Detention is not a 'solution': Asylum Seekers, children, and the need to heal trauma not exacerbate it

Detention is not a ‘solution’: Asylum Seekers, children, and the need to heal trauma not exacerbate it

I wrote this letter to my local politician this morning. Feel free to borrow any parts of it if you too are upset by plans to have children and traumatised refugees sent to offshore detention camps in Malaysia, and wish to write to your local politician and let them know. (If you go through Getup, they have an easy link to do this.)

Dear Deborah O’Neill, MHR

I am deeply saddened and upset that our Government is planning to send Asylum Seekers who have already been so severely traumatised, away to detention camps in Malaysia. That some of these are young children makes it even more shocking.

As a stress-consultant/coach, I have seen how childhood trauma that is left unacknowledged and untreated can damage a person and cause a wide range of problems that continue to resonate and build for the rest of their lives.

These problems don’t only affect the individual but can affect every member of their family, and continue down the generations.

These children – and their parents and older siblings too – have been through enough and deserve our compassion and help.

They have the courage and initiative to seek a better life despite even more dangers and uncertainty, and as such with proper support and healing-help, would seem to be ideal migrants.

Past experience has shown that only a small minority are fabricating their histories, and that the overwhelming majority are genuine.

Surely if they were given professional therapeutic help (for instance using cutting edge techniques such as EFT), it would become obvious whose stories were suspicious and these could be referred on for further investigation.

We pride ourselves on a system that has a presumption of innocence for good reason.

Emotional trauma that is untreated and compounded by more trauma has far reaching effects through the entire community. It costs us so much more in the long run to ignore it than to face it and deal with it.

We have excellent techniques available now and these can be taught and shared (as for instance has happened in Rwanda using EFT – see below)

If asylum seekers are held within the community, this kind of education and healing can become possible. Organisations like Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne are already doing so much and in an incredibly cost-effective way.

Off-shore detention centres only create more trauma and problems. As most refugees coming to Australia are genuine, and legally entitled to our assistance, they will eventually be released into Australian society, and we will then reap the ills – in all sorts of ways – of our lack of compassion and short-sightedness. Whereas if we spent the same money and energy in wiser ways, we could be enormously enriched by their contribution and experience.

It is also clear that this kind of detention – especially when it is offshore – is enormously costly. So it cannot even be justified on economic terms.

This is such a stain on Australia’s history. Have we learnt nothing from our treatment of Indigenous Australians in the past, and the consequent deep social problems that developed from that?

I urge you and your government to reconsider this ill-considered, short-sighted and destructive plan.

yours sincerely,
Beth Spencer

Links and resources:

Here’s the short video of how groups of Rwandans are using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or Meridian tapping) to start to heal the pain in their hearts and to move on and rebuild their lives.