The Catholic Alliance for People Seeking Asylum (CAPSA) has today called on the Federal government to establish a Royal Commission following allegations of countless cases of abuse, sexual assault and self-harm of people seeking asylum on Nauru.
The leaked ‘Nauru Files’ by the Guardian Australia, details more than 2000 incidents involving people placed on Nauru by the Australian government from May 2013 to October 2015. More than half of these cases involved children.
CAPSA firmly believes that mandatory, arbitrary and indefinite detention of people seeking asylum is unjustifiable, unnecessary, and a breach of Australia’s responsibility to respect the human dignity and lives of those in its care.
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Jesuit Social Services has joined the calls to immediately bring people seeking on Nauru to Australia in light of the leaked ‘Nauru files’ which allege countless cases of abuse, sexual assault and self-harm of people in Australia’s care.
“Jesuit Social Services believes that the mandatory and indefinite detention of people seeking asylum in Australia, and who are often fleeing trauma and persecution in their home countries, is inhumane and directly in breach of our responsibility to respect the human dignity of those in our care,” says Jesuit Social Services CEO Julie Edwards.
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The current policy has about it a cruelty that does no honour to our nation. How can this be when Australians are so generous in so many situations where human beings are in strife? Think of the way the Vietnamese boat people were welcomed in the 1970s and 80s. The question becomes more pointed when we think of the politicians who are making and implementing the decisions. They are not cruel people. Yet they have made decisions and are implementing policies which are cruel. How can this be so?
Island dwellers like Australians often have an acute sense of the “other” or the “outsider” – and that is how asylum seekers are being portrayed. They are the dangerous “other” or “outsider” to be feared and resisted because they are supposedly violating our borders.
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