21 February 2016•Update: 22 February 2016
By Jill Fraser
MELBOURNE, Australia
Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton announced Sunday that a one-year-old asylum seeker asylum seeker who doctors had refused to discharge from a hospital in Queensland state would be given interim community detention in Australia, rather than immediately deported to an offshore detention center in Nauru.
Dutton’s announcement came after doctors and protesters waged a sustained campaign to prevent the return of the baby, dubbed ‘Baby Asha’, to the small Pacific island nation where she suffered accidental burns requiring treatment in Australia last month.
The Australian-born infant who has been detained on Nauru since she was five-months-old will, however, be subject to normal refugee processing along with her asylum-seeking parents.
A spokesperson told Fairfax that this means that they would not be settled Australia, while Dutton did not rule out that she would be returned to Nauru.
Asha has been receiving treatment at Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, where doctors have refused to release her due to welfare issues on Nauru.
For the past 10 days Asha’s fate has been the focus of demonstrators who have been camping outside the hospital in support of the doctors.
After Dutton told reporters that immigration officials had reached an agreement with doctors so that Asha and her family would be transferred to community detention in Brisbane, the chief executive of Children’s Health Queensland released a statement saying the move would take place within 24 hours.
"Children's Health Queensland is currently working with the department on finalising arrangements for the safe relocation of the family," Fionnagh Dougan said.
"In recent days, the child and her mother moved to family accommodation within the hospital because the patient no longer required treatment in the burns unit."
Refugee advocates celebrated Dutton’s decision to place Asha in community detention, claiming it as a victory for “people power”.
But Dutton insisted that the government had always planned to move Asha into community detention, arguing that this step is “a continuation of the Government’s policy”.
Dutton went on to declare that the Asha case had been “hijacked” by the media and advocates who, he maintained, skewed the facts.
Anadolu Agency spoke to refugee advocate Ian Rintoul and the media spokesperson for Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, both of who asserted that the government’s agenda was to return Asha and her family to Nauru as soon as she was well.
Asked in his media conference Sunday when he had previously clarified that the baby would be released into the community, the minister responded, “I haven't previously announced anything other than that there would be a return to Nauru, ultimately, when people's matters are finalized.”
A spokesperson for Dutton told Anadolu Agency: “As the Minister has indicated today and as he said all along, each case will be looked at individually and he would like to make sure that people can go into community detention and get the number of children in detention down to zero. Once their matters are finalised, medically and legally, arrangements for them to return to their country origin will be taken. If that's not possible and the individuals don't wish to return to their country of origin, then they go to Nauru or Cambodia.”
On June 4, Asha became the first infant born in detention in Australia to be transferred to the Nauru Regional Processing Centre – against the advice of Save the Children.
A story in News Corp in July described the conditions in which Asha was living on Nauru as “no place for a five-month-old girl”, stating that she and her mother were living “in a leaky tent surrounded by rats” with no running water.
The story reported that Asha had trouble feeding, that the threat of disease was high and that mosquitos were everywhere.
Despite that, Asha’s mother had reportedly refused to use the government-supplied mosquito net, saying it was “sprayed with chemicals”.
Under the Border Force Act passed in 2014, anyone working in immigration detention, including doctors, faces two years' imprisonment for revealing details of what goes on there.
Around 160 children are being held in offshore detention by Australian authorities.
