The left want people to believe there were suicide attempts - the truth is foreign to them. #Auspol #BSWNBPM #LaborLies #GreenLies #CountryShoppers -A HANDFUL of Christmas Island detainees have engaged in minor acts of self-harm, in what authorities claim are attempts to be transferred to the mainland to be housed in community detention. The revelations surfaced as the government shot down Fairfax Media reports of mass suicide attempts as baseless and Tony Abbott vowed he would not “capitulate to moral blackmail’’. It has emerged that Serco, the private contractors running the Christmas Island detention centre, have been using the prospect of mainland detention — albeit without processing and without visas — as a compliance tool in the outpost’s compounds. The Australian has learned the authorities on Christmas Island believe “minor self-harms” at the Australian territory’s immigration detention camp for families this week are cynical attempts to follow three mentally ill young detainees into community detention in Sydney. It is understood that the female asylum-seekers who self-harmed at Christmas Island this week had recently become aware that three other teenage detainees had harmed themselves last month inside the centre’s compounds. Refugee advocates and others working inside the Christmas Island centre are linking this week’s self-harm incidents to a recent decision by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to allow the three Somali girls aged 16, 17 and 18 to leave the same camp and live in Penrith, in Sydney’s west, where they are receiving psychiatric care. “These were exceptional cases; the girls had been in very bad shape for some time,” said one insider with knowledge of the circumstances. “You then get other people doing self-harm, thinking ‘maybe if we do something …’ “It’s always a difficult issue for any government to manage.” As six “Code Black” alarms rang out from the island’s family camp on Monday afternoon, screaming could be heard from the road outside. Code Black means a guard needs assistance. Police attended briefly. No detainee has been evacuated off the island since the incident and no detainee was taken to the local hospital in the immediate aftermath. “If you heard someone who hurt themselves had gone to Sydney would you try it? Of course you would,” said one advocate. One female detainee who has been moved from Christmas Island to mainland detention, and whose children are in detention with her, told The Australian that detainee families on Christmas Island all understood that moving to mainland detention in Darwin or Inverbrackie was possible if a family member required ongoing medical treatment — and if the family did not cause trouble, but she had found conditions were not much better. “You are still behind fence, no freedom,” she said. Guards say rounds of self-harm as protest are relatively common in the compounds of Christmas Island. However it has been 10 months since an attempted suicide triggered an evacuation to a mainland hospital. The government’s Senate leader Eric Abetz yesterday responded to unconfirmed reports in Fairfax Media that several mothers who are asylum-seekers on Christmas Island were believed to have attempted suicide in the expectation that their orphaned children would be settled in Australia. Senator Abetz said there was “no basis for the claims that up to 12 women have attempted suicide at Christmas Island detention facilities’’. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison also weighed in, issuing a statement to slam the Fairfax reports as “not correct’’. Both the Greens and Labor attempted to use the unconfirmed reports for political mileage. Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young accused the government of being “morally corrupt’’ and pushing people to a point of “self-destruction’’. Mr Morrison issued a statement yesterday, slamming the Fairfax reports of multiple suicide attempts. “While the government understands the concern that exists on such sensitive matters of self-harm, it is important to recognise government commentary on such issues takes into account privacy and the impact public commentary may have in encouraging such behaviour,” Mr Morrison said. Earlier, the Prime Minister said the government would not allow its policies to be driven by people who were “attempting to hold us over a moral barrel’’. “No Australian government should be subjected to the spectacle of people saying, ‘Unless you accept us, I am going to commit self-harm’ and I don’t believe any Australian — any thinking Australian — would want us to capitulate to moral blackmail,’’ Mr Abbott told the Nine Network. Bill Shorten jumped on Mr Abbott’s comments, saying they were “terrible’’. “These comments by the Prime Minister of Australia are a new low even for him. We say to Mr Abbott, you mightn’t wish these people were in our care but they are in the care of the Australian government, and we’ve got to treat these people as human beings, not just points on a political scoreboard,’’ the Opposition Leader said in Brisbane. The Coalition is maintaining its silence over the group of 153 asylum-seekers being held in limbo on an Australian Customs vessel on the high seas. The group is the subject of a High Court challenge by refugee advocates. The government is understood to have no intention of sending the boatload to Sri Lanka, and it could send them to the Nauru or Manus Island processing centres or return the boat to India. Labor’s former foreign minister Bob Carr yesterday said the arguments used by the refugee lobby to claim that Tamil asylum-seekers returned to Sri Lanka were subject to persecution were “simply unsustainable’’. Speaking in Colombo, Mr Morrison has dismissed as “offensive” allegations by Sri Lankan asylum-seekers that they were mistreated on board an Australian customs vessel before their return to Sri Lanka on Monday.- theaustralian.au/national-affairs/policy/revealed-the-true-story-about-whats-happening-on-christmas-island/story-fn9hm1gu-1226983614867
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 22:03:43 +0000
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