Showing posts with label penal mentality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label penal mentality. Show all posts

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Prison islands for Australia

Protesters have been gathering in Australian cities to oppose cruel government plans to deport 267 refugees, including 72 children, to offshore detention in a prison island.


Australia has installed such detention centres in two foreign lands. One is located in the republic of Nauru: a remote and desolate phosphate island in the Pacific Ocean.


In this hot climate, people and their children have to live in tents, in a place where there is so little to do that many inmates tend to develop psychiatric problems.


Everybody knows that white Australia started as a penal colony for Britain, towards the end of the 18th century. Unfortunately, as a modern society, we seem to have retained certain aspects of what might be termed our "penal mentality".