Just in case you thought that maybe, just maybe, the government were about to take mental health seriously – or if you thought that perhaps we weren’t utter monsters – then be advised that our Home Office has just returned a suicidal 17 year old to Nauru against medical advice.
His name hasn’t been released because of his age, but the teen has been reported to have had deteriorating mental health for five years, including suicide attempts.
His mother, Fatemah, has been awaiting life-saving heart surgery for 18 months but has refused to leave her son lest he kill himself in her absence. So both were removed to Taiwan for treatment – which seems to have not happened, since they were each removed seperately by four guards apiece into a charter jet back to the island prison.
Suicidal son and mother forced back to Nauru
“I don’t know what to say about the way the Australian government has treated us. I have been officially accepted as a refugee, but still live in a tent,” https://t.co/WcyZLQsqCn
— RAC Canberra (@rac_canberra) May 14, 2018
They’d reportedly been told there was a possibility of US resettlement, but since the travel ban on people from Iran – as these two refugees were, until they fled – that’s no longer on the table.
So, to recap: two critically ill people desperately in need of medical attention which is not available on Nauru are being sent back there to… what, thrive? Start a positive new life? Pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
But you know, it’s all about stopping deaths at sea – or have we updated the excuse we’re using now? Because it better be a convincing one to justify sentencing a mother and her son to death.