Video pictures of asylum seekers hitting their heads against cell walls have been aired by Australia's national broadcaster. The 20-minute video, made last June by staff at the Curtin centre in West Australia where armed asylum seekers have defied guards for the last four days, shows Afghan detainees in concrete cells bleeding after hitting themselves against the walls and screaming to be freed.
Australian Correctional Management (ACM), which runs Australia's six detention centres for illegal immigrants, recorded the incident for internal purposes but it was leaked to Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV.
An advocate for the detainees said when authorities told hunger strikers they would have to pay for a lawyer they asked if they could sell their own blood to pay the legal fees.
In the video, a bloodied male asylum seeker is released from an isolation cell he shared with another inmate and he continually pleads with guards in Afghan and broken English to explain why he had been detained. One of the men was heard to threaten to kill himself before he was released from the cell. ABC said the detainees belonged to an Afghan minority group which had fled to Australia after being persecuted by the former Taliban hardline rulers.
One of the men was heard to scream out, in English, "open the door" at least 10 times before ACM staff let him out of his cell.
"In the name of God, I will kill myself and someone else as well," ABC's interpretation of his claim said.
The men had been put in the isolation block because they refused to end a hunger strike. The scenes were said to have preceded a riot last June which resulted in damage to the camp. A man later convicted of four charges in relation to the riot was sentenced to more than five years in jail, ABC said. But most of the group have since been granted visas.
Australia's stance on asylum seekers will be put to the test next month when the UN Human Rights Commission sends a team to inspect the six centres which have been the scenes of riots.