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A doctor in Australia says that he risks prison for revealing the hellish conditions in which the country’s authorities keeps “illegal immigrants.”
Pediatrician David Isaacs told Russia Today how he saw a young girl “try to hang herself” in the prison-like camp on the Pacific Island of Nauru.
Isaacs spent five days posted to the island, 3,300km northeast of Brisbane, and accused the Australian guards of subjecting refugees housed there to “mental torture.”
“I am breaking the law by talking to you about this and I could even go to prison for doing this. Anyone who works there, doctors, teachers, nurses – could go to prison for two years for telling the truth about what is happening,” Isaacs told RT.
“I saw a child as young as six who tried to hang herself,” he said, adding that he saw a number of children who had developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to testimonies from some of the children published by the Australian Human Rights Commission, tents are dirty and frequently become flooded.
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“The officers shout at us. The way they treat us is very bad. They treat us like animals,” one wrote.
Isaacs echoed this, describing the centers as “like prisons.”
“Everybody was rough with them and they just didn’t treat them very well. They were treated almost as though they were criminals. The living quarters were awful so they were living in very hot tents, but there was no water in there. So if they wanted to go to the toilet or have a shower, they would have to walk 100 meters,” he told RT.
Other whistleblowers claim to have witnesses physical torture. A former Wilson Security worker, who used to guard the facility said he had witnessed waterboarding, among other violent methods.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott denied the accusations of inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. He told the Guardian that they’re false, they’re absolutely false and if people have evidence to the contrary, let it be produced.”
Last year, Vice published a damning report from two former Salvation Army volunteers, who also broke their confidentiality agreements over the dire situation in Nauru.
“The intake days were the worst,” Chris Lacono told Vice. “The men arrived on the bus to the camp. And as soon as the bus rolled in, you can see the shock on their faces—the sadness and the anger—and we were supposed to stand there and smile and welcome them to their new home for however many years. It’s just one of toughest jobs to try and sell a place that looks and feels like hell.”
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