Australia has agreed to pay Aus$28 million ($20 million) to compensate dozens of asylum seekers held in a remote immigration detention centre two decades earlier by a conservative government seeking to deter boat arrivals.
The Woomera detention centre opened in the southern Australian desert in 1999. Within six months it held nearly 1,500 people, most from Iraq and Afghanistan. A third of detainees were children.
The centre led human rights groups to condemn Australia’s punitive asylum seeker policies as protesting detainees sewed their lips closed on hunger strikes and attempted mass breakouts.
It was closed in 2003.
Last week, Australia’s High Court ruled the government was not immune from compensation claims for immigration detention found to be unlawful.
Shine Lawyers said on Friday the Australian government had agreed to settle a class action by 38 former detainees who allege serious harm while they were held in immigration detention in the
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