More than 1,000 health professionals and other staff rally outside hospitals to demand the release of children from immigration detention centres
Doctors and healthcare workers at the Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne on 12 October protest against children being held in detention. Photograph: Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
Senior doctors and other healthcare workers from hospitals in Sydney, Adelaide, Darwin, Brisbane and Newcastle have protested against children being kept in immigration detention.
More than 1,000 health professionals and their supporters gathered outside hospitals to press the government to remove the children and their families, which one doctor called “child abuse”.
Speakers at the rallies, many of whom had experience treating asylum seeker and refugee families, said the effects of detention on children were devastating.
“Keeping children in prolonged detention, without them knowing what’s happening to them, is child abuse,” paediatrician David Isaacs, from Sydney’s Westmead children’s hospital said.
“These are people who are already traumatised. They’re fleeing persecution.
“We compound that by putting them in indefinite detention for very long periods.”
Associate Professor Karen Zwi, from Sydney children’s hospital, said anxiety, bed-wetting, nightmares and poor sleep were common among the more than 200 children still in immigration detention.
“In the extreme cases, children are self harming and attempting suicide,” she said.
She said at an average of 417 days, children were being held in detention centres for too long.
A similar protest was held almost three weeks ago by staff at the Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne, who stood outside their workplace with a banner declaring “Detention harms children”.
Earlier Isaacs told Guardian Australia the recent change of prime ministership had made no difference to the children’s situation.
“While the rhetoric has changed towards asylum seekers under the new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and has softened somewhat, we don’t see any sign that the current government wants to get any children out of detention.
“We want to increase the pressure. And we won’t stop with this protest. We will make noise until the detention of children ends.”
Isaacs is soon to have a paper published in a renowned international medical journal that will say the detention of children constitutes torture.
He is treating a three-year-old – originally from Iran and detained in the Villawood detention centre – for tuberculosis. Once the treatment ends the boy would be sent with his parents to Nauru offshore processing centre, Isaacs said.
“It’s an awful thing to do, and I have no power over his situation, none, even though I recommended to the immigration minister that he be allowed to stay,” Isaacs said. He has spent time on Nauru.
“Every time he comes to see me at my clinic he is accompanied by two guards. And when his treatment is finished, his parents will be handcuffed in the middle of the night and sent back to Nauru.
“I’ve been told by the department of immigration that Nauru is the most appropriate placement for him.”
Among the other hospitals where staff protested were the Women and Children’s hospital in Adelaide, the Royal Darwin hospital, Newcastle hospital and Lady Cilento children’s hospital in Brisbane.
The Greens immigration spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, praised the medical staff.
“These doctors and nurses should be congratulated for trying to protect the hundreds of children that are still locked up in Australia and on Nauru,” she said.
“There is no question that locking children in immigration detention destroys them both mentally and physically. Locking up people who are seeking asylum and robbing young boys and girls of their childhood is not what we, as a caring people, should be doing.”