AUSTRALIA’S Church leaders have spoken out against the detention of children in immigration detention centres following a damning report criticising the Federal Government’s policy.
The National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) has called for children in detention centres to be released immediately.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, in a statement on asylum seekers from its plenary meeting earlier this month, said: ‘We must, as a matter of urgency, find alternatives to detention for unaccompanied minors and for children who accompany their parents.’
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s (HREOC) National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention Report – A Last Resort?, tabled in Federal Parliament on May 13, found that children in Australian immigration detention centres have suffered numerous and repeated breaches of their human rights.
The HREOC called on the Government to release all remaining children from detention within four weeks, for Parliament to change the law to ensure detention is no longer the first and only resort for asylum seeker children and to ensure that decisions about the detention of children be made by an independent court.
NCCA general secretary John Henderson said: ‘At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves whether the pain and suffering inflicted upon mothers, fathers and their children is a just trade-off in attempting to deter people from our shores.’
Brisbane’s Catholic Justice and Peace Commission (CJPC) has also backed the call for the release of children, and is urging people to write to Prime Minister John Howard and Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, pressuring them to comply with the HREOC’s recommendations.
Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, in a joint statement, said the Government rejected the major findings and recommendations of the report, and rejected claims that Australia’s system of immigration detention was inconsistent with obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
