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Australian Immigration Minister: Refugees Falsely Report Abuse

  • Protesters during a rally in support of refugees in central Sydney, Australia, October 19, 2015.

    Protesters during a rally in support of refugees in central Sydney, Australia, October 19, 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 11 August 2016
Opinion

The immigration minister responded to a damning leak outlining systematic abuse as "hype."

Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton responded to a massive leak of incident reports detailing widespread abuse at an offshore immigration detention center Thursday by saying that asylum seekers have “reported false allegations of sexual assault.”

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"I have been made aware of some incidents that have reported false allegations of sexual assault, because in the end, people have paid money to people smugglers and they want to come to our country," Dutton said to Australian radio station 2GB.

The leak uncovered by the Guardian Australia on Wednesday included over 2,000 documents from Australia’s offshore immigration detention center in the Micronesian island of Nauru. The incident reports spanning from 2013 to 2015 detailed widespread sexual abuse, assault and self-harm, with the majority of cases involving children who were detained.

Dutton also repeated comments from May that advocates actively encouraged detained asylum seekers to commit self-harm in a bid to enter Australia. “Some people do have a motivation to make a false complaint,” Dutton said.

Dutton’s Department of Immigration and Border Security stated earlier that “many of the incident reports reflect unconfirmed allegations or uncorroborated statements of claims — they are not statements of proven fact.”

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The president of the country’s Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs said that the incidents documented in the leak had indeed occurred and had been reported by professionals.

She also echoed sentiments by the opposition Labor Party who are calling for an independent body to be able to look after children in detention. The Greens Party have been calling for a royal commission into the issue.

Triggs said that Australia’s current offshore processing is “clearly not working at the moment and I think the only solution is to bring the children home.”

Advocacy group Asylum Seeker Resource Centre started the hashtag #bringthemhere, which was trending in Australia, and started an online petition calling for the end of Australia’s harsh immigration detention policies.

“The entire policy is falling apart—the legal permissions, and the political and corporate support for the camps, are all disappearing. But the government is pretending everything is fine, and the camps are still open. Now the human cost is again laid bare,” read the petition.

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