Aboriginal children are subjected to “shocking” treatment at youth detention centers in northern Australia, an investigation revealed yesterday, after a video of violence against mostly Aboriginal boys sparked outrage.
The damning report said detained children were subjected to physical abuse, encouraged or paid to perform humiliating acts, and denied essentials such as food, water and the use of toilets.
It also found that isolation was used inappropriately and punitively, which “caused suffering to very many young people and likely caused them enduring psychological damage.”
The government ordered the royal commission, a national inquiry, into youth detention last year after public broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp aired footage showing children being tear-gassed and mistreated at the Northern Territory’s Don Dale detention center in 2014 and 2015.
The disturbing scenes included a 17-year-old boy hooded and shackled to a chair, which was likened to the treatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay.
Aboriginal children are 24 times more likely to be detained than other Australian children, Amnesty International said.
A government-backed report last year said that their imprisonment rate had increased 77 percent over the past 15 years.
The royal commission looking into the Northern Territory abuse said the “shocking and systemic failures occurred over many years, and were known and ignored at the highest levels.”
The commission has called for the closure of Don Dale and made a raft of recommendations to overhaul the territory’s youth justice system, including a ban on the detention of children under 14 and wider engagement with Aboriginal organizations for child protection.
“All children deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. All children deserve to be safe,” Australian Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion told reporters.
Aboriginal groups said the findings highlighted issues that have be known for decades.
“For too long we have had reports, royal commissions, buck-passing between Commonwealth and state level and territory governments,” Central Australian Aboriginal Congress chief executive Donna Ah Chee said. “We are going to watch with great vigilance that [these recommendations] are implemented.”
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