Inside the closed door of his room in the Park hotel in Melbourne – his “cage†for the past 10 days after eight years in detention – Salah Mustafa has nothing to do but wait for the coronavirus he fears will inevitably infect him.
“I sit in the room and I am afraid. We are all afraid,†he says.
“Today, I am negative, my son is negative. But tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, what then? Everywhere is infection.
“We are trapped here. We are stuck in our rooms, waiting [for] this virus to come.â€
Nearly half of the refugees and asylum seekers held by the Australian Border Force inside the Park hotel have now tested positive for the Delta strain of Covid-19.
Twenty of the 46 men held in the hotel are now confirmed cases. One man has been taken to hospital by ambulance. The original source of infection has not been traced.
Inside the hotel, staff and those detained say the hotel is an “incubator†for the virus. Refugees and asylum seekers share a common kitchen area and use the same lift – one at a time, with a guard – if they need to travel between floors.
Confirmed positive cases are moved to the first floor, but this sometimes happens hours after test results are returned, days after tests were taken.
Windows in the hotel can’t be opened – they were sealed shut after refugees were moved into the hotel in December – so air conditioners circulate air.
Salah Mustafa and his son, Mustafa Salah, have spent eight years within Australia’s immigration detention regimes: offshore on Nauru, in Sydney’s Villawood detention centre, and, for the past few months, confined to the Park hotel in Carlton.
Their claim for refugee protection has been formally recognised. Australia is legally obliged to protect them and they cannot be returned to their homeland Iraq where they would face persecution.
Salah Mustafa keeps in close contact by phone with his son in the adjacent room and with other refugees in the hotel.
“Everybody is very tired, everyone is very angry. We are feeling like animals, like we are in a cage. They [the Australian government] are mocking us … they don’t care.â€
Once or twice a day, Salah Mustafa, who is fully vaccinated against Covid, calls a guard and is escorted to the fourth floor, where there is a small outdoor area where refugees and asylum seekers can smoke, one at a time.
“I am smoking … because I need to something. Otherwise I just sit in this room all the time.â€
The Covid lockdowns have exacerbated the frustrations of those in indefinite detention. Almost every person held in the hotel has been detained, offshore and on, by Australia for more than eight years. Few have any sense of when they might be released.
“Why do they keep us like this? No one can ever say when this will end,†Salah Mustafa says. “I just need stability. I just need freedom, for my family.â€
Salah Mustafa says his son was 14 when he came to Australia seeking sanctuary. He is 23 now. “His education, his childhood, all of it taken away.â€
Another refugee at the Park hotel, who did not want to give his name, said: “We have been here nine years and we are dying. We are very, very scared.
“Every day there is another case. There is no safety and no rules. Here it is very bad. It is closed, there is no fresh air, it is a small place. There is not any doctor.â€
The current outbreak began less than a fortnight ago. On 17 October, three refugees tested positive. That number was 19 cases within four days.
Nursing staff at the hotel only work during the day, refugees say, and have limited access to medication. Some Covid-positive refugees have said they have only been given paracetamol.
The detainees at the Park are a vulnerable group. Many of them were brought to Australia from offshore processing in Papua New Guinea and Nauru under the medevac laws for serious health issues that could not be addressed offshore.
At least 14 are immunocompromised, including one man who has burns to more than half of his body from setting himself on fire on Nauru.
Department sources have told the Guardian an outbreak in a detention setting “was avoidable – there were plenty of warnings this would happenâ€.
A staff member inside the hotel said health officials working in the building were “waiting for advice from the [Victorian government] public health unitâ€.
The Australian Border Force has issued regular statements on the situation at the hotel. Its latest bulletin confirms 20 positive cases.
“As is the case in the community, not all Covid-19 positive patients will require hospital admission,†a spokesperson said.
Those requiring additional care are taken to hospital and returned to the hotel once discharged, the spokesperson said.
“All detainees within the facility have been advised to quarantine in their accommodation rooms to reduce the risk of transmission.â€
The Guardian has asked for specific details on the vaccination rate within the Park hotel cohort. More broadly across the immigration detention network, vaccine rates are lower in detention than in the general community.
Across Australia, 86.8% of those aged over 15 have had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccination, and 73.4% are fully vaccinated.
But among those in detention, 62% have had one vaccine dose and 55% are fully vaccinated. The vaccination program in detention began in August, six months after the nationwide rollout began.
Among those detained, there is a low level of vaccine hesitancy. Sources say this exists because of a mistrust towards the health contractor, International Health and Medical Services, which has been responsible for the healthcare of detainees for years. Others have reported missing vaccine appointments because they were moved within the detention network.
Victorian authorities concerned
The Victorian health minister, Martin Foley, said the state government was “quite concerned†about the situation inside the Park hotel. He said health authorities had “sought some assurances from the commonwealth and operatorâ€.
“What we’re concerned about is the measures in place at the facility need to be the same, or at least the same kind of standard that we would expect in other arrangements. We’re not saying that isn’t the case, but we just don’t have the clarity of oversight.â€
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne described the hotel outbreak as an “avoidable disasterâ€.
Thanush Selvarasa, a human rights intern with the ASRC and a refugee formerly detained on Manus Island and at Melbourne’s Mantra hotel, was released in January this year.
“It is hard to hear about the news, painful news, about my brothers in Park hotel.
“When I was in detention I was also talking about an outbreak of Covid. Now look. The government is very careless.â€
