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Australia May Refuse U.N. Inspection Of Detention Center
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| An asylum seeker, with his lips sewn shut, lies in a hospital in Woomera.
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SYDNEY, Feb. 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Australia refused Tuesday to rule out the possibility of blocking a request by the United Nations to inspect a detention center for asylum seekers where several detainees have tried to hang themselves, news agencies reported.
Growing international concern came as the Refugee Action Collective of Australia said two asylum seekers had tried to hang themselves at the Woomera center in South Australia, while up to 25 others were threatening suicide, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Cyrus Sarang, the group’s president, said the detainees used bed sheets in an attempt to hang themselves Sunday and Monday night. He also said that between 15 and 25 other asylum seekers in the detention center had threatened to commit suicide. “They are tired, they’re really mad inside,” he said. “Some have been there for two years.”
Philip Ruddock, Immigration Minister, refused to say when the government would reply to U.N. request. Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, had asked Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in Geneva Monday to allow Indian Supreme Court judge S. Rajendra Babu to inspect the center, after she received a flood of complaints about it.
More than 200 detainees at the center, many of them Afghan asylum seekers, who had sewn their lips together, abandoned a two-week hunger strike last weekend after promises their asylum claims would be processed more promptly.
"My concern is the human rights dimensions, the conditions, the psychological impact, the self-harm that a number of the detainees have been inflicting," Robinson said. "It's about children and the impact of a mandatory detention policy and what I wish to do is to send a personal envoy."
However, Ruddock denied there were human right violations at Woomera and said issues such as safety, and privacy had to be considered. "In relation to issues about access to detention centers, our view has always been that detention centers ought to be as open as possible," Ruddock said.
"There is also a question of how many times you are subjected to scrutiny," he continued. "The question of whether we allow this particular U.N. request has to be seen in the context of the wider range of issues and that's a matter the government will consider."
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