Eleven of the 21 Sinhalese Sri Lankan asylum seekers at Curtin detention centre have begun a hunger strike.<\/p>\n
The hunger strike, in protest at the long delays in the processing of the refugee claims began at noon, Wednesday 13 August. Out of the 21 Sinhalese at Curtin detention centre, 13 have been in detention two years or more.<\/p>\n
All eleven hunger strikers have been screened in; some have been accepted as refugees; some have even signed the code of conduct statement \u2013 usually the final step before being granted a visa.<\/p>\n
One of the hunger strikers has been in detention since 2009 \u2013 over five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shocking bureaucratic delays in processing are one of the lesser known injustices of mandatory detention,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe delays are inexcusable. To keep asylum seekers who have been found to be refugees in detention is inexplicable. Cases are left sitting on the Minister\u2019s desk while the hope and mental health of asylum seekers ebbs away. In many cases the damage inflicted by long term detention amounts to a life sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven secretary of the Immigration Department, Martin Bowles testifying at the Human Rights Commission inquiry agreed that the link between prolonged detention and mental illness was a \u2018well-established issue\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ball is in the Minister\u2019s court. \u2018Justice delayed is justice denied\u2019 has never had a truer meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Refugee Action Coalition has called a protest at the Sydney Immigration Department offices, Lee Street, City, 12.30pm Friday 8 August, to highlight the hijacking of the 157 Tamil asylum seekers taken to Nauru and the horrors of detention revealed in the Human Rights Commission inquiry.<\/p>\n
For more information contact Ian Rintoul mob 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eleven of the 21 Sinhalese Sri Lankan asylum seekers at Curtin detention centre have begun a hunger strike. The hunger strike, in protest at the long delays in the processing of the refugee claims began at noon, Wednesday 13 August. Out of the 21 Sinhalese at Curtin detention centre, 13 have been in detention two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}