The online group GetUp has launched a campaign calling on the Australian government to return to its policy position of treating refugees and asylum seekers humanely, as outlined in the 2008 speech by former Immigration Minister Chris Evans, “New Directions in Detention.”

“Many Australians would have been shocked last night at what they saw on the ABC’s Four Corners program. The way we treat refugees once they arrive in Australia for processing is a disgrace,” GetUp National Director Simon Sheikh said.

“The Government will be waiting to gauge community response to this terrible reality and that’s why today GetUp members will be signing and sharing a petition to stop refugees being left languishing in immigration detention centres.”

“In 2008 Minister Evans made the case that detention in immigration detention centres should only to be used as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time, that people in detention should be treated fairly and reasonably within the law and that conditions of detention should ensure the inherent dignity of detainees,” Mr Sheikh said.

“All we ask is that the Government keep its promise and implement its own party platform, which clearly labels this kind of treatment as unacceptable.”

GetUp’s campaign follows a motion passed this weekend at the South Australian ALP State Conference directing, “the federal government to realign its immigration policies, consistent with the ALP’s National Platform”.

In its email to members, the group will today tell the story of one asylum seeker who found himself confined in the facility’s “Management Unit”, a 3.5m2 cell with a mattress on the floor and nothing else, where occupants are kept 23.5hrs a day under observation with no reading or writing material.

“After being locked up in detention in Australia, with no court finding him guilty of any offence, guards entered his room and ordered him to strip,” Mr Sheikh said.

“He refused because apart from it being deeply humiliating for a Muslim man to be naked in front of others, his 7-year-old daughter was in the room. The guards then beat him, handcuffed him and took him to the Management Unit.”

“With some detainees spending close to two years in detention and many suffering post traumatic stress, it’s no wonder that on our watch detainees are attempting suicide.”

Last month GetUp and the Edmund Rice Centre released a policy paper, Refugee and Asylum Seeker Policy: A Third Way, which outlines a full compliment of changes required to achieve a more humane immigration system.