Australian Hotels are turned into immigration detention centres by the Government but incomplete secrecy
Dozens of hotels have been mapped by Researchers which are used for immigration detention centres by the Australian government.
It is the first nationwide visualisation of a practice which operated mainly in the shadows. But this data is not complete.
The Australian government, for more than two decades has been running semi- secret detention alteration centres in the hotels in the major cities which have more than 3,000 people as detainees.
But there is no information available about these detention centres to the public. These Apods locations were not listed to the public by the government. Also the government has refused the request for information as they don’t have a list to where they all are staying.
Concerns are raised by the independent government agencies consistently about these Apods conditions and also about the length of their detention time which in some cases has exceeded to two years.
The hotels which are used as the detention centres were lacking in the basic facilities such as exercise and recreation. Also they have limited outdoor space limiting the access to fresh air.
Some of the hotels are also reported to serve maggoty food as per the reports. According to the human rights commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, the living conditions in these hotels are serious and will be documented.
Between 2018 and 2021, it is said that around 170 places in Australia were used as Apods according to the department officials. 77 hotels were approved as Apods as reported by The commonwealth ombudsman from which 31 were approved in July this year and seven of them are currently in use.
Researchers are arguing that the information about these Apods is incomplete. These are hidden detention centres used by the Australian government and only 34 hotels have been identified by the researchers.
