Right now there are over 4,000 people held in immigration detention centres across Australia. On average, asylum seekers remain in detention for around a year, but that figure hides a group of people who remain locked away for much longer periods of time. Just over a year ago, the Federal Government announced it would begin releasing children into the community to minimise the harm caused by their incarceration. At the same time, thousands of adults remain locked away in detention centres remote from the rest of the world - a situation that's concerning to many healthcare professionals. Says one:

"What we've observed is people who seem to be in detention for periods of 12 to 15 months onwards, start to develop very significant mental health problems and certainly people who've been in detention 15, 18 plus months have very high rates of psychiatric morbidity."

Despite a massive debate about Australia's asylum seeker policy, few people know what life is really like inside detention camps. According to refugee activists, the reason is simple - the Government does not want the broader population seeing the conditions inside and the impact the camps are having on the detainees. Now, reporter Sarah Ferguson has gathered together startling evidence exposing the truth about life inside; how medication prescribed to asylum seekers is being misused and how many cases of self harm are going unreported, giving the public a false impression of conditions behind the wire.

In the wake of the Government's failure to engineer an offshore processing solution, and with detention centres close to capacity, the Government is now exploring alternatives, such as community detention. But that does not help the people who remain locked inside the camps. With a growing body of evidence that shows detention can cause long term psychological harm, what are the consequences of the current policy? Are people being damaged for life? If they are finally given refugee status, will they ever be able to participate fully in community life - being trained, winning jobs and raising families - or will they simply become a problem that future generations will have to deal with?

'Asylum', presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 24th October at 8.30pm on ABC1. It is repeated on Tuesday 25th October at 11.35pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 at 8.00pm on Saturdays, on ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT

Program Transcript

Read the transcript of "Asylum", first broadcast Monday 24 October 2011.

Date: 24/10/2011

ADEL, DETAINEE (footage from inside Northern Detention Centre): It's still jail. We are three clients sleeping here in small room, just like small box, two metres by two. Power fails everywhere. Don't know what to do. Don't know what to say. Don't know where to go.

KEERY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Humane mandatory detention the Australian way.

Welcome to Four Corners.

This is not a story about how many asylum seekers are coming to this country, why they're coming, or how to stop them. It's about how they're treated when they get here while their claims for refugee status are considered.

Not long after Kevin Rudd led Labor to power in late 2007 promising more humane treatment for asylum seekers, his new Immigration Minister Chris Evans issued a seven-point declaration of key immigration values underpinning the Government's treatment of unauthorised arrivals to Australia.

In future, mandatory detention would only to be used, quote, "as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time," and conditions of detention, quote, "will ensure the inherent dignity of the human person".

In light of the harsh realities we're about to reveal tonight of life behind the wire, it's worth reflecting further on what Minister Evans said while releasing his immigration Values back in July, 2008.

For instance, quote, "Labor rejects the notion that dehumanising and punishing unauthorised arrivals with long-term detention is an effective or civilised response."

On the face of it, evidence presented in tonight's program makes a mockery of those words. The disturbing cases of self- harm, of successful and unsuccessful suicide attempts and of heavy use of medication are too powerful to ignore.

Even the head of the Immigration Department - the public servant who has to oversee delivery of Labor's refugee policies - is urging the Parliament to challenge whether mandatory detention works.

The current minister, Chris Bowen, is in the process of drawing a new landscape for asylum seeker policy after the collapse of the Government's so-called Malaysian solution.

I hope he and his cabinet colleagues are able to watch this program from Sarah Ferguson tonight, which starts with rare access to Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre.

SARAH FERGUSON, REPORTER: Beyond this security zone is the Villawood Detention Centre, one of seven high security immigration facilities around the country. Since they were built, television cameras have been forbidden entry.

Last week Four Corners was allowed in to see the place which in April this year was set ablaze by rioting inmates. Nine men charged with involvement in the riots have since been moved to prison.

There are 380 detainees here. We're not allowed to show their faces nor to interview them on camera.

The routines of Villawood, as we were allowed to glimpse them, give no hint as to why the riots happened or why three people committed suicide here last year.

In an effort to improve the place, the women's quarters were recently rebuilt. Detainees are encouraged to exercise and to take English classes.

ENGLISH TEACHER (off camera): Now I would like you to have a look at the words here.

SANDI LOGAN, DEP'T OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: While they're here in administrative detention under the Migration Act we need to care for them, we need to provide them with meaningful activities, we need to ensure their mental and physical health is as good as possible so when the time comes either to be released on a visa or to be returned home they are in as best health as possible.

SARAH FERGUSON: Can you actually do it though? Can you actually keep people sane and healthy in long term detention?

SANDI LOGAN: It's our belief that with the measures in place that have been introduced in the last four or five years that certainly we are addressing the mental health needs.

SARAH FERGUSON: Beyond the locks and electric fences is the Fowler Compound for high risk detainees - people at high risk to others or themselves.

In early 2010 Australian of the Year, Professor Patrick McGorry, described detention centres as factories for producing mental illness. Since then the situation for many has worsened considerably.

Last year the department recorded more than 1,000 incidences of self harm or threatened self harm across the network compared to only 90 in the previous year.

Forced by the political failure of the Malaysia solution to reform its detention policy, the Government now has to face the question as to whether the long term detention of people who have committed no crime is damaging to their mental health. The evidence across the network is that it is.

DAVID MANNE, REFUGEE AND IMMIGRATION LEGAL CENTRE: This is history repeating itself and very darkly. The detention system is clearly in crisis and in many respects what we're seeing is a situation of mass harm, very similar to the situation that we saw a decade ago.

ADEL (footage from inside Northern Detention Centre): Please, I'm asking again, we need your help. We are dying in detention centre and no one knows.

DETAINEE PROTESTERS (hidden camera footage from inside a detention centre): Visa! Visa! Visa!

SARAH FERGUSON: To understand what's really going on in the detention centres, you have to hear directly from the people inside.

We relied on information from multiple sources. From videos filmed secretly by detainees:

IRAQI DETAINEE (excerpt from phone video, subtitled): I sacrificed everything just to reach Australia.

SARAH FERGUSON: Photographs of self-harm.

(photos of detainees with lips sewn together, scarred bodies, images of self-harm)

Texts and emails from inside.

TEXT MESSAGE FROM DETAINEE 1 (voiceover): I got angry and tried to punch myself.

TEXT MESSAGE FROM DETAINEE 2 (voiceover): My roommate says I cry in my sleep.

TEXT MESSAGE FROM DETAINEE 3 (voiceover): There is no news. I don't know where I am, I am lost and confused.

SARAH FERGUSON: And the haunting images of attempted suicide.

ADEL (looking at noose hanging from the ceiling of a bedroom): Someone trying to hang himself.

SARAH FERGUSON: In the Victorian country town of Mildura, a group of men are preparing a simple lunch.

They are Afghan Hazaras - refugees, as the Government now concedes, from Taliban persecution.

They are amongst the most recent refugees to be released from Australia's crowded detention centres and they are immensely grateful at last to have found a safe haven.

MOHAMMED BAIG, FORMER DETAINEE: It's very beautiful. It's a wonderful life. We're getting started with a new life here.

SARAH FERGUSON: You are very glad to be here?

MOHAMMED BAIG: Thank you for that.

FORMER DETAINEE 2 (subtitles): It's a good place. Australia is like a flower.

SARAH FERGUSON: As victims of the Taliban, these men share a common enemy with Australia.

The trauma of that persecution stays with them but they also have to deal with a more recent trauma, which to them is far more incomprehensible - the trauma wrought by long periods behind bars in this country.

MOHAMMED BAIG: When the day came that I was getting out I was very, very sad about my friends. They were- they were really sad. I couldn't celebrate myself that I'm getting out of detention. It was very ... the moment was very sad for me.

SARAH FERGUSON: And what, are they still there now?

MOHAMMED BAIG: Yeah. They just call me after one week or three days, four days. It was very difficult for them (crying). Everyone in detention, every problem. Right now I cannot describe. It is very difficult for me.

SARAH FERGUSON: Locked up for a year in the Curtin and Christmas Island detention centres, Mohammed Baig witnessed horrors he's struggling to deal with.

MOHAMMED BAIG: The hanging, killing, cutting themself, it was normal. It was getting normal for everyone, because every time you see people cutting his hand, cutting his neck or doing something stupid like these things.

SARAH FERGUSON: One afternoon earlier this year at Curtin, Mohammed heard a commotion outside the room of a young Afghan he knew only as Asif.

MOHAMMED BAIG: When the Serco officers just broke down his door and the guy was hanging by his bed and he just made a rope with his bed sheet and hanged himself there, and he was he was dead, almost dead when his tongue got out his mouth.

SARAH FERGUSON: Mohammed Asif's death was recorded as the fifth suicide in detention in the past two years. What's not on the public record is the affect it had on other detainees.

This former counsellor was at Curtin at the time. Like all detention centre workers she's not allowed to speak to the media

FORMER CURTIN COUNSELLOR: Soon after that incident there was a spate of men attempting to suicide by hanging themselves in trees and when they were discovered, the entire compound would go into lockdown - gates would all be locked, people would be banked up on each side of the gate, no movement in and out of the compound. It was very tense.

SARAH FERGUSON: More than 2000km from Perth in the Kimberley, located inside an air force base, Curtin is one of the most isolated immigration detention centres in the country.

It is here that refugee Mohammed Baig witnessed suicide and self harm. In the past year there've been more than 110 incidents. Our cameras aren't allowed in to see that side of detention.

If you manage to get a phone call out, the message is one of despair.

JAFFA, DETAINEE (phone call to Sarah Ferguson from inside detention centre): The stress of being in prison that is just killing me day by day. Every time I see the fences, I just, something burning in my heart. I just cannot feel, I don't have words to express it.

DR SURESH SUNDURAM, MENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE: This is an extremely isolated spot, very difficult to access. The physical environment is oppressive and the conditions of detention are very akin to a prison.

DANIEL, SERCO GUARD (to Sarah Ferguson): How are you going today?

SARAH FERGUSON: Good, thank you.

DANIEL: My name's Daniel. I'm from Serco.

SARAH FERGUSON: Hi Daniel, I'm Sarah Ferguson from the ABC.

Guards from the private company Serco that runs the centre immediately want to know why we are there.

(to Daniel) There's no problem with us being here is there?

DANIEL: Not at all, Ma'am, no. As you're aware it's a restricted area from the gate up the top there.

SARAH FERGUSON: Yeah, yeah, but we're fine here.

DANIEL: Yeah, not a problem.

SARAH FERGUSON: (laughs) Why did you take our name then?

DANIEL: Oh we've just got to report it through to the department and then.

SARAH FERGUSON: Why?

DANIEL: Just part of our reporting requirements. I just go back and report it through to the department here on site that there is media within the vicinity of the centre on the ...

SARAH FERGUSON: To the Department of Immigration?

DANIEL: Yeah, that's correct.

SARAH FERGUSON: The isolation means that few independent witnesses ever reach the place.

(to Chris Saunders) Hi there, how'd you go?

CHRIS SAUNDERS, CATHOLIC BISHOP OF BROOME: Good, it was a good visit.

SARAH FERGUSON: The Catholic Bishop of Broome, Chris Saunders manages to get here once a month.

CHRIS SAUNDERS: I wanted to meet the people who are here and who are incarcerated in a place in my own diocese, and more than that, I'm a priest at heart and it's priestly work to visit.

SARAH FERGUSON: Do you find it's the same or is it getting worse in there?

CHRIS SAUNDERS: Well, I saw some men there today who I had spoken with last time and I do detect a growing hopelessness.

SARAH FERGUSON: Bishop Saunders is also chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council.

CHRIS SAUNDERS: Well I'm used to going inside prisons. It's not much different from other prisons, but once you go through you look out and you're looking through wire and you're looking through electrified wire and you're looking at a desolated bush scene.

HUSSAIN ALI, DETAINEE (on phone to Sarah Ferguson): My roommate just wanted to cut his nerves off

SARAH FERGUSON: His nerves? On his on his wrist, on his arm?

HUSSAIN ALI: Yeah, on his wrist. Yeah, he wanted to cut his nerve.

SARAH FERGUSON: Hussain Ali is another Afghan Hazara. He's been in Curtin for almost two years.

HUSSAIN ALI: It's been now 21 months since I'm here.

SARAH FERGUSON: That's a very long time. How are you coping with it?

HUSSAIN ALI: I am very stressed and depressed at the moment.

SURESH SUNDARAM: We had people who were very significantly depressed, so all the symptoms of major depression, including people who appeared to have a psychotic depression.

SARAH FERGUSON: One of the few psychiatrists to have visited Curtin recently - Dr Suresh Sundram, reporting for the Human Rights Commission - was appalled at what he found.

SURESH SUNDARAM: We saw lots of people with significant post traumatic stress disorder, we also saw people with frank psychotic illnesses, so disorders like schizophrenia for example where there were a couple of individuals who were clearly psychotic within the immigration detention centre.

SARAH FERGUSON: Using a concealed camera, a visitor to Curtin filmed 33-year-old Afghan Hazara, Hadi.

HADI, DETAINEE (subtitles): I've taken refuge here. Being in prison for 20 months has made me completely insane. I don't know what I'm supposed to have done. What's my crime? I want death.

SARAH FERGUSON: The Government accepted Hadi was persecuted. His father was murdered by the Taliban.

HADI (subtitles): The day that I got here I was very happy that I'd come to a safe place with a humanitarian government. But now all those who came on the same boat that I did, they've all left.

SARAH FERGUSON: Unlike the others, Hadi's refugee status was rejected. After almost two years in detention, he's been told he can safely relocate to Kabul.

HADI (subtitles): If I got to Pakistan, the Taliban will kill me. If I go to Afghanistan they'll kill me there too.

DAVID MANNE: There are fundamental flaws in decision making which have seen, for example, very high overturn rates on review, but in the meantime, people have had to languish in detention having been initially refused and then only upon review being successful.

An Afghan for example can be found not to be in need of protection if returned to Afghanistan and on review, on the very same facts and on the very same independent information, a completely different view can be taken on these often life or death matters.

SARAH FERGUSON: Around three quarters of all rejections are overturned on appeal, by which time the individuals will have spent months in detention

SURESH SUNDARAM: We get people who are, generally speaking, reasonably resilient, reasonably healthy and then subject them to extraordinary conditions where we appear to subvert their resilience and subvert their mental health.

SARAH FERGUSON (to Chris Bowen): The solutions are complicated but do you accept the proposition that long term detention makes people mentally ill?

CHRIS BOWEN, MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: I accept that in some cases it can be better to move people into the community before their claim is processed. And in fact in the last year we've released more people out of detention than have gone into it and that's and that's the first time that's happened in a long time.

SARAH FERGUSON: The consequences of long term detention are well understood. Curtin was first opened more than a decade ago by the Howard government.

Guards working for the private company that ran the centre filmed their own activities as legal protection.

When some of that footage was leaked to the ABC in 2002 the images shocked the country and the world.

(Archival footage of abuse in Curtin Detention Centre in 2002)

Abdul Hamidi was in Curtin, and in Woomera, Port Headland and Baxter detention centres. He says Curtin was the worst.

ABDUL HAMIDI, FORMER DETAINEE: If they kill someone there, no one gonna notice, no one gonna know about Curtin Detention Centre. It was like worst detention centre I think in Australia.

SARAH FERGUSON: In four years of detention Abdul cut himself repeatedly, drank poison, took pills and tried to hang himself.

ABDUL HAMIDI: In Curtin I did cut myself again, my arms, my stomach, my chest. I tried to talk to them, like I'm not well, I need help. But it's no-one listen, nobody listens.

SARAH FERGUSON: He was kicked and punched by guards and beaten with batons by riot police. In critical need of psychiatric care, instead he was repeatedly put into solitary confinement.

ABDUL HAMIDI: They took me to management unit there and I spent a few weeks there because I tried to kill myself.

SARAH FERGUSON: Abdul came to Australia asking for asylum because in Iran he was beaten and tortured and imprisoned in a small room.

Six years after leaving detention in Australia he is a broken man.

BEN PHI, LAWYER: His doctors say that, you know, to the best of their knowledge he's never going to work again. It's my sincere hope that with specialist medical attention he will get back to a point where he can start to I guess interact at least a bit better with society.

At the moment his life is very solitary. He spends a lot of time at home smoking and thinking, which is not helpful for anybody.

SARAH FERGUSON: When Curtin closed in 2002 no one imagined it would ever be re-opened.

The Labor Government had come to power promising a new civilized approach to mandatory detention.

CHRIS EVANS (footage from July 2008): Labor rejects the notion though that dehumanising and punishing unauthorised arrivals with long-term detention is an effective or civilised response.

SARAH FERGUSON: In 2008 when Evans made that speech, 161 people arrived by boat. By 2010 the numbers reached 6,535.

NEWS READER, ABC NEWS (footage from June 2010): The Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in Western Australia's north will reopen tonight as the Government brings more asylum seekers to the mainland. The Federal Immigration Minister says Curtin will only accommodate male asylum seekers.

ABDUL HAMIDI: When I heard that in the news I said, oh my god they're gonna put another more detainees, like few hundred or maybe thousand detainees there. And they gonna become someone like Abdul, like another thousand Abduls.

SARAH FERGUSON: Afghan refugee Hamid Amiri was moved to Curtin just after it was re opened.

HAMID AMIRI, FORMER DETAINEE: I didn't know that I spend such a long time in detention.

SARAH FERGUSON: Amiri was released a few weeks ago to live in Perth. His wife and two daughters are still in Pakistan.

He spent 18 months in detention after his first request for refugee status was rejected.

HAMID AMIRI: I was too depressed and everything looked to me very dark and hopeless.

SURESH SUNDRAM: There's good data to show that most people who've had significant immigration detention centre experiences have compromised mental health on their, on their release, and worse that those mental health problems persist for quite a protracted period of time following resettlement in the general community.

SARAH FERGUSON: Amiri was prescribed medication

HAMID AMIRI: They explain me that because you are so depressed and you need to take this medication which would help you and I said okay. So it is for depression I think.

SARAH FERGUSON: And what's the name on the top there, MOR?

HAMID AMIRI: MOR is my boat number, which is I think 131, so they named it MOR.

FORMER CURTIN COUNSELLOR: I think there's a containment and management approach and a lot of men who were distressed and highly anxious were given antidepressants, not all of them knowing that's what they were taking.

SARAH FERGUSON: More than a month after leaving detention, Amiri is still on a daily dose of antidepressants.

HAMID AMIRI: It has been about five months, yeah, that I have been taking this and just, I stop it for about two weeks and I just, I was not thinking better, so that's why I started taking again that medication.

CHRIS BOWEN: Look I think Curtin is a difficult environment. We need to reduce the number of people in detention and obviously I'd consider Curtin as a as a centre to close before I'd close other centres, which are perhaps less confronting and less harsh. I do think Curtin's a harsh environment for that particular group of people.

SARAH FERGUSON: At the beginning of this year the overcrowded detention centres were in crisis. Violent riots broke out at Christmas Island.

In June a parliamentary inquiry into the detention network was opened up in Canberra

On the first day, the head of the Immigration Department himself, began asking serious questions about the policy of mandatory detention.

ANDREW METCALFE, SECRETARY, DEP'T OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: Is immigration detention a deterrent? Does immigration detention facilitate case resolution?

SARAH FERGUSON: Last month the inquiry shifted to Darwin where the Northern Detention Centre has seen alarmingly high levels of self harm.

Located inside a defence base, it was originally used as a small facility to imprison Indonesian fishermen for short periods.

It was turned into a detention centre, housing more than 400 asylum seekers in cramped conditions.

Riots and protests became common.

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, we do have significant numbers of people in the Northern Detention Centre in Darwin who are regarded as not refugees. That leads to frustration.

(Detainee video)

ADEL (footage from inside Northern Detention Centre): It's not protection visa.

SARAH FERGUSON: This video from inside the centre was filmed by detainees on a phone smuggled in by sympathisers.

ADEL: It's jail. We are three clients sleeping here in small room just like small box, two metres by two. Power fails everywhere. Don't know what to do. Don't know what to say. Don't know where to go.

SARAH FERGUSON: Twenty-six year old Adel is a Bedoon from Kuwait, meaning he's stateless. After two rejections he's been in the Northern Detention Centre for 16 months. His frustration is obvious.

ADEL: I'm not Australia now. I'm not in Australian. I'm in Guantanamo but I can see Australia. It's over there, behind that tall fence, 100 metres between Australia and me.

How long time I need to be there? I don't know.

SENATOR SARAH HANSEN-YOUNG, GREENS: It's by far the worst, particularly on the mainland. It's just reeks of depression.

SARAH FERGUSON: Greens Senator Sarah Hansen-Young was visiting the centre for the parliamentary enquiry.

SARAH HANSEN-YOUNG: As we walked around the facility just these kind of almost shadows of people hunched over. When they look at you, eyes are all glazed and red, you know, they're obviously on a lot of antidepression medication, suffering huge mental health issues.

SARAH FERGUSON: There've been almost 100 incidents of self harm or threatened self harm in the last year.

SARAH HANSEN-YOUNG: I asked one of the security guards who she was watching and then he came out and a young guy who's been found to be a genuine refugee, he had a bandage on his neck and he lifted his T-shirt and he had cut open his stomach last night.

JENNIFER, FORMER NORTHERN DETENTION CENTRE NURSE: After a couple of months you'd start to see, you know, mild depression symptoms but you could still motivated people into staying healthy.

By six months they've usually had a rejection and they would start to have difficulty sleeping. They'd be having thoughts of wanting to harm themselves. By nine months they'd probably acted out on those things and the feelings, those thoughts were coming more and more.

SARAH FERGUSON: Jennifer, as we'll call her, was a mental health nurse at the Northern Detention Centre. She's not supposed to speak to the media.

She witnessed a daily crisis in the mental health of the detainees.

JENNIFER: I've had to talk people from into not hurting themselves by banging their heads, by hanging themselves. That's what your job was one after the next after the next. You'd talk to them about the level of despair that they were going through and it was heart breaking.

SARAH FERGUSON: How frequently were you confronted with people trying to commit suicide?

JENNIFER: Every day. Every single day, all day, every day.

SARAH FERGUSON: Inside, the detainees have filmed a man who has had made a noose out of bed-sheets.

ADEL: Someone trying to hang himself and two officers sitting in front his room. That client trying to hang himself, he is sitting, he's upset.

SARAH FERGUSON: By nightfall, the same man is bandaged, lying on the ground. He is now on suicide watch, with a Serco guard is sitting with him round the clock.

JENNIFER: We have a high imminent and that's meant to be somebody that's about to go over and kill themselves that when you put them on and then you'd have a Serco officer sort of shoulder length, you know I mean arms length away from the patient at all times.

SARAH FERGUSON: The following day, according to the accounts of people in the surrounding rooms, he tried to smash the walls with his fist. The suicide watch continues.

(to Jennifer) At any one time what's the highest number of people on suicide watch that you were aware of?

JENNIFER: Oh probably about 30 at one time. Yeah we had that for a while but it wasn't, it's not really an accurate reflection

SARAH FERGUSON: So you're saying that the levels of self harm were actually much higher than those figures suggest?

JENNIFER: Oh certainly I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it because I mean I know how many people I'd diffuse in a shift you know.

SARAH FERGUSON: Mental health staff in detention are using large quantities of medication to manage the epidemic of self harm, depression and sleeplessness

ADEL (looking at sleeping pills): Three kinds of sleeping tablets. Don't know what the difference between them, the first, second, and the third one, just make you feel dizzy and relaxed.

When you wake up - no problem, your mind is empty. There is another tablet they give us, we call it just happy tablet. We don't know what is the name of that tablet.

SURESH SUNDRAM: There's widespread use of medication throughout the detention centre network. There seemed to be a culture of sleeplessness within the detention centres and the health staff were finding it difficult to know how to deal with this.

According to health workers and psychiatrists drugs are being incorrectly prescribed.

FORMER CURTIN COUNSELLOR: Some of them would tell me that they were taking sleeping medications and when I asked them to show me the medications so I could see what they were taking, I discovered that in actual fact they were taking Mirtazapine which is an antidepressant.

SURESH SUNDARAM: There certainly seem to be large numbers of people that we spoke to within the immigration detention centre network who are using Mirtazapine on an ad hoc basis purely for sleeplessness.

SARAH FERGUSON: Now as a psychiatrist, how much does that trouble you?

SURESH SUNDARAM: That is concerning. It is concerning that people are being given medication not for its approved indication

SARAH FERGUSON: High risk detainees at the Northern Detention Centre are monitored at weekly meetings.

Four Corners has obtained those reports for August and late September this year.

Some men are described as too ill to be managed at the centre.

EXTRACT FROM NORTHERN DETENTION CENTRE REPORTS (voiceover): August 2011 - Clients mental health is deteriorating rapidly.

EXTRACT 2 (voiceover): August 2011 - Serco stated client is not doing well and was found with a noose around his neck last week.

SARAH FERGUSON: There are no names but the notes reveal a litany of escalating self harm

EXTRACT 3 (voiceover): September 2011 - Prior to this meeting client mixed washing powder with water and threatened he would drink it

EXTRACT 4 (voiceover): September 2011 - Client threatened to swallow two razor blades held in his mouth

SARAH FERGUSON: According to the notes, the most vulnerable cases are recommended for community detention.

(to Jennifer) What is self harm about?

JENNIFER: Well I think it's feelings of frustration and anger and internal pain that is so intense that to relieve some of that you actually cut yourself physically to actually get rid of some of that pain cause it's less painful to be physically than it is emotionally.

SARAH FERGUSON: There are people who say that the acts of self harm are all about making a visa come more quickly.

JENNIFER: Yeah sometimes it's completely behavioural. It's "if you don't get me my DIAC officer now I'm going to self harm" but there's more behind that you know?

That's the only thing that they've got left, that's the only way that they can deal. They've got nothing else, what else can they do?

SARAH FERGUSON: Last week in the Northern Detention Centre this young Iraqi man tried to hang himself. He was recovering in a room in the medical centre.

(Jaffer and Adel speaking in hospital)

JAFFER (subtitles): I have seen only darkness in life and a dark future ahead.

ADEL (subtitles): Is that why you tried to commit suicide?

JAFFER (subtitles): This is exactly why I tried to commit suicide, but unfortunately even death didn't want me.

SARAH FERGUSON: Jaffer has been in detention for 20 months. He's just received his third rejection.

JAFFER (subtitles): I haven't seen any justice or equality.

ADEL (subtitles): Justice in Australia exists, the formalities exist, and God willing you will soon be out.

JAFFER (subtitles): There is no such thing, there is no justice.

ADEL (subtitles): Why, there's a process isn't there?

JAFFER (subtitles): But is it a matter of rights or simply chance? I don't know, I just sit here all by myself. I don't know (crying).

SARAH FERGUSON: The Darwin Airport Lodge is an alternative place of detention, an APOD in department speak, a less punitive form of detention but still detention.

The Airport Lodge is used for families, unaccompanied minors and other vulnerable detainees.

Many of these people are Iranians, now the largest category of asylum seekers and the hardest to manage, because even the ones who don't get refugee status can't go back to Iran. The Iranian government won't take them.

SARAH FERGUSON (to detainees on other side of fence): Do you know how long you have to wait here?

FEMALE DETAINEE: I don't know. Most of the people very tired.

SARAH FERGUSON: And anybody sick or are you okay?

FEMALE DETAINEE: No! A lot of people okay but in mind no.

ALI, DETAINEE: If you have a good case you go out.

SARAH FERGUSON: You want to go out?

ALI: Yeah, but we can't go out.

SARAH FERGUSON: Ali is a 9-year-old from Afghanistan. His mother was happy for him to talk to us.

ALI: Here we just play and don't go out, that's not good.

SARAH FERGUSON: What do you want to do if you get out?

ALI: I don't know. I want to study because we really not long time in this school, little time in this school.

SARAH FERGUSON: Do you like to study?

ALI: Yeah.

SARAH FERGUSON: Since he became minister, Chris Bowen has moved more than 800 children into the community.

At the beginning of October there were still 369 children in alternative places of detention.

The local Australian Medical Association calls it child abuse.

DR PETER MORRIS, AUSTRALIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (extract from Darwin hearing, September 2011): The Northern Territory branch of the Australian Medical Association is deeply ashamed of the way Australia treats asylum seekers.

We believe that the policy of mandatory detention is medically harmful, violates basic human rights. We agree that the detention of asylum seeker children and their families is a form of child abuse.

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, I mean people are entitled to use their own language. Do I agree that children are better off in the community? Yes I do and that's what we've done.

SARAH FERGUSON (to Peter Morris): How much do we know about the harmful effects of detention for children?

PETER MORRIS: Recent research and systematic reviews of the research from many countries and involving many thousands of children have found that overall between 10 and 30 per cent of children are suffering from depression and between 20 and 50 per cent have post traumatic stress disorder.

SARAH FERGUSON: There are 89 minors in the Airport Lodge - 49 of them unaccompanied.

When they turn 18 they're removed to the Northern Detention Centre. We spoke to one 17-year-old who was so afraid of moving, he's been slashing his wrists.

(Phone call to young detainee)

SARAH FERGUSON: What have you heard about people at the NIDC?

YOUNG DETAINEE: All big guys 20 or 30. I am just 18 - small. Not ... I'm scared to go to NIDC. I don't like the NIDC.

SARAH FERGUSON: What is it you are you scared of there?

YOUNG DETAINEE: It's not good. Every day someone kill himself. Every day someone kill, cut themselves. Everyday someone dead.

SARAH FERGUSON: Have you told them that you're too afraid to go?

YOUNG DETAINEE: No, I told my case manager, if you put me to NIDC, maybe I kill myself.

JENNIFER: We had nowhere to put people that were fragile. They have to be in the compound with all these other people.

There was a lot of allegations of sexual abuse going on there and there was, and I would suspect that a lot of that was true by seeing the patients' reactions.

SARAH FERGUSON: One of the most pitiful entries in the case notes from the Northern Detention Centre describes the treatment of a young man crying uncontrollably. He'd just moved from the Airport Lodge.

EXTRACT FROM NORTHERN DETENTION CENTRE REPORTS 5 (voiceover): Medical state that he's the 4th client they have seen transferred from the Darwin Airport Lodge. It can be a shock with the changing conditions.

SARAH FERGUSON: Its 8pm and a new group of asylum seekers has just arrived at the Airport Lodge from Christmas Island.

Senator Hansen-Young has been at the lodge visiting detainees, including a young woman unaccompanied from Iran.

SARAH HANSEN-YOUNG: Just been in her room talking to her, talking to her about whether she's had any legal assistance. She hasn't yet.

I tried to keep it all positive of course, because you kind of, you know, the last thing you want to do is get too caught up but as I was sitting there, her room is covered in drawings of ropes hanging people, of graves ... (emotional)

SARAH FERGUSON: You weren't expecting that.

SARAH HANSEN-YOUNG: This is a young woman ... Sorry Sarah (crying).

It wasn't that long ago that I was 17 and it's yeah, it shakes you. I've got, I've got an 18 year old sister. I think to myself, how on earth would a young woman like this get in this situation? She has no family, she can't speak to her mother, she can't speak to her father. She's here all alone.

CHRIS BOWEN: We can and are moving more people into the community. I do think that we can do more of it and there's varying ways to do it, but I would say this, Sarah, you need to make sure that the care in place is appropriate for each individual.

SARAH FERGUSON: Brothers from Sri Lanka, Niro and Sinthu were released into community detention six weeks ago.

SINTHU, FORMER DETAINEE: That day is too, like, is like very happy, really very happy.

NIRO, FORMER DETAINEE: I want to do more study, more study, study because my mum like, my Mum she want my son be good job that's why I want more study.

SARAH FERGUSON: In community detention, Shintu and Niro are impatient to work and learn English.

NIRO: I wake up early in the morning and then I get ready to school. I got a new friends, like because I want to improve my English. That's why I'm chatting to my friends and then go to classroom and every teacher is happy with me.

SARAH FERGUSON: So now is it possible now for your life to begin properly?

NIRO: Yeah. But I'm worried about two years I wasted, two years.

SARAH FERGUSON: The boys' mother is still in Sri Lanka. Their father was killed in the civil war.

SINTHU: My father somebody shot, yeah, um I don't know.

SARAH FERGUSON: Were you, were you there?

SINTHU: Yes I am also there and just a, just like little minutes I'm also escape that day also, I'm also going to die, they also shot me.

SARAH FERGUSON: You were shot too?

SINTHU: Ah yeah they also shot me but not get it. I am jumping and running away.

It's too hard to talk about. When I'm talking about that thing my body's shaking like I'm scared like that. It's still.

SARAH FERGUSON: Niro had nightmares in detention.

NIRO: When I was in camp and in my dream and when I was in Sri Lanka the army bombs and they shoot my father and everything reminding in my dream and suddenly I wake up yeah, I'm still in Australia.

SARAH FERGUSON: Sinthu and Niro spent 21 months in detention after their visa was rejected the first time.

Sinthu's biggest concern was his younger brother

SINTHU: Yes it's too much worry about him because he is small.

NIRO: Yeah of course because I'm 18. They won't play with me. They always, they are sitting the room, sit at the room always and they don't like to play also.

SINTHU: It's too hard because old boys and they also thinking of their families and they are going to cutting themselves and hang up - oh it's too hard.

CHRIS BOWEN: We've moved a lot of people into the community over the last 12 months, including adults who've suffered from torture and trauma and who are particularly vulnerable.

We do move those people into the community and I've announced of course that we'll use bridging visas more regularly to move more people into the community because I do think that's appropriate.

(Sinthu and Niro cooking together)

SARAH FERGUSON: Simple freedoms like these, now enjoyed by the refugee brothers could become more common in the months ahead.

The collapse of the Malaysia solution has led to an unexpected shift in the government's detention policy.

For the first time they'll use bridging visas for some of the 4,000 asylum seekers currently in detention, just as they have done for years for asylum seekers arriving by plane.

CHRIS BOWEN: Because of the well known confluence events, the High Court, the inability of the Parliament to come together to pass legislation, we took the view that it's appropriate now to therefore move more people in the community when you're going to, as a way of managing what are large numbers of people who have arrived in Australia by boat.

SARAH FERGUSON: In the meantime, Niro and Sinthu's visas have been granted. Their apartment will be passed to the next asylum seekers released from detention while they join the rest of the Australian community, finding haven from the nightmares.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And before we go, it's worth reflecting once more on item seven of the Government's declaration of Immigration Values, quote, "Conditions of detention will ensure the inherent dignity of the human person."

Not much inherent dignity on display tonight.

End Transcript

Background Information

KEY REPORTS

Health Care of Asylum Seekers and Refugees | AMA | Aug 2011 - Read the Australian Medical Association's Position Statement on the Health Care of Asylum Seekers and Refugees.

Asylum Statistics Australia 2010-11 | Department of Immigration - Statistical information on applications for Protection visas and refugee status determination information on irregular maritime arrivals.

I nvestigation Report on National Detention Facilities | Comcare Work Health and Safety | August 2011 - Comcare has finalised a work health and safety investigation involving seven Immigration Detention Facilities. The investigation was initiated on the basis of concerns Comcare held about the health and safety of federal workers, contractors and detainees at IDFs. The concerns included the impact of work pressure and the risk of harm and mental stress.

Immigration detention at Curtin | HREOC | 2011 - Observations from visit to Curtin Immigration Detention Centre and key concerns across the detention network.

Immigration detention in Darwin | HREOC | 2010 - Summary of observations from visits to immigration detention facilities in Darwin.

Immigration detention in Australia: Facilities, services and transparency | Joint Standing Committee on Migration | August 2009 - Third report of the inquiry into immigration detention in Australia. [PDF 1.78Mb]

Immigration detention in Australia: Community-based alternatives to detention | Joint Standing Committee on Migration | May 2009 - Second report of the inquiry into immigration detention in Australia. [PDF 1.75Mb]

Immigration detention in Australia: A new beginning; Criteria for release from immigration detention | Joint Standing Committee on Migration | December 2008 - First report of the inquiry into immigration detention in Australia. [PDF2Mb]

SUPPORT AND ADVOCACY

Australian Red Cross Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme - The Red Cross' ASAS assists asylum seekers in Australia who are in the process of having their refugee status determined. The program provides financial assistance and limited healthcare assistance, plus referrals to other agencies for settlement issues. www.redcross.org.au/

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre - Australia's largest asylum seeker advocacy, aid and health organization promoting and protecting the human rights of asylum seekers. www.asrc.org.au/

Children Out Of Detention - ChilOut is a not-for-profit community group of Australians who are concerned with the plight of children held in immigration detention. We seek to increase public awareness by providing accurate information and case stories showing what is happening to children inside our immigration detention centres (IDCs). www.chilout.org/

Edmund Rice Centre - Providing help and support for asylum seekers and refugees. www.erc.org.au/

Lifeline Australia 13 11 14 - Crisis support, suicide prevention and mental health support, 24 hours and 7 days. www.lifeline.org.au/

The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) - The national umbrella body for refugees and the organisations and individuals who support them. www.refugeecouncil.org.au/

The Refugee & Immigration Legal Centre (RILC) - A community legal centre specialising in all aspects of refugee and immigration law, policy and practice. Call (03) 9413 0100, Wed:10am-4pm Fri:2pm-4pm. www.rilc.org.au/

Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors - STARRTS helps refugees recover from their experiences and build a new life in Australia. Services include counselling, group therapy, group activities and outings, camps for children and young people, English classes and physiotherapy. www.startts.org.au/

Suicide Prevention Australia - We strive and advocate for change in the suicide prevention sector, better services and greater public awareness. www.suicidepreventionaust.org/

The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture - 'Foundation House' provides a range of services to people from refugee backgrounds who have survived torture or war related trauma. Call: (03) 9388 0022. www.foundationhouse.org.au/

NEWS AND RELATED MEDIA

Inside Australia's detention centres | RN Breakfast | 24 Oct 2011 - More than 3,500 asylum seekers are being held in immigration detention centres spread across the country and, on average, asylum seekers remain in detention for around a year. But some are locked away for much longer periods, sparking deep concerns about their mental wellbeing. Fran Kelly talks to reporter Sarah Ferguson.

Australia bucks global asylum seeker trend | The World Today | 19 Oct 2011 - The latest report from the United Nations refugee agency shows that contrary to the dire warnings from both the Coalition and the Government, the number of people seeking asylum in Australia has actually fallen in the first half of this year.

Adviser wants onshore processing in the spotlight | ABC News | 13 Oct 2011 - A member of a Federal Government advisory group says even if both sides of politics want to pursue offshore processing, serious thought needs to be given to the best way to process asylum seeker claims onshore. By Naomi Woodley.

Barely trained casual workers in detention centres | The Australian | 10 Oct 2011 - An English backpacker on a tourist visa, Australians straight from high school and overseas students are among hundreds of casual workers earning up to $450 a day as "officers" in immigration detention centres.

Immigration guards tell of fears of violence in detention centres they say are understaffed | The Australian | 5 Oct 2011 - Immigration guards have been stabbed and threatened with rape amid a staffing crisis that has left detention provider Serco unable to properly manage detainees, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

Human Rights Commissioner condemns Curtin Detention Centre | ABC AM | 29 Sep 2011 - Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, Catherine Branson, has condemned the Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia, saying many of the asylum seekers there are suffering mental trauma and languishing in poor conditions.

Asylum seeker child, 9, tried to take own life | NT News | 17 Sep 2011 - A Darwin doctor has told a parliamentary inquiry that a nine-year-old child in immigration detention tried to commit suicide.

Question mark over Curtin's security | ABC News | 8 Sep 2011 - A member of the parliamentary inquiry into Australian detention centres has described the Curtin facility in Western Australia's Kimberley region as a "disaster waiting to happen"

Opinion: Humane reasons for processing asylum seekers offshore | SMH | 7 Sep 2011 - Do you support onshore or offshore processing? In some quarters, support for onshore processing of asylum seekers is used as a de facto test of compassion, morality or support. By Chris Bowen, Minister for Immigration.

Detainees describe heightened tensions | The World Today | 29 Jul 2011 - Reporter Michael Coggan goes inside the Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin.

Self-harm in detention centre 'dire', say advocates | 5 Jul 2011 - Refugee advocates are warning today that tensions are rising alarmingly inside the Darwin Immigration Detention Centre.

Mixed reaction to reopening of Curtin detention centre | ABC PM | 19 Apr 2010 - The Curtin detention centre in the Kimberley has been described as the most primitive of Australia's asylum seeker facilities. Its worst critics called it a "gulag". But now the Federal Government has reopened the remote defence facility to house Afghans and Sri Lankans who've had their refugee applications suspended. Listen to this report.

Government urged to prevent human tragedy in detention centres | Medical Journal of Australia | 18 Sep 2011 - The Government needs to act swiftly to prevent suicide and self-harm in Australian immigration detention facilities, according to an editorial in the latest Medical Journal of Australia.

FURTHER READING

Joint Select Committee on Australia's Immigration Detention Network | Oct 2011 - The Joint Select Committee on Australia's Immigration Detention Network will conduct a comprehensive inquiry into Australia's Immigration Detention Network, including its management, resourcing, potential expansion, possible alternative solutions, the Government's detention values, and the effect of detention on detainees. The Committee will report in March 2012. Read information about the Inquiry, Submissions and the Terms of Reference.

Transcript: A fair deal for asylum-seekers? | Commonwealth Ombudsman | 14 Apr 2011 - A guest lecture by Commonwealth Ombudsman Allan Asher to The University of Melbourne Law School. [PDF 570Kb]

Debunking the Myths About Asylum Seekers | Edmund Rice Centre - The Edmund Rice Centre published two fact-sheets: Debunking the Myths on Asylum Seekers and Debunking More Myths About Asylum Seekers. Read more.

Overview of Detention Services | Department of Immigration - A government overview of Australia's detention centre network.

Refuguee Timeline | Refugee Council of Australia - Timeline of major events in the history of Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program, from 1948 - 2011.