Four asylum seekers treated after suicide attempt

Officials in Australia today said they had treated four asylum seekers at an Outback detention centre, including a child, after they tried to harm themselves in what is believed to be a group suicide attempt.

In an escalating immigration crisis for Australia, the refugees at the Woomera internment camp in remote South Australia state had tried to hang themselves, but officials would not confirm that report.

The Department of Immigration said today that the three adults and one child, whose age was not given, had been moved to the camp’s medical centre for treatment. The department would not release details of the group’s injuries or the treatment they were receiving.

But South Australia state human services minister Dean Brown said he had been notified that a parent at the camp had threatened to hang children.

More than 200 mostly Afghan asylum seekers are on hunger strike at Woomera, a former missile testing base in the desert, to protest their treatment. Dozens of the protesters have sewn their lips together, and the government said yesterday that two children had also had their mouths stitched by adult detainees.

About 40 others at the camp have swallowed potentially lethal cocktails of shampoo and detergent in an apparent suicide attempt.

The protest have also spread to the Maribyrnong Detention Centre in the southern city of Melbourne, where about 25 detainees are refusing to eat or drink.

Mr Brown said today that government officials were removing five unaccompanied children under the age of 14 from the centre. Seven other children are being investigated for signs of abuse, he said.

The growing troubles at the camp, which is holding about 830 asylum seekers, has led to widespread criticism of the federal government’s immigration policy, even from one of its own advisers.

The government locks up all refugees - including children - in spartan detention centres while their asylum applications are processed. About 3,000 people from the Middle East, South and Central Asia are currently languishing in five camps across the country.

Yesterday, Neville Roach resigned as chairman of the government funded Council for Multicultural Australia, branding the policy ‘‘extreme’’.

Opposition parties have called for Mr Ruddock to resign and for the UN to take over the running of the camps.

But the UN has ruled out getting involved. Overnight in Geneva, Kris Janowski, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said it had ‘‘no business detaining asylum seekers’’.

‘‘We oppose prolonged detention of asylum seekers, especially detention of minors, and this unfortunately is the case in Woomera,’’ Mr Janowski said. ‘‘We think that prolonged detention is unacceptable and unnecessary.’’