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A secretive ordeal stretched over the better part of a decade was, for about 60 refugees and asylum seekers, over without warning in a matter of days.
Across seven years the group had been detained in squalid offshore camps housed on remote islands, locked-up inside detention centres on the mainland, and, finally, shut inside inner-city hotels.
The ordeal ended when the Australian government did something many thought it would never do: releasing the group, who came to the Australian mainland under the now-repealed Medevac legislation, into the community on six-month temporary visas where they will be able to live freely for the first time in years.
Over nearly a year of a pandemic, many people have become acutely aware of what it means to be confined to their homes. But for asylum-seekers who have been held in Australian hotels, these stifling conditions have stretched on for months and months, pushing some to the breaking point. Two have tried to commit suicide.
Jan 22, 2021
Melbourne – When authorities brought Ramsiyar Sabanayagam to the Mantra Bell City Preston hotel in suburban Melbourne in November 2019, he assumed he would be there for only a few weeks.
Instead, Sabanayagam, a refugee from Sri Lanka, spent the next 14 months locked inside his room for all but a brief period each day, unsure when his ordeal would end.
He and the other refugees detained in the hotel were ordered to keep their windows shut until, after protesting, they were allowed to crack them open, but no more than 4 inches. Guards checked on them day and night, sometimes shining flashlights into their faces while they slept. The men could see guests coming and going, and they knew that people were gathering with friends and loved ones in the dining hall below, but they had no hope of joining them.
Countries are set to question Australia over the lack of progress on reducing Indigenous incarceration rates and policies towards asylum seekers and refugees.