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Leading psychiatrists, bioethicists, human rights lawyers, novelists, priests and refugee advocates have published a collective document accusing the Australian government of inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and demanding an end to mandatory detention and offshore processing.

It says Australia’s policy of deterring asylum seekers, in which they are all moved to offshore detention centres on Papua New Guinea and Nauru, “requires damaging some to deter others and uses the lives of vulnerable people, the vast majority of whom are found to be refugees, as a means to a political end”.

Professor Louise Newman, one of Australia’s foremost developmental psychiatrists and a signatory to the statement, said the document “pulls together prominent Australians with a shared view that current responses to asylum seekers, including children, are cruel, unnecessary and unacceptable”.

“If we take the definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that definition,” Young said.

Young’s extensive observations, reported by Guardian Australia, also included that the department of immigration misused patient informationand that psychiatrists working within the system were often viewed as “soft touches” by the department if they advocated on their patients’ behalf.

The “j’accuse” statement also says Australia’s immigration regime violates the rights of children by “exposing them to violence, trauma and to poor medical and psycho-social care, with no access to independent monitoring”.

It accuses the federal government of “exploiting ignorance about asylum seekers’ needs and circumstances” adding that it does this by “encouraging racist media coverage”.

The statement ends by demanding the federal government bring an end to mandatory detention, cap the length of detention to 30 days, and adopt a policy framework that is “consistent with obligations under the refugee convention”