One hundred and three former staff previously and currently employed in offshore processing centres on Manus Island and Nauru have issued a statement calling for all asylum seekers in both locations to be brought to Australia immediately.
The workers are from a variety of professional and academic backgrounds, and believe that a senate inquiry is simply not enough to secure the safety of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island.
The decision to speak out publicly has been taken despite the risk for many of these professionals of two years imprisonment under the Border Force Act.
Some of the professionals involved have requested their names not to be published. Among those who have already made submissions and given evidence to numerous inquiries, investigations and reviews are Save the Children teacher Connie Delfos, who was working in Nauru from March 2014 until September 2015, and unaccompanied minors residential worker Alex Cloumassis, who was also employed on Nauru between 2013 and 2015 for the Refugee Assistance Program, Save the Children and Salvation Army.
Doctors, teachers, case workers, managers and social workers from Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield), IHMS and other contracted workers with first-hand experience across both Manus Island and Nauru Regional Processing Centres agree that the establishment of another Senate Inquiry in response to the release of the Nauru files is quite simply not enough.
“This has reached crisis level and requires an immediate response,” said Toby O’Brien, a former child protection officer with Save the Children.
“The evidence is already overwhelmingly clear.
”We’ve given evidence and it’s been ignored. No change has occurred for the men we worked with since the last Senate Inquiry. The camp is not safer, conditions have not improved, the physical and mental decline of those held continues,” said Natasha Reid, case manager with Broadspectrum until February 2015.
“I watched these children’s lives being destroyed by these camps,” said Katie Price, a former child and youth recreation officer who was employed on Nauru with Save the Children for almost two years.
“They went from energetic, cheeky, normal kids to completely devoid of all emotion. I recall one seven-year-old child towards the end having a complete breakdown. She collapsed, screaming and kicking and crying for 20 minutes, completely incoherent and would not let go of me.”