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More refugees confronted with a lifetime in immigration detention because of an “adverse” security check by ASIO are being driven to suicide attempts and self-harm.

In Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne, two Tamil refugees tried to commit suicide within a month of each other, one over Mother’s Day weekend. that a “third man stood screaming with an electrical cord clutched in one hand … at the same spot where a friend had swung by the neck until he almost died three nights earlier”.

“The man, one of 78 rescued by the Australian customs vessel Oceanic Viking in 2009, had become distraught listening to a Mother’s Day special on radio, and remembering how his mother was killed in Sri Lanka’s civil war when he was 13.”

One of the men told refugee supporters he lost hope when another Tamil refugee, mother and wife Ranjini, and her two sons were locked up in Sydney’s Villawood detention centre on May 10 because ASIO decided she was a “security risk”.

After they had lived in Melbourne for a year as recognised refugees and Ranjini had remarried only one month ago, she was taken into custody in Melbourne and sent to Villawood, where her husband has been unable to visit her and she now faces indefinite detention.

The SMH said it was believed ASIO found her deceased husband had been connected to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But there is no way to confirm this because all of ASIO’s decisions regarding refugees are kept secret.

“They are refugees, they cannot be returned to their country of origin, they have an adverse security finding — Australia has effectively blacklisted them, what other country will take them?

Almost 50 people found to be genuine refugees by Australia remain locked up in detention centres, known widely to be “mental illness factories”, due to ASIO’s negative security findings. A recent parliament inquiry said an independent review and appeals process was needed and the ALP national conference adopted a similar position last year, but the government is yet to act.