WOOMERA, Australia (AP) — United Nations officials inspected an Australian refugee detention center Tuesday where asylum seekers have repeatedly rioted, sewn their lips together and attempted suicide to protest what they claim are inhumane conditions.
United Nations envoy Justice Prafullachandra Natwarlal Bhagwati and members of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited the Woomera center on a barren, treeless plain 1,120 miles west of Sydney, to check conditions for themselves.
They made no comment on what they saw at the former missile testing base surrounded by razor wire-topped fences. Their findings will be reported to the 59th session of the U.N.’s Commission on Human Rights next year.
Hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka, can be housed in the camp—one of five in Australia built to accommodate refugees caught trying to sneak into the country without visas. It was not clear how many refugees were in the camp Tuesday.
All illegal immigrants, including young children, are locked up under Australia’s hardline policy of mandatory detention and are not freed until their visa applications are processed—which can take up to three years.
Local activists who visit the camp regularly to offer legal advice and counseling to the refugees claimed Tuesday the government had been sprucing up the camp in recent weeks ahead of the U.N. inspection.
Matthew Hamon, an activist who visited the center Tuesday morning, said trees were planted around the complex and the dormitories were painted in the lead-up to the visit.
