Asylum seekers treatment in Australia`s Detention Centre`s

A Serco training manual instructing immigration detention centre guards to use force to incapacitate detainees was leaked. It included techniques to kick, punch and target pressure points on detainees.

Serco Group plc is a British government services company based in United Kingdom. its operations are public and private transport and traffic control, aviation, military and nuclear weapons contracts, detention centers, prisons, and schools. Currently Serco has a $1 billion contract with the Gillard Government to run nine detention centers and is thought to be responsible for 4783 asylum seekers across Australia.

Recently a prison-style training manual purportedly designed by Serco has been leaked by Crikey online, detailing explicit instructions on how to use pain to "control and restrain" hostile detainees.

Firstly personnel are taught to target detainees' pressure points and put detainees in "joint-lock control and escort" positions to render them motionless. Beyond those responses are defensive counter strikes that involve straight punches, palm heel strikes, side angle kicks, front thrust kicks and knee strikes.

The theory behind the counter strikes is to "create temporary motor dysfunction" and "temporary muscle impairment" through the "fluid shock wave" that gets sent around detainees' bodies, but only leaves bruising, the manual explains.

It is not known whether the training manual has since been updated. Serco has repeatedly fought the release of similar documents, claiming other versions are not in the "public interest" and could cause commotion inside lockups.

The Age reported that the Immigration Department had modeled its policy on restricting media access to detention centres by consulting the United States' rules for Guantanamo Bay.

"Serco's training manual, complete with detailed instruction on the infliction of pain and carefully-split gender roles for staff, appears to be based on techniques for maintaining control inside prisons.”The Department of Immigration likes to say that detention centres are not prisons, or places of punishment, but Serco's manual clearly establishes exactly such a framework."

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was expected to read key sections of the training manual to Parliament. She said the guide taught guards to treat "vulnerable people as if they are prisoners, when they have broken no laws and are asserting their international right to seek asylum".

"There is nothing in this training manual to suggest anybody working on the ground in our detention centres has the skills necessary to deal with the specific needs of asylum seekers,". "All it does is teaching how to use force. Serco officers themselves have told the Immigration Detention Centre inquiry and their union that they are ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues and suicide prevention training.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) has continued to back Serco and its methods. A department spokeswoman said that while DIAC did not approve Serco's training manual, since that was a matter for the company, it did assess very carefully during the tendering process for the government's $1billion contract "the capability, the experience and the culture" of the bidding companies.

There are presently three inquiries into deaths in immigration detention centres run by Serco in Australia. Serco's UK parent company was last year found responsible for the death of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood, who was staying at a UK youth training centre.