FREDERICTON, New Brunswick, Canada:  Parents with autistic children confronted New Brunswick's Family and Community Services Minister, Tony Huntjens, on July 25 and demanded the release of a 21-year-old autistic man being held in a psychiatric hospital in Saint John.

"This is the most difficult thing I have ever faced," says Muhammad Arif, who is trying to get his autistic son, Walleed, out of Centracare, a psychiatric hospital in Saint John. His son has been there for more than a year and Arif says he hasn't been given a reason why. "I cannot believe that this kind of lack of compassion and this kind of atrocity will go on so long as it has gone."

Other parents of autistic kids from Fredericton, Moncton and Miramichi came to support Arif. But they say their fight goes beyond freeing Walleed.

"We here today are a group of parents with autism. We live, eat and breathe autism. We know what the struggles ar, but as you well know, the incarceration of Walleed Arif into Centracare is totally unacceptable," said Shirley Smallwood.

Arif and his supporters walked from the legislature to Family and Community Services offices. They confronted the Health Minister, who says its takes time to solve problems. "I'll try to intervene and work with the education system and the parents to see if we can come up with a solution."

The province has set aside Canadian$2.8 million for treating autistic children under the age of five. The group of parents want to meet the Minister again to discuss how treatment can be extended to an older age and be covered by Medicare. Hutchins has agreed to meet Arif on July 28 regarding his son. Walleed.

The protesters claimed that the mental-health facility was not well-suited to the needs of autistic individuals and that Walleed'scondition was deteriorating.

Waleed Arif was placed in Centracare by the Department of Family and Community Services in March. The move was against the wishes of his parents and against the advice of health specialists, the group claimed.

New Brunswick does not have a mental-health facility specically designed to treat autistic individuals.

Muhammad Arif said his son was now a shell of his former self, after living in an open Centracare ward. "We see death in his eyes ... every week when we go and visit him," Muhammad Arif said on July 25. "His eyes haunt us."

The group planned to take its protest to the Family and Community Services offices on Queen Street. The parents also want the government to deliver a form of treatment called Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) to autistic sufferers in the province.

The Tory government has promised to make the service available to children aged two to five, but the parents argue that is not enough.

One local mother, Nancy Blanchette, said the treatment could cost $40,000 a year. Her six-year-old son, Justin, is too old to access the services, which still have not been made available to autistic children.

Blanchette said the service was already available in five other Canadian provinces: Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta.

The treatment had been shown dramatically to improve individuals’ autistic disorders, she said. "I don’t want to see any other children or families go through this," Blanchette said.

There are roughly 1,000 individuals with autism in New Brunswick.

Muhammad Arif said the group would keep protesting until the Tory government released his son from Centracare.

They have collected a petition with 800 signatures supporting Waleed’s release, and they intend to have the petition tabled in the legislature after a new sitting begins next week.

A Liberal critic, Michael Murphy, has promised to take up Waleed Arif’s case in the legislature.

(Sources: CBC; The Daily Gleaner, July 25, 2003)