The Salvation Army was not silent

Letter to the editor in response to the opinion piece titled "Abuses in Australia’s name must be stopped" published by Fairfax Media on 3 December 2014.

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Salvation Army has taken exception to the inaccurate and misleading opinion piece appearing yesterday about Manus Island and Nauru.

Whilst the views may be the personal views of the writer, they are also clearly wrong and misleading. This is not the first time Fairfax has published inaccurate claims related to The Salvation Army and Manus Island/Nauru (16/07/2014 Five months after detainee killed, no suspect charged).

My concern is that articles are published without any fact checking on the topic or contacting The Salvation Army to clarify the (false) claims.

The Salvation Army was not prohibited from speaking to the media nor were we silent. The Salvation Army has spoken widely - both to the media and policy makers - about this issue and continues to do so.

We regularly spoke to the media, conducted interviews with your own journalists and other media like 4 Corners. We would also send out statements about offshore processing and we still maintain a dedicated media page outlining our work and role in offshore processing.

The Salvation Army also presented extensive testimony to the Manus Inquiry and have also presented evidence to the parliamentary committee on human rights.

The Salvation Army also did not issue any confidentiality agreements.

The Confidentiality Deeds were signed between the Commonwealth of Australia and the individual employee only. The Salvation Army was not a party to these Deeds.

Finally, The Salvation Army has never called any employee a “hero”. “Hero” was actually a headline from Fairfax media that has since wrongly been attributed to The Salvation Army.

These claims are not only inaccurate and wrong, but also go against the hard work our dedicated staff in Manus Island and Nauru were tasked with carrying out.

Regards

Sharon Callister
CEO
Humanitarian Mission Services
The Salvation Army