A Somali refugee who attempted suicide in the early hours of Saturday, 24 October, was taken to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation (BITA) late the same day, where he is now being held on “high watch”.
The Refugee Action Coalition has been told by refugees inside Kangaroo Point that it was only last-minute action by Serco guards that prevented an almost certain tragedy.
At least two other refugees who attempted suicide at Kangaroo Point are also being held in BITA. The numbers of attempted suicides are increasing across the detention regime where Medevac refugees are being held.
The Somali refugee was transferred from Nauru to Australia in June 2019, under the family reunion provision of the Medevac legislation. But the government has ignored the legislation, holding the refugee in closed detention for 16 months separated from his wife and 3-year-old son who are living in Brisbane, just twenty minutes drive from the hotel.
Since all visits were cancelled because of COVID in March this year, the Somali man has only seen his wife and son from the balcony of the hotel when they have come to the fence that now surrounds the hotel. His wife and son were transferred from Nauru in 2017, when his son needed specialist treatment in Australia. They have been separated ever since.
The latest suicide attempt is the tip of the iceberg of the mental distress that has engulfed those being held in Kangaroo Point, and at the other detention centres, like the Mantra Hotel, BITA and the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation.
There are around 104 refugees and asylum seekers in Kangaroo Point, all transferred under the Medevac legislation for medical treatment or family reunion in Australia.
The sick irony is that while the government was compelled to transfer the refugees, it has been able to systematically subvert the legislation by holding them for over a year in conditions that exacerbate their mental health distress.
“Only the government’s bloody-minded determination to victimise refugees and thwart the Medevac legislation explains why the refugee is separated from his wife and child, and why all the other Medevac refugees are in detention. They should have been freed when they were transferred, ” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition
“Kangaroo Point has become nationally known for the daily refugee protests on the balcony of the hotel, but many in the hotel-prison are too traumatised to even come out of their rooms. All of them urgently need to be released. The government’s ‘factories of mental illness’ are relentlessly crushing the minds and bodies of people they should be protecting. It needs to stop.”
A protest outside Kangaroo Point Hotel, will join with refugees protesting inside Kangaroo Point hotel at 4.30pm today, Sunday 25 October.
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713