Key Points
- A Bangladeshi refugee with a disability says he experienced horrible treatment in Australia's offshore detention system.
- The evidence was recounted at the disability Royal Commission, which is hearing from people with disabilities from culturally diverse backgrounds.
A disabled Bangladeshi refugee has told the Disability Royal Commission he often went hungry during his detention on Nauru because he was unable to stand in the food line for hours.
The psychological toll of detention for several years was compounded by being physically attacked by locals, who broke his leg, he told the commission.
The hearing on Thursday is focusing on barriers for culturally and linguistically diverse disabled people.
Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan spoke of the need of disability services to accommodate multicultural communities.
"While migrants and refugees encounter a range of difficulties in accessing support services ... these take on new forms for diverse people with disability," Mr Tan told the commission.
The online shift during the pandemic disadvantaged many disabled people of culturally diverse backgrounds, with their lack of access to the internet and lack of material in different languages.
Participants in community consultations described the disability sector as "very European", he said.
"Ensuring cultural safety, respect and inclusion for culturally and linguistically diverse people is paramount," he said.
Mr Tan's message was reiterated by the second witness Mr Rahman (a pseudonym), who detailed his harrowing experience as a disabled asylum seeker in 2013, when he was detained on Christmas Island.
The 36-year-old was born in Bangladesh with a severe spinal condition and a chest deformity that restricts his breathing.
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His doctor's orders to remain in Australia for medical treatment were ignored by authorities and he was shipped back to Christmas Island.
"It was humiliating to be handcuffed and treated like a criminal," he told the commission through an interpreter.
"I felt like I had engaged in a criminal activity just for being a disabled person ... I could have died rather than being humiliated."
Mr Rahman detailed his detention in Nauru until 2019, when he was transferred to Australia through the Medevac program.
"I lived in a small plastic tent with 25-30 other people," he said.
"There were very limited toilet and shower facilities. It was very hard to access clean drinking water".
"I had to line up for food for hours but because of my disability I could not always stand in line and would often go without food."
"The word humanity is absent in Australia.
"I was better off in the jungle of many other countries. My only fault is that I arrived ... by boat," he said.
He was later transferred to Australia where he spent two years in detention in Melbourne, including in the infamous Park Hotel.
"What I feel in Australia when people look at me as a disabled person is that I'm an animal.
"My feeling is that the detention centre was run as if people were in a zoo," he said, adding he was only given Panadol to numb the pain and was not provided
with specialist services for his back.
Once released into the community on a bridging visa, Mr Rahman found access to disability services lacking especially when the pandemic in 2021 plunged the entire city under prolonged lockdowns.
He was unable to work due to his disability, forced into homelessness and resorted to eating from rubbish bins for two months after Centrelink payments and free accommodation stopped after six months.
His situation has marginally improved and he is now living with other refugees in a temporary shared house.
But he urged the government to better financially support disabled refugees through Centrelink. He receives some $550 a fortnight.
He said he feels insecure about his future with his status on a bridging visa.
"I just want to ... be treated with respect and dignity," he said.
