Call for Australian refugee abuse probe

Some children can spend up to three years behind razor wire in Australia

MELBOURNE, Australia (CNN) -- Two Australian social work academics have called for an investigation into suspected child abuse at the Woomera refugee detention camp, citing a legal obligation to report their suspicions.

While neither of the academics have personally been to the Woomera camp, they say they have "reasonable grounds" to suspect that children being held there were being abused or neglected.

They said that under South Australian state government legislation they were legally obliged as social workers to report suspected child abuse to the state's Department of Human Services.

In a statement released Wednesday, academics Chris Goddard and Max Liddell from Monash University in Melbourne, said they expected the department to "expeditiously investigate the circumstances of the children and to act to secure their safety and best interests, as required under the legislation".

"In this investigation, the contribution of all parties contributing to the care of the children -- including the Federal Government and the responsible Minister, Philip Ruddock -- will have to be assessed."

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The academics are basing their suspicions partly on reports by Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Australian Medical Association into conditions in the remote desert camp.

"Although we have never seen these children, we have formed the opinion that they are at least emotionally and psychologically abused," the academics said.

They said the Child Protection Act did not require them to have "proof" of child abuse, only "reasonable grounds" for suspicion.

"It is surely impossible to imagine that any child-protection service anywhere in the world would regard keeping a child behind razor wire in a desert as anything but emotionally abusive," Goddard and Liddell said.

Asylum seekers are often held in spartan camps surrounded by razor wire in remote parts of the country, and some -- including children -- can be kept there for up to three years if they choose to appeal their applications through the legal system.

Humane

Immigration minister Ruddock, however, has rejected the academics' action, saying Woomera was "very well equipped to house children".

"That includes their medical care, their psychological care, and in relation to educational matters, in relation to recreation, and those issues are dealt with ... with a very high degree of amenity," he told ABC radio.

"But people who believe that detention is undesirable will never accept that detention can be humane," he said.

At the beginning of last month there were 365 children being held in detention centers across Australia and 259 women.

Conditions in the camps, particularly Woomera, have been the subject of a number of damning reports in the past.

Suicide threat

A raft of reports and investigations have condemned conditions in the camps

The camp was also the scene of a prolonged hunger strike and self-harm protest by hundreds of detainees in January who were angry at the conditions in the camp and the slow processing of their visa applications.

Nine children also threatened to commit suicide if they were not removed from the camp.

Earlier last year, a prison watchdog described conditions in Australian detention centers as being "unacceptably overcrowded" and described medical services as "disgracefully inadequate".

A report by a parliamentary committee in June 2000 recommended an overhaul of Australia's detention system, saying it had led to human rights abuses.

And in February last year, an independent inquiry called the Flood Report criticized the management of detention facilities, saying inmates were humiliated and abused by staff and children were treated like criminals.