Christmas Island is located in the Indian Ocean and is a non-autonomous territory of Australia, which governs itself. During the 1980s it became a destination for ships carrying people on board seeking refuge, which led to the so-called “Tampa” controversy (after the Australian government refused to accommodate more than 400 people than a Norwegian ship had picked up on the high seas).
Nowadays there are still a thousand children (of Indonesian origin, mainly) detained in immigrant centers in Australia and Papua New Guinea, it is estimated that about 400 on Christmas Island; and they remain in difficult circumstances, without their development complying with any international standard of Children's rights. Gillian Triggs is the president of the Human Rights Commission, an entity that has initiated a research to assess the impact of this situation on children. To do this, opinions from adults who have been previously detained (while they were minors) will be collected, current circumstances will be assessed, and the response of children in their state will be analyzed.
In the opinion of the technicians of this commission, children should not suffer this type of detention more than to meet specific and necessary objectives, such as health and safety controls
The drawings that illustrate the post have been made by these children, who are (and feel) trapped; the images themselves reflect them. Locks, bars, uniforms, security guards, and also all that this entails, even when the strokes do not reflect it, that is, restrictions, suffering, etc.
Children are not alone because there are other children, and also adults, but none of them is immune to a depressed mood due to lack of freedom. Maybe when they get there they can still play as they are, but with the passage of time, the lack of expectations is primed in the most vulnerable.
Mrs. Triggs is convinced that the Australian government should provide some kind of help to these families; At the moment the Commission is in the data collection phase, to subsequently (in September) deliver the data obtained.
But today of retained children It is bleak because they are in inhuman conditions (and that includes lack of educational attention), In the middle of nowhere.
