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One asylum seeker detained at Pontianak IDC said, “If you are a criminal you know the
sentence, two years, three years. But here, the wait is unknown. It’s hurting the mind, to
wait and wonder, it makes us crazy.” 169
Detention can be particularly severe for children’s mental health. According to medical
experts in the United Kingdom, children held in immigration centers developed “clinically
significant emotional and behavioral problems.” 170 Drawing on an extensive study from
Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, the International
Detention Coalition finds that
Children who are detained for immigration purposes are at risk of a variety
of psychosocial and developmental problems linked to their detention
experiences … The experience of detention may mimic the experience of
human rights abuses, persecution and terror.… Children and young people
who are detained for extended periods of time are more likely than others
to experience feelings of isolation, detachment, and loss of confidence. 171
An IOM doctor reported that one 14-year-old boy detained at Pontianak IDC “became a
stammerer because of the stress of the long detention. He had problems in the past, he
was a stammerer … as a young boy in Afghanistan. He had been treated for depression
then, and got better. But it came back, the stammer, when he was in detention.” 172 Another
IOM staffer added, “The minors have more psychological problems than the adults, they
haven’t developed their defenses yet.” 173
The psychologist who volunteers in Pontianak IDC described some of his child patients:
There were recently [in 2012] seven unaccompanied minors in detention, all
of whom were Afghan. Three of them had serious psychological problems;
they felt very distressed there. They had trauma from before, back in
169 Human Rights Watch interview with Mohammed A., Pontianak IDC, September 4, 2012.
170 Karen McVeigh, “Children made ‘sick with fear’ in UK immigration detention centres: Weight loss, difficulty sleeping,
bed-wetting and sickness among symptoms found at Yarl’s Wood,” Guardian, October 13, 2009.
171 International Detention Coalition, Captured Childhood: Introducing a New Model to Ensure the Rights and Liberty of
Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Irregular Migrant Children Affected by Immigration Detention (Melbourne, 2012), pp. 48-49.
172 Human Rights Watch interview with IOM doctor, Pontianak, September 5, 2012.
173 Human Rights Watch interview with IOM staffer, Pontianak, September 5, 2012.
51 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JUNE 2013