Asylum seeker dies at Curtin

ADRIAN BEATTIE, The West Australian March 28, 2011, 6:27 pm

Officials at the Curtin detention centre near Derby are investigating the apparent suicide of an asylum seeker.
An Afghani male, aged about 19 or 20, was found dead about 3pm today.
It is believed he hanged himself.
A spokesperson for the Department of Immigration confirmed that there had been a death and said that detainees and detention centre staff tried to revive the man by administering CPR.
He said that officers from the Western Australia Police would investigate the circumstances of the death. He said the department wished to extend its sympathy to the man's family and friends.
The West Australian understands the asylum seeker was a recent arrival at Curtin and was a member of the Hazara community, an ethnic and religious minority in Afghanistan.
Victoria Martin-Iverson from the Refugee Action Network said: "This is what happens when our Immigration Detention Centres become mental illness factories. This young man is not the first to end his life in this way, having reached the end of his coping mechanism."
Ms Martin-Iverson said that this latest suicide by an asylum seeker was the sixth in seven months within detention centres on the Australian mainland.
New figures from the UN's refugee agency show there was a huge jump in the number of people applying for asylum in Australia last year even though the rest of the Western world saw a decrease in claims.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees said the number of asylum applications in Australia and New Zealand increased by 30 per cent during 2010 from the previous year, while around the world asylum applications fell by 5 per cent.
The large drop was attributed almost entirely to the collapse in asylum applications in southern European countries such as Italy and Greece due to new hard line policies.

Source,

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/9089760/asylum-seeker-dies-at-curtin/