© The GuardianIn his 43-year career, Paul Stevenson has worked in the aftermath of the Bali bombings and the Boxing Day tsunami but says nothing he witnessed was as bad as the treatment of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus
The trauma specialist who condemned the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees in Australia's offshore detention regime as the worst "atrocity" he has seen has had his contract to work on Nauru terminated.
Psychologist Paul Stevenson, whom the Australian government awarded an Order of Australia for his work counselling victims of the Bali bombings, had undertaken 14 deployments to Nauru and to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. He was due to return to Nauru on Thursday.But after he spoke publicly to the Guardian about his experiences working within Australia's offshore detention regime - describing conditions in the camps as "demoralising ... and desperate" - he was told his contract had been summarily cancelled.
PsyCare, the company through which he was employed to provide counselling to guards working in offshore detention, informed him by email his employment had been terminated.
Stevenson said the news was not unexpected. "But the public needs to hear about the consequences people face for speaking out, and to understand the level they go to in minimising access."
Previous whistleblowers, such as the former International Health & Medical Services director of mental health Dr Peter Young, have also faced serious ramifications for advocating for better care of those held in immigration detention. Police accessed Young's phone records because he had been critical of the detention regime.
The Border Force Act gives the Australian government the power to jail, for up to two years, anybody employed by the department or its contractors who speaks publicly about conditions inside the offshore detention regime, including doctors advocating for better healthcare, or other workers exposing sexual and physical abuse of detainees.
In an extensive interview with the Guardian, published on Monday, Stevenson said:
"In my entire career of 43 years I have never seen more atrocity than I have seen in the incarcerated situations of Manus Island and Nauru."His comments were backed up by more than 2,000 pages of incident reports which showed a litany of self-harm, sexual and physical assaults, depression and violence.
"Every day is demoralising. Every single day and every night. And you can work an eight-hour shift, or a 16-hour-shift, or a 20-hour-shift, you can get up in the middle of the night to answer the calls to go down to the camp, and you know it's not getting any better. And it's that demoralisation that is the paramount feature of offshore detention.
"It's indeterminate, it's under terrible, terrible conditions, and there is nothing you can say about it that says there's some positive humanity in this. And that's why it's such an atrocity."
The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the island security provider Wilson and PsyCare have all refused to answer questions from the Guardian.
One of the men incarcerated in the Australian-run detention centre on Manus Island, Behrouz Boochani, asked a direct question of the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on the ABC's Q&A.
Boochani, a Kurdish journalist who fled persecution in Iran and has been recognised as a refugee, asked:I'm talking to you from Manus prison. Australia exiled me by force three years ago. What is my crime? I am a refugee who fled injustice, discrimination and persecution. I didn't leave my family by choice. Why am I still in this illegal prison after three years?Turnbull responded that the policy of offshore detention was necessary to maintain Australia's border protection regime and to deter unauthorised boat arrivals.
"It is a tough policy, I grant you that," he said. "It is a harsh policy. But in government and in politics, often you are presented with tough choices.
"A person who has been found to be given refugee status in PNG is able to then settle in PNG. I know, I'm sure, he would rather come to Australia, but that option is not available to him. The people smugglers are out of business, they would love to get back into business, they are itching to get back into business, believe me. Every now and then they test us out. But we have kept our policy firm."
On Tuesday morning Boochani wrote in response to the prime minister, from Manus: "You did not answer to my questions because you could not, because you don't have any plan for the future. You are lying to Australian people and playing with Australia's international reputation. I know you will never answer my questions."
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