Detention conditions ‘too much to handle’
Many people being held in Australian detention centres are suicidal after living in what they describe as “war camps”, says a group campaigning for New Zealanders’ rights.The Iwi n Aus group said about a hundred people have been sent to Christmas Island, while it is decided whether they should be deported.
A New Zealand lawyer, who is representing some of the detainees, said the situation there was getting more and more desperate, and the Serco-operated centre was now in lockdown.
Radio New Zealand has asked the Department of Immigration and Border Control over the last fortnight to clarify how many New Zealanders have been deported or detained, and how many are being held on Christmas Island, but it has not.
Instead, families of those affected have emailed and called ministers, embassies, lawyers and media begging for help.
What is wrong with us as a nation? Australia has around 100 of our citizens on a detention camp in Christmas Island, and another 100 of our citizens in detention camps inside Australia.
Why aren’t we demanding an immediate remedy to the rights of our own citizens? I think it’s because of the way hatred and anger has warped our views on punishment and our mentality towards these 200 of our own citizens is clouded by that spite.
The media’s love affair with whipping up emotion around crime stories for ratings fodder robs us of compassion. Look at the glee National took away prisoners rights to vote. Look at the amount of media attention a far right group like the Sensible Sentencing Trust gets. Look at how longer harder sentences are adopted without any consideration to the wider impacts. Look at the ease we handed prisons over to private corporations. Look at the abuse rate in our underfunded public prisons.
Look at how crime has dropped another 30% yet our incarceration rate continues to climb.
Look at how we ignore the injustice of our prison system and refuse to allow the innocent an easier way to have their cases re-investigated.
We have allowed anger and hate to influence social policy and that is damaging our ability to have compassion and politicians are all too happy to reap that blind fury for political gain.
This is why we don’t care about 200 of our own citizens in detention camps.
I care. A lot of us care. But we can write letters, march, protest till the cows come home but until the media stops being obsessed with ratings and our politicians grow a pair and stop thinking about winning the next election then it’s in their best interests not to convince the less enlightened there is an alternative.
yeah I agree that the NZ public is brainwashed I mean the majority with the exceptions of a few brown people who have been brought up in this country to view criminals as belonging to a brown skin race that are also greedy landgrabbers it has a racial element that is not hard to find in this so called caring society. Politician and others use the race debate issue to a phenomenal effect that they are aware that the public majority white people resonate with their beliefs
Serco!!!!!! there they are again with their green finger in every rotten pie
why don’t we just bring the locked up NZers home
then send the locked up Australians home
and sort out the family, friends logistics later.
Sounds better than a detention camp
Comments are closed.