Australia 'is treating migrants worse than criminals'

Asylum-seekers in Australian detention centres are treated worse than criminals and frequently suffer from depression, a United Nations delegation said yesterday.

The UN group, which has spent the past fortnight inspecting five centres, voiced particular disquiet about vulnerable detainees such as small children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The application process can take three years.

The Australian government said it would not bow to international pressure to change its policy of locking up illegal immigrants. Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister, said: "Whatever the rights and wrongs of these issues, we will decide them ourselves, not have bureaucrats in Geneva decide them for us."

The government's embarrassment was compounded by a newspaper report that said delegates had privately told ministers that conditions in the centres constituted a gross violation of human rights.

The UN working party on arbitrary detention, headed by Justice Louis Joinet, will table its full report in New York next March. But Mr Joinet said the group felt it had to raise its concerns immediately.

Detainees were prone to "collective depression", he said. "[They] live day in, day out with an agonising uncertainty. This indeterminate length of detention is something that doesn't happen to common criminals when they're put in prison."