Asylum Prison

Australia's policy of automatically locking up asylum seekers is one of the most draconian in the world. This powerful story looks at the system from within.

Asylum Prison This documentary investigates Australia's harsh asylum system. The country's policy of automatically locking up asylum seekers is one of the most draconian in the world. This powerful story for the first time gets inside an Australian detainment camp.
This year there have been riots inside Australia's secretive detention centres. The country's asylum crisis joins other high profile race issues to project an Australia that is unsympathetic to the needs of people who have fled their homeland. Stefan, a Berber, arrived in Australia in 1998 after fleeing Algeria. Upon arrival, he was locked up in solitary confinement for two days, then moved to a dormitory shared by 60 people, and without enough beds. New arrivals sleep on the floor until someone with a bed is either moved or deported. There is a window, but it is closed; "you can't open it, ... you can't see another thing, only this box."

The media is forbidden access to Detainment Camps. However, Aamer Sultan, a Shi'ite Muslim doctor who escaped from Iraq, is prepared to risk hefty punishment for secretly filming the Villawood Detention Centre. He claims he's done it to alert the Australian public. "If Australians could see what their government is doing to us they would not allow it." Sultan faces a real chance of being sent back to Iraq for speaking to the media.

We track down other immigrants involved in a mass breakout from Villawood. They say they were driven to flee conditions not much better than they escaped from in their home countries. Stefan, who spent 33 months at Villawood says; "Sometimes I get depression... I wanted to kill myself. That's it, to finish the problem." The Australian government insists it has a right to consider all immigrants as illegal entrants who've broken Australian law by coming to her shores without travel documents. They defend the harsh system as serving to discourage others from arriving.

Six year old Shayan Bedraie has been in a detention centre for 11 months. He is traumatised and refuses to eat or speak. He draws the same picture, of a tearful family hidden behind grid wire, and a stick man with bleeding wrists. Shayan's father tells us his son is refused medical treatment for as long as possible. The boy now faces being split from his parents as the authorities now wish to release only him from the detention system.

"The population from the detention centres are probably the most traumatised people on the face of the planet." Says a Clinical Psychologist. Add that trauma to long-term detention, says Steel, and the psychiatric damage could be irreversible. Self mutilation and mental trauma are commonPlace among detainees. Philip Ruddock, Australian minister for Immigration, tries to explain the large incidence of mutilation; "I think the principle reason is that there are some people who do not accept the umpire's decision, and believe that inappropriate behaviour will influence the authorities..."

A powerful documentary which explores an asylum policy emanating from the far right. Is this where we're going in Europe?

Produced by ABC Australia
FULL SYNOPSIS

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