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Omicron Worsens Crisis in Australia’s Nursing Homes

Critical Care Needs of Older People Unmet During Covid-19 Surge

The Omicron wave has further exposed the crisis in Australia’s aged care sector with staffing so short, that workers’ unions are calling for the government to deploy the army to assist. Meanwhile, reports are emerging of residents missing out on…
A woman in the back of an ambulance
News

Covid-19’s Devastating Impact on Older People in Australia

Failing Aged Care Facilities Risk Lives of Residents and Staff

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on people living in nursing facilities around the world, including in Australia. On August 10, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety will hold a hearing on “lessons learnt” on Covid-…
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Coronavirus is a Ticking Time Bomb for Australia’s Prisons

Prisoners with Disabilities Face Particular Hardship

Locked in cramped cells with others, being an easy target for violence, and getting bullied for your food and medication – that’s daily life for a prisoner with a disability in Australia. And the Covid-19 pandemic is only making things worse.…
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Indonesian Woman with Mental Health Condition Charged with Blasphemy

Revoke Abusive Law, Drop Pending Cases

Indonesian police last week senselessly detained and charged a woman with a mental health condition with blasphemy after she entered a mosque in Bogor, a Jakarta suburb, wearing shoes and accompanied by her dog. A video of…
Screenshot of a viral video showing an incident involving a woman living with paranoid schizophrenia arguing with worshippers at a mosque in Bogor, a Jakarta suburb in Indonesia.
News

Australia’s Terrifying ‘Watch Houses’

Children with Disabilities Abused in Police Detention

Pinned down, stripped naked, locked in a padded cell, and yelling continuously for help – that’s how an Indigenous boy with a cognitive disability spent three days in a police holding cell in Australia. The horrifying account – cruel…
A person lying on the floor of a prison cell, seen through a CCTV camera.
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Australia’s Parliament Speaks Out On Disability

But Fears Government Will Delay Inquiry Into Nationwide Abuse and Neglect

In a positive move, yesterday, the Australian parliament voted for a Royal Commission into violence, abuse, and neglect experienced by people with disabilities in Australia. Disappointingly, the government’s response gave no timeline to set up the…
A prisoner lies in his solitary confinement cell in the safety unit at Lotus Glen Correctional Centre, northern Queensland.
News

The Nightmare Lives of Indigenous Prisoners in Australia

On International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples, Government Should Address Marginalized Group

“The senior officer stood on my jaw while the other [officer] hit my head in and restrained me. They said, ‘You don’t run this prison … we do,’ and they cut my clothes off. They left me naked on the floor of the exercise yard for a…
A prisoner lies in his solitary confinement cell in the safety unit at Lotus Glen Correctional Centre, northern Queensland.
News

Interview: The Horror of Australia’s Prisons

Prisoners with Disabilities Serving Time in Solitary, Face Physical, Sexual Abuse

How is it that 50 percent of Australia’s prison population has a disability? Eighteen percent of Australia’s general population has a disability. The most common type of disabilities found in prisons are mental health conditions. People with…
A prisoner lies in his solitary confinement cell in the safety unit at Lotus Glen Correctional Centre, northern Queensland.
News

‘Shocking’ Detention of Australia’s Aboriginal Children

Royal Commission Report Needs Swift Action

The camera shows a slightly built 13-year-old boy pacing in a tiny cell, pausing every so often to lean against the wall, his head buried in his arms, his body trembling. Three guards rush in and quickly overpower the boy, stripping him…
A still from the Australian Broadcasting Company’s program “Four Corners,” showing 17-year-old Dylan Voller strapped into a mechanical restraint chair on March 2015 in the Northern Territory.
News

Indonesia’s Death Penalty Debacle Exposed

Maladministration in Nigerian’s July 2016 Execution

The official Ombudsman of Indonesia has accused both the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and the Supreme Court of “maladministration” in denying a Nigerian citizen, executed for drug trafficking in July 2016, his legal rights. …
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News

An Indonesian Childhood in Chains

Shackling Persists Despite Government Eradication Efforts

Childhood should be a time of innocence, play, and learning. But 15-year-old Subekti spent his shackled to the floor of his family’s house in Serang, a city about a three-hour drive from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. For the past six…
Fifteen-year-old Subekti spent his childhood shackled to the floor of his family’s house in Serang, Indonesia.
News

Australia’s Cells of Horror

Neglect and Abuse in Mental Health System Caught on Camera

Drugged, naked, left covered in feces and locked in a seclusion room for more than five hours without food or water. Repeatedly falling and hurting yourself in a dark cell while your distress and cries for help are ignored. …
Miriam Merten shown on CCTV footage from a government hospital in New South Wales, Australia, 2014.
News

Dispatches: Torture of Australia’s Children

Abuse of Detained Teenagers Caught on Camera by ABC’s Four Corners Program

Teargassing, hooding, shackling, stripping. Twenty-three hours a day solitary confinement in a hot dark cell. When a 17-year-old threatens to hurt himself, guards hood him, strap him to a chair and leave him alone for two hours. This is not how anyone…
A still from the Australian Broadcasting Company’s program Four Corners, showing 17-year-old Dylan Voller strapped into a mechanical restraint chair in March 2015, Northern Territory, Australia.
News

The Living Hell of People with Mental Health Conditions in Indonesia

More than 57,000 people in Indonesia with mental health conditions have been chained and locked up in overcrowded rooms or filthy sheds at least once in their lives. About 18,000 are still believed to be shackled, despite a 1977 government ban on pasung, …
A man with a psychosocial disability lies chained at the wrist on a platform bed at the Bina Lestari healing center in Brebes, Central Java. All residents of the healing center are chained. © 2015 Andrea Star Reese for Human Rights Watch
News

Dispatches: Shackling No Answer for People With Disabilities

“I used to be tied up at home with a plastic rope,” Rafi, a 29-year-old man with a mental health condition living on the outskirts of Jakarta, told me. “I had to go to the toilet on the spot, in the drain in the room. My heart broke when they chained me…

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