Amnesty welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee inquiry into the serious allegations of abuse, self-harm and neglect of asylum seekers in relation to the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, and any like allegations in relation to the Manus Regional Processing Centre.
The Australian Government is choosing to subject women, men and children to an elaborate and cruel system of abuse with a policy that is intentionally designed to harm people, as highlighted in our new report: ‘Island of Despair’: Australia’s “processing” of refugees on Nauru‘.
Amnesty has used this report, released in October 2016, as the basis for our submission to the Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee inquiry into the ‘serious allegations of abuse, self-harm and neglect of asylum seekers in relation to the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, and any like allegations in relation to the Manus Regional Processing Centre’.
Based on months of research, including interviews with more than 100 people in Nauru and Australia, this report brings together further revelations of abuse with existing accounts to reveal the full scale of Australia’s system of deliberate cruelty. Amnesty has been documenting human rights abuses in Australia’s offshore processing centres for many years, and we have also provided the Committee with our previous research reports including:
- Nauru: Weakening Human Rights Protections and the Rule of Law, Amnesty International Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review;
- Australia: This is breaking people: human rights violations at Australia’s asylum seeker processing centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea; and
- Australia: This is still breaking people: update on human rights violations at Australia’s asylum seeker processing centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.
The Senate inquiry is an important step forward in building the political momentum and will to end the policy of offshore processing and detention and permanently close the Refugee Processing Centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
