From Australia’s concentration camps on Manus and Nauru the brutal treatment of children spreads here
Posted by John, April 2nd, 2015 - under Manus Island, Nauru.
Tags: Canberra, Children
From Manus Island and Nauru the contagion of mistreatment of children has spread to engulf Australia.
From the Canberra Times:
A school that placed a child with special needs and behavioural issues in a cage-like withdrawal space told parents it had intended it to be a “sanctuary”.
ACT Education has suspended a principal and launched an investigation into how a primary school student was placed in the purpose built two-by-two-metres structure made of metal pool fencing.
Locked up for hours behind bars. Sounds like kids on Manus Island and Nauru. Except they are locked up indefinitely.
A later report in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald called “Children’caged’ at school” suggests that the practice of locking up kids with disabilities in schools in Australia is widespread.
Stephanie Gotlib, form Children with Disability Australia is quoted as saying that ‘it is a form of abuse … If I locked someone’s child in a cupboard for a couple of hours or tied them to a chair, I would have the police on the doorstep.’
Exactly. And since that is precisely what the Australian government does and has done for years to asylum seeker and refugee kids, why aren’t the police bashing down the doors of former Prime Ministers Howard, Rudd, Gillard and their Immigration Ministers and Abbott and Morrison and Dutton and charging them with willful child abuse too?
A final point. Australia has a long long history of brutalising Aboriginal children as the Bringing them Home Report makes clear.
That, plus the brutal treatment of asylum seeker children in detention centres, dehumanises us all and makes sections of society in positions of some power more likely to abuse kids in Australia. The fight against child abuse in Australia has to include the fight against child abuse of those under our care on Manus Island and Nauru and of Aboriginal kids.