Let recently elected members of the federal parliament hear your voice.
Clare Forbes, Chair of Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children says: “The harm that is being done is incalculable. Malcolm Turnbull has the ability to stop this horrendous cruelty. He must bring the refugees on Nauru here. He must act now. He must show that he can lead with humanity and integrity. He must save these children and their families.” Ms Forbes expressed dismay at the extraordinary inhumanity of the statements from Peter Dutton, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.
The leaked documents – the Nauru Files – include over 2,000 incident reports. They outline shocking evidence of physical and sexual assaults, self-harm attempts, poor living conditions, poor medical treatment, hunger strikes, injuries, threats and lack of accountability of corporations running the centre and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) charged with their care.
Despite only making up 18 per cent of the population in detention from May 2013 to Oct 2015, children were involved in an alarming 51.3 per cent of the incident reports. Within this, there were seven reports of sexual assault of children, 59 reports of assault on children, 30 of self-harm involving children and 159 of threatened self-harm involving children.
Ms Forbes states, “Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children urge all Australians to express their outrage that the safety and wellbeing of the children being detained on Nauru is being so cruelly violated.” She added, “We, as grandmothers, urge everyone to see the film Chasing Asylum, to read the reports of the abuses on Nauru published by The Guardian, and to join with Gillian Triggs in calling on the government to close the camps, to bring the refugees (small in number but huge in their impact on our national integrity) to the Australian mainland now.”
The Nauru Files are the latest in a long line of reports documenting shocking treatment of those who have sought help from Australia.
Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children say to Malcolm Turnbull, “One child in Detention is one too many”. We say, “Refugee and asylum seeker children detained on Nauru are being deprived of their childhood. We call on the Australian Government to stop being part of this child abuse. As a first step to restoring these children and their families to health, we call on the government to bring them here.”
Let us all write a letter to recently elected members of the Federal Parliament. Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children suggest you use something like the letter below to add your voice to this protest.
