The Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) today supported calls for a full Royal Commission into the circumstances surrounding Cornelia Rau's detention at the Baxter Detention Centre. However, it insists such an inquiry must also examine the conditions of all other detainees inside the centre.

RAC Victoria said the harrowing experiences of Ms Rau and the total failure of the centre's management and the Department to safeguard her physical and psychological welfare clearly demonstrate they are unfit to run the centre and it must be closed immediately.

Refugee groups will be going to the Baxter Detention Centre this Easter for a national protest to demand it and all other Australia immigration detention centres are shut down.

"What if Cornelia Rau had been an asylum seeker? She would still be there and still suffering in obscurity like all the other detainees in Australia's gulag archipelago," said RAC Victoria spokesperson Tim Petterson.

"This poor distressed woman was kept in solitary confinement for 18 hours a day. When she needed psychiatric help she got guards in full riot gear," he continued.

"Senator Vanstone acknowledges her department stuffed up, but only because the normal abuse of detainees' human rights was this time meted out to an Australian national."

"Baxter detention centre is a secretive and toxic environment, where madness, suicide attempts and other acts of self-harm are part of daily life."

"Australians have a right to know who else is being treated like Cornelia Rau."

"We say close Baxter now and end the suffering of all detainees. There has got be a better way."

For information / interviews, contact:
Tim Petterson (RAC Vic) on 0438 399 973