Doctors at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne staged a protest yesterday against the returning of child patients back to detention centres, according to the Herald Sunday.
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The Australian Medical Association said it backs the “principled and ethical” stance of the Melbourne RCH staff, calling on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “to intervene with a compassionate and humane solution”. “We’re seeing evidence from individual doctors right though to published evidence now in studies that detention harms people, and the longer they are in detention, the more permanent that harm becomes”, Dr Parnis told AAP. One doctor told the Herald Sun that discharging patients back to detention was counter-productive.
Under the Border Force Act, which was passed in May, health workers can face up to two years in prison for speaking out against conditions in detention centres.
Professor Newman said even though the pair’s health had improved by mid-2015, their doctors refused to discharge them unless the Department of Immigration agreed to not return them to detention.
Rights groups have sharply criticized the remote detention camps for inhumane living conditions, sexual abuse and cases of self-inflicted harm and hunger strikes staged by refugees.
“The environment of a detention centre is so far from what develops normal opportunity, the families don’t have the opportunity to play together, the children are subject to rules and regulations that no typical child is subjected to”.
RACP president Nick Talley added in a statement that “time and again, the Australian public has seen inquiries and heard excuses for the wrongs committed against children inside these detention centres”.
‘These children are suffering extreme physical and mental health issues, including severe anxiety and depression.
Victorian health minister Jill Hennessey has also offered her support, saying she is proud of the staff for “putting the interest of the children first”.
She said the doctors would not give further interviews at this stage to clarify what, if any, changes they would make to their discharge process for children from detention centres.
The Australian government maintains a so-called turn-back policy deterring asylum seekers access to the country and housing them in detention facilities in Nauru, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea and Christmas Island.
RCH chairman Rob Knowles, a former Liberal state health minister, says the staff outcry is not surprising.
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The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. “I understand the concern of the doctors, but the Defence and Border Force staff on our vessels who were pulling dead kids out of the water don’t want the boats to restart”.
