Woomera 'concentration camp'

Sydney
10 February 2002

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Woomera 'concentration camp'

By Chris Hook

The immigration detention centre at Woomera has been labelled a concentration camp in a letter to Mary Robinson, the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The letter - signed by Marc Purcell, executive officer of the Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace, and representatives of the Uniting Church and the Islamic Council of Victoria - uses the Macquarie Dictionary to justify the claim.
"With full acknowledgement of the agony of the Jewish people and other groups exterminated by the Nazis, in the sense of its original meaning, Woomera is a concentration camp: 'a guarded enclosure for the detention or imprisonment of political prisoners, racial minority groups, refugees etc,'" the group writes.
They urge Ms Robinson to visit Australia or send an envoy so that she is fully apprised of the situation surrounding the treatment of asylum seekers in the camps and requests "urgent representations to the Australian government".
Specific concerns outlined by the letter include the period of detention, a lack of judicial review of the time and appropriateness of detention, the detention of minors and a lack of mental health services for detainees.
The government is accused of "intransigence" on the issue of mandatory detention and deliberately undermining public sympathy for refugees.
The letter cites anecdotal evidence in its claim that detainees at Woomera have been involved in at least one incident of self-harm a day for the past 18 months.