AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Tuesday ordered an inquiry into the treatment of children in detention after the airing of video showing prison guards teargassing teenage inmates and strapping a half-naked, hooded-boy to a chair.

    Footage of the abuse of six aboriginal boys in a juvenile detention center sparked renewed criticism of Australia’s treatment of Aborigines and their high imprisonment rate.

    The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) aired CCTV footage late Monday of boys in a Northern Territory juvenile detention center also being stripped naked, thrown by the neck into a cell, and held for long periods in solitary confinement.

    “Like all Australians, I’ve been deeply shocked — shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment of children,” Turnbull said on ABC radio as he announced a Royal Commission, Australia’s most powerful, state sanctioned inquiry.

    The CCTV footage from the Don Dale Youth Detention Center in Darwin was shot between 2010-2014. A lawyer representing two of the boys said all six boys abused were of aboriginal descent. Aborigines make up the majority of the Northern Territory population and 94 percent of juvenile inmates in the territory.

    A report into some of the incidents by the Northern Territory Children’s Commissioner in 2015 found fault with the guards’ behavior, but the findings were disputed by the then head of prisons and not acted upon, said the ABC.

    Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles sacked his corrections minister within hours of the broadcast and said that information about the abuse had been withheld from him, blaming a “culture of cover-up” within the Corrections system.

    Residents in Alice Springs staged a peaceful protest against the abuse of children in detention, while the ABC reported that at least eight people were protesting on the roof of a prison in the town.

    The CCTV video showed guards mocking inmates, carrying a boy by the neck and throwing him onto a mattress in a cell, and covering a teenager’s head with a hood and shackling him to a chair with neck, arm, leg and foot restraints.

    The ABC reported that only two detention staff members identified in footage remained within the youth justice system.

    Lawyer Peter O’Brien, who represents Dylan Voller and Jake Roper who were abused, said he was suing the state on their behalf.(SD-Agencies)