November 09, 2015
Brutal treatment behind Christmas Island riot
Labour’s corrections spokesperson Kelvin Davis is blaming Australian government policies for the riot that has broken out in the Christmas Island detention centre.
The Taitokerau MP visited New Zealanders on the remote Indian Ocean island last month and received a call early this morning that detainees were rioting.
He says it appears to have started when a guard punched a detainee who was asking about an Iranian Kurdish refugee who escaped over the weekend and died in the jungle.
Mr Davis says the treatment of detainees at the Serco-run centre was appalling, including assaults by staff, refusal of medial treatment, and people being hosed down and then left in their cells with the air conditioning cranked down.
"If you treat people like animals they're going to bite back and from my understanding the detainees are biting back and I can't help but have some empathy with them, I don't know if this is going to do their cause that much good. Probably mainstream Australia will saying this is the reason why we need to be lock them up, but this is what happens when people have their backs to the wall," says Kelvin Davis.
Kelvin Davis says the New Zealand Government is failing its citizens by not speaking out or even sending consular officials in to check on the welfare of detainees.
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