MOSCOW, November 6 (RIA Novosti) — A third of asylum-seeking detainees on the Manus Island, Australia use marijuana on a regular basis, The Guardian reported on Thursday.
“In the hard situation of prison, many people are living a hallucination life,” the newspaper quoted an anonymous detainee as saying. “It is a bitter fact that more than 10% of asylum seekers use marijuana every night and about 30-40% from time to time.”
According to the detainee, the exchange of the substance is usually made at sunset. Dealers throw marijuana over the territory of the detention center in exchange for packets of cigarettes being delivered in the same way.
“Sometimes, local officers get the drugs into the prison,” the detainee claimed as quoted by the newspaper.
Australia has recently come in for heavy domestic criticism for the way asylum seekers live in detention centers across the country. Specifically, the Australian government was blamed for ignoring cases of child abuse in detention centers and returning mentally ill applicants to their places of origin. In an August interview with The Guardian, employees from Australian detention centers stated that immigration officers had even done harm to the asylum-seekers in a bid to scare them against coming to Australia.
