Distressing scenes from a leaked video showing a guard dragging an unconscious asylum seeker across a concrete floor has sparked calls for a commission of inquiry into conditions in Australia's refugee detention centres.

At a rally outside the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMIA) head office in Canberra Wednesday, the Refugee Action Collective said that there had been a protest last Friday night and this was just the culmination of a series of incidents over the past months.

The day before, a 12-year-old Iranian child attempted to commit suicide, an Afghani man jumped off a roof into razor wire and two men cut their stomachs and wrists.

The Friday protests at the Curtin detention centre in western Australia are believed to have erupted when asylum seekers grew frustrated at their inability to get phone access to external supporters. Since last weekend, direct phone access to the refugees has been impossible.

''The people inside Curtin are now without a voice. The only information that is coming out is through DIMIA. We were getting phone calls from inside the detention centre. We need to tell their story to get their story out'', a spokeswoman for the Refugee Action Collective, Cathy Lewis, said.

The leaked video was screened on national television this week, revealing two refugees bashing their heads into concrete walls after being told they would not be allowed to apply for refugee status in Australia.

Australian Correctional Management (AMC), the company contracted by DIMIA to manage the Curtin detention centre, recorded the video in June 2001.

The video showed one asylum seeker knocking himself unconscious and then being dragged across the concrete floor by a guard and apparently left without medical attention.

Medical staff later treated the other man who had blood streaming from his head.

Later that day, a full-scale riot erupted. In the wake of the riot, one of the refugees was sentenced to five years in jail for rioting. The screening of leaked video footage earlier this week has created a furore over the treatment of those held in Australia's detention centres.

Full inquiry

The graphic footage has prompted the Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace (CCJDP) to call for a full inquiry into the management of the detention centres.

''The footage showed the apparent failure of ACM or ACM officers to treat and unconscious man'' said the Catholic commission's executive officer, Marc Purcell.

''We need a full judicial inquiry into incidents of self harm and procedures for dealing with such incidents in Australian immigration detention centres'', he said.

With media access to the centres heavily regulated and professionals obliged to sign contracts with confidentiality clauses, the only source of information on conditions inside the centres is through refugees directly contacting support groups or having lawyers pass information on.

For its part, DIMIA acknowledged that 100 of the 340 people held in the Curtin centre were involved in protests Friday night, protests that it complained originated with ''a few ringleaders''.

The protests, it claimed, resulted in five staff injured and buildings damaged ''leaving taxpayers with a substantial bill''.

The Refugee Action Collective, along with parliamentarians such as Greens Sen Bob Brown, has called for all the videos recorded by ACM of both the June 2001 and last week's incidents to be publicly released.

Since the video was first aired by the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Monday night, Australian Prime Minister John Howard sought to downplay the rough treatment of the unconscious refugee by the guard.

''I've been told that the staff were prevented, because of the conduct of some of the detainees, from providing it (assistance) and when they could, they did,'' he told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

''Look, I strongly support our policy of mandatory detention and I'm not going to criticise what occurred there,'' he said.

The acting minister for immigration, Senator Chris Ellison, acknowledged that the two people shown in the video whose first applications were first rejected, were later accepted. ''Further information was obtained and they were found to be refugees'', he said.

After airing the leaked tape, ABC followed up the initial story with a further programme featuring extensive interviews with three psychologists who worked in the Woomera detention centres in the harsh South Australian desert as recently as last week.

The psychologists told ABC 's Lateline programme that self-mutilation and attempted suicide was a daily occurrence in the detention centres and that the attitude of staff was often dismissive.

''There was a pervasive culture for example when they were distressed, saying 'I think what they're doing it's an Arab attack', meaning it's feigned, this distress is feigned,'' one of the experts told ABC .

Howard objected not to the plight of the asylum seekers, but to the amount of coverage the particular ABC programme was devoting to the treatment of asylum seekers.

''The emphasis put on this issue is out of proportion and not consistent with its obligations (of ABC ) to provide coverage of other current affairs issues,'' Howard told journalists. (IPS)