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The Forum > Article Comments > Life is extra risky for women in immigration detention > Comments

Life is extra risky for women in immigration detention : Comments

By Eva Cox and Terry Priest, published 17/8/2005

Eva Cox and Terry Priest argue the welfare of the diminishing population of women in immigration facilities is a problem.

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The authors seem to be saying that all women, (whether they have children or not), should be released from detention centres, (leaving behind the men), but this would not be gender bias.

But what if all men (whether they have children or not) were released from detention centres (leaving behind the women). Would this be gender bias?
Posted by Timkins, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 3:48:58 PM
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Theoretically not, Timkins, but it might be helpful to pay attention to cultural mores. As the Immigration Department admits it did not do when it incarcerated a Sabean Mandean woman and her children in Curtin Detention Centre, as the sole woman, and sole Mandean among 50 Muslim men (http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,15986262%255E1702,00.html). But what can we expect when we hand over the culturally-sensitive matter of immigration detention to private companies which run prisons and work off the assumption that the inmates are criminals who deserve whatever they get?
Posted by anomie, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 6:30:17 PM
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When are the bleeding hearts and others opposed to the policy of mandatory detention (introduced by the Labor Party) going to face the fact that the policy has overwhelming support among the people, particularly those in the Labor heartland?

Have you noticed the number of people arrested in connection with the recent London bombings who are illegal immigrants? Even the innocent brazilian shot down by the police because he refused to stop turned out to be an illegal. There is no better example of the security risks associated with allowing these people into the country. During WWII virtually none of the refugees we got were nazi sympathisers. Similarly during the cold war, but not now.

Do any supporters of unrestricted immigration think things are going to get any better? The world population is increasing at 6 million per month, and we are going to face a major problem keeping these people out. What with the collapse of the world economy due to the lack of cheap oil, it looks like being an interesting century.
Posted by plerdsus, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 7:16:35 PM
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Anomie,
I must admit that whenever I hear terms such as “women and their children” or “women’s special needs” I become immediately suspicious, because my experience to date has been that such terms are used to gain more and more privileges and benefits for the woman, and normally much gender bias develops, and eventually both males and children become much disadvantaged over time.

I understand that work by the authors on this detention issue was partially funded by the Pamela Denoon Trust for the Women's Electoral Lobby. That is an all female lobby group to my knowledge, so it would advocate a bias towards the female gender, and correspondingly, a bias against the male gender eventually.

There has been much said about Cornelia Rau and her mistreatment, but there are about 15,000 males in various prisons throughout Australia, with estimates that about 40% have significant mental illness that is rarely diagnosed or treated adequately, and even judges are saying that prisons are being used instead of mental hospitals. The number of males having their human rights of proper treatment denied to them has never been mentioned by such organisations as the Women's Electoral Lobby or by the HREOC. Those males have been left behind to rot in the system, because they don’t have “special needs” like a “woman and her children”. They are just mere males.
Posted by Timkins, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 7:27:01 PM
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Oh, Timkins, it's quite amusing, in a bizarre way, to see how close we are on this. My husband has bipolar A, with occasional violent psychotic episodes. Fortunately, he's currently holding down a quite high-powered job, largely because when he's good, he's very, very good (a good side effect of bipolar – his brain works, not normally, but very fast), and his boss is the wettest of wet Liberals. But he's been sacked from quite a few jobs because of bizarre behaviour or paralysing depression. When he's depressed, he can't work. (This is the reason I take issue with Col Rouge and his kind and their "winners and bludgers" view of society. Sometimes it's a genetic unlucky dip). When he's hypermanic, he also can't work, and I also have good reason (and the scars to prove it) to fear for my safety. But the only means I have of getting treatment for him, according to the NSW police, in every encounter I've had with them, is to charge him with assault. Then they'll put him in the cells, get a psychiatric assessment, and get him hospitalised and stabilised. I won't do this: it's wrong, and I'm pretty much the last person he has left to trust, and I won't betray that. So instead, I have to cop whatever he hands out until he's well again. Not everyone in a similar situation has (a) a good left hook; (b) a large dog who loves only me and; (c) somewhere else to go if I can take no more again. They opt for custodial rescue.

It's well established in psychiatry that males are more prone to catastrophic mental illnesses. It's the downside of what can be seen as the superior creativity and energy of males. I don't totally dismiss that view. But I understand, from bitter experience, it's not an unmitigated blessing. My job, by the way, is editing a journal on disability. I'm just putting to bed an issue on mental health, railing against imprisonment of people with mental illness. Most of them male. You're wrong about HREOC, by the way.
Posted by anomie, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 8:32:08 PM
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It is sickening that someone can write an article about the treatment of women in detention centres, but due to political correctness, ignore major reasons why this occurs? What cowards!

I have followed the issue of detention centres closely, and was amazed that the HREOC report into children in detention, among others, didn't set alarm bells ringing about the all-too-often exploits of Islamic men sexually harrassing non-Muslim women, or Islamic women who are unacompanied by a male in our detention centre's.

Only three months ago, the young 14 year old Ilham Rhamati, who was released from Nauru detention centre said to the media in her statement about what the worst thing in detention was, and I quote:

"The worst thing for me wasn't the food, the staff, but that I was a single, unacompanied Muslim girl".

She went on to say that she "couldn't go outside her room, not because of the staff, but all the men" who incidentally, as we've heard from Islamic clerics, and seen in everyday practise (one can't help but notice the packs of middle-eastern men that hang about the front entrance to any Westfields in Sydney's west, who, whenever they see a young woman walking past, all run up to her offering their phone numbers, asking her for sex, calling her an "Aussie slut" when she tells them to get lost), they see it as their right to pressure unacompanied women for sex.

Indeed, the HREOC report last year into children in detention (Sections 8.5.1, 8.5.2, & 15.4.7) goes to the heart of abuse on children, non-Muslims & women, by Islamic men.

One Christian Iranian family consisting of three teenage girls & a mother were so sexually harassed that men would regularly peek through curtains & pressure them all for sex so often the entire family were moved to another compound.

This also happened to many non-Muslims, particularly Sabian Mandaens, although thats another matter. Another unacompanied teenage girl was pressured so often she tried to kill herself.

Poor girl.
Posted by Benjamin, Thursday, 18 August 2005 7:53:37 AM
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