E/CN.4/2002/24/Add.1 page 47 work at the appropriate level of expertise. Many migrants therefore have to work for many years in jobs inferior to their real qualifications and have to bear the financial consequences. In some professions (medicine, teaching, engineering) the barriers migrants have to face are so great that they often have to give up the profession altogether. 103. The Special Rapporteur was informed that there are over 3,000 people, including women and children, being held in DIMA detention centres. A disproportionate number of these people are adherents of the Muslim religion, mostly from the Middle East and Asia. Others are from the Pacific Islands and Africa. Some have been kept there for several years, during which time they have been prevented from communicating with the outside world. It has been alleged that punitive, cruel and degrading treatments, often in the guise of “psychiatric care”, are routine in these detention centres. Injections with chemical substances to restrain, followed by solitary confinement, are routinely used as punishments. The drugs used usually belong to the phenothiazine and butyrophenone classes of drug, which block the neurotransmitter dopamine (in the brain), causing difficulty with movement, dulled emotions, impaired concentration and memory, and Parkinsonism (tremors, stiffness). The DIMA detention centres, located at Port Hedland (Western Australia), Villawood (Sydney), Perth (Western Australia), Curtin (Western Australia), Woomera (South Australia) and Maribyrnong (Melbourne), are staffed by the United States (Florida)-based Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC). WCC also provides health care to detainees and these treatments reportedly are racially discriminatory, punitive and harmful to the physical and mental health of recipients. 104. The Special Rapporteur inquired about the above allegations with several interlocutors, including the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia, which denied them. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission stated that “there are no objective sources which can prove these allegations. Allegations about the use of sedative injections to restrain detainees - i.e. when not indicated/required for medical reasons - were made during the early to mid-1990s and referred to in the Human Rights Commissioner’s 1998 report ‘Those who’ve come across the seas’. Recommendation 10.15 of that report was ‘The Department (meaning DIMA) should seek legal advice on the lawfulness of chemically restraining detainees’. Recommendation 10.16 proposed that, provided such use was lawful, ‘the Department should only chemically restrain a detainee in an emergency situation where it is required to save the person’s life or to prevent him or her from causing serious harm to himself or herself or others’”. 105. In response to those recommendations, the Minister for Immigration stated, in the “Government response” tabled in Parliament in mid-1999, “DIMA does not chemically restrain detainees. Under no circumstances are these medications used for punishment or to control detainees”. That position has been maintained since. Certainly the Immigration Detention Standards binding Australian Correctional Management - the private detention service-providers now operating the Australian immigration detention centres - make these stipulations. 106. The Special Rapporteur would call upon the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants to look further into immigration issues in Australia and intends to share relevant information with her.