime minister and immigration minister condemning the government’s offshore detention policies as “brutal” and “shameful”.

The Turnbull government has faced intense backlash over its offshore detention policies this week in the wake of a high court ruling paving the way for 267 asylum seekers – including 37 babies born in Australia – to be returned to the remote island of Nauru.



Following Wednesday’s high court ruling that it was constitutional for the government to send asylum seekers to the islands of Nauru and Manus in Papua New Guinea for processing, church leaders have openly defied the government, risking jail time by offering sanctuary to asylum seekers, while paediatricians have also risked prosecution by revealing conditions in detention and condemning them as “toxic” for children.

A series of protests, under the banner of Let Them Stay, have been held across the country, including sit-ins at the office of the prime minister.

Both Nauru and Manus detention centres have seen consistent reports of physical and sexual abuse of men, women and children, as well as acts of self-harm and attempted suicide, including by children as young as seven. Two asylum seekers have died in offshore processing since 2014.

The open letter was sent to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the immigration minister, Peter Dutton. Its 61 signatories include: Coetzee, a South African-born novelist and naturalised Australian who won the Nobel prize in 2003; Booker prize winners Peter Carey and Thomas Keneally; Helen Garner, Gail Jones, Michelle de Kretser, Alexis Wright, and Frank Moorhouse.



The writers asked the minister and prime minister: “do we wish to live under a government that routinely treats other humans cruelly? Can we be sure of our own immunity to cruel treatment when such practices are, we know, obviously common, no matter how secretive immigration authorities are about the entire detention system.”

“Not only does our current system bring shame to Australia, in its demonstration of brutal government power and disregard for human dignity it brings shame on us as a nation. We express our outrage at this in the strongest possible terms.”

The letter cited former director of mental health services for IHMS Dr Peter Young, who said conditions on Nauru and Manus meet the threshold for “torture”, and Dr David Isaacs, a paediatrician who formerly worked on Nauru and who describes conditions there as “child abuse”.

It also quotes Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian journalist incarcerated on Manus Island, who wrote of his detention: “[H]ow can I describe the pain and suffering? Who can answer our questions and explain what human rights and freedom means? ...nobody can answer my questions and they are treating me like a criminal. We begin the day with pain and we sleep under nightmares.”.

Author Thomas Keneally, who won the Booker Prize in 1982 for Schindler’s Ark , told Guardian Australia the lives of children were being used as “pawns” to pursue the government policy’s of stopping boat arrivals.



“These children are being forced to endure every pain imaginable short of death, for this stated policy aim of stopping drownings at sea. The best professional advice, and all the medical advice, says that these people, these children in particular, will be damaged by being sent to those places.”

“But the proposition that the only way to stop drownings at sea is to run these punitive camps is not only wrong, it is grotesque. There are other policies, they may be difficult, but there are other more constructive, more humanitarian, and less punitive policies Australia could be pursuing.”



Keneally said that the group of writers had felt compelled to speak out against the government’s secrecy over offshore processing, and had written the open letter in the spirt of Emile Zola’s famous ‘J’accuse!’ letter of 1898.

He said political discourse over refugees in Australia had been debased by political sloganeering and the calculated dehumanisation and demonisation of asylum seekers.

Guardian Australia has approached the minister for immigration and his department for comment.

Dutton told the ABC’s 7.30 program this week that the Australian government was committed to its current compassionate arrangements for people requiring medical attention but that offshore processing was a fundamental policy in controlling Australia’s borders.



“There’s obviously a lot of emotion around this issue at the moment ... but the situation on Nauru is quite different than the way in which people are painting it,” he said. “For example, nobody is held in detention on Nauru.



“There is the ability for people to come and go freely in the community and I think it’s quite a different picture than that which has been painted by some of the advocates, but, as I say, that’s understandable because it is a very emotional space.”

The minister said each case for removal to Nauru would be assessed individually, taking note of the advice of medical experts.



“We aren’t going to put people in harm’s way,” he said.

Turnbull told parliament this week that “one child in detention is too many”, but that the government’s resolve for its policies was undiminished.

“Since coming back into office, the Coalition government have stopped the boats and we have reduced the number of children in detention to fewer than 100. Our goal is to reduce that to zero. But the key element in doing so is to ensure that people do not get on people-smugglers’ boats and put their lives at risk.”