RE: “Church denounces asylum-seeker treatment” (CL website, 3/4/11).
My heart is heavy, because so many innocent suffering people including over a thousand children, are locked up and not free, when it is peace and freedom they are seeking, and protection from further persecution.
With families accommodated in places of detention in Brisbane itself – about 150 people – and another 510 men now locked in the Scherger Airforce Base, 30km outside the mining town of Weipa, Queensland has joined the infamous immigration detention network which locks up asylum seekers who have used their human right to seek protection here.
They are not illegal.
In your prayers please remember the families of those in mandatory detention, because they are severely affected by the loss of their male protector and provider.
Men in detention are denied the right to work, and while our taxes pay for their keep, their own families suffer in ways we cannot even imagine.
When the unforgivably long process is completed, most asylum seekers are granted permanent protection and are confirmed to be no threat to our security and have been damaged by the treatment our Government gave them.
Many commentators write about the cruelty and inhumanity of the current system of mandatory detention. I go further and say it is hateful and sadistic.
FREDERIKA STEEN
Chapel Hill, Qld
