Australian immigration
detention centres are in secluded locations, some on offshore islands, and are
subject to extreme secrecy, comparable with 'black sites' elsewhere.
There are
parallels between healthcare professionals working in immigration detention
centres and healthcare professionals involved with or complicit in torture. In
both cases, healthcare professionals are conflicted between a duty of care to
improve the health of patients and the interests of the government. While this
duality of interests has been recognised previously, the full implications for
healthcare professionals working in immigration detention have not been
addressed.
The Australian Government maintains that immigration detention is
needed for security checks, but the average duration of immigration detention
has increased from 10 weeks to 14 months, and detainees are not informed of the
progress of their application for refugee status. Long-term immigration
detention causes major mental health problems, is illegal in international law
and arguably fulfils the recognised definition of torture.
It is generally
accepted that healthcare professionals should not participate in or condone
torture. Australian healthcare professionals thus face a major ethical dilemma:
patients in immigration detention have pressing mental and physical health
needs, but providing healthcare might support or represent complicity in a
practice that is unethical.
Individual healthcare professionals need to decide
whether or not to work in immigration detention centres. If they do so, they
need to decide for how long and to what extent restrictive contracts and
gagging laws will constrain them from advocating for closing detention centres.
Purchase full article at: http://goo.gl/fAyLXk
By:
- 1Department of Infectious Diseases & Microbiology, Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Discipline of Child Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
More at: https://twitter.com/hiv
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