Citation

Woodhead M. BMJ 2016; 352: i550.

Affiliation

Sydney.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1136/bmj.i550

PMID

26821756

Abstract

One of Australia’s leading paediatricians has invited the government to arrest and prosecute him for defying a new law that gags healthcare workers from speaking about conditions in detention centres for asylum seekers.

David Isaacs, clinical professor in paediatric infectious diseases at the University of Sydney, said that he witnessed appalling and inhumane conditions for children while working in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru.

He also claimed that the Australian government was maintaining a media blackout and a culture of secrecy around the conditions in detention centres.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics,1 Isaacs said that keeping children in long term and indefinite detention met the definition of …

Language: en