Hundreds of people at a pro-refugee rally in Canberra on Sunday have heard a graphic description of how people are traumatised after being in a war zone.
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Diana Abdul Rahman, from Australian Muslim Voice in Canberra, said she and her daughter were terrified when bombs fell near their apartment in Lebanon.
"I covered my daughter, who was only two years old at the time, with my body, just in case something happened," she said.
"Every time a missile went off, she would jerk, sound asleep.
"Until you witness [war] and until you feel it, you don't know what it feels like.
"You hear the sound of a missile, an eerie screech; you hear it hit a building, then sounds like breaking concrete and smashing glass. It went on all night.
"I can still hear those missiles, as if it happened just today."
Her voice broke as she described enduring the bombardment when she lived in Lebanon and the lasting effects.
"As I lay there with my daughter in my arms, I thought I would do anything to save her," she said.
"I would walk, take a boat, I would bribe anybody, I would sell everything.
"So when you talk about refugees as nameless entities, remember, these are people who witnessed, who saw and felt the full brunt of brutal wars.
"They are not just human misery, they are individuals who once had a thriving life but were forced to make such treacherous journeys to find a better place.
"Imagine yourself, losing everything overnight and having nothing to show for it."
The rally also heard from Tobias Gunn, a former worker with Save The Children on Nauru, who had told Fairfax Media of seeing a toddler bashed at the detention camp.
He told the Canberra rally about this incident.
He said he saw despair among the children in the camp.
"They asked me a question that I'll die not knowing how to answer: 'why is Australia doing this to us'?" he said.
Every week, two children in the camp lost hope and self-harmed, he said.
"This is a place where every second day a child is assaulted," he said.
UnionsACT secretary Alex White said asylum seekers should be allowed to work in the community.
Traffic was blocked briefly in cental Canberra as the crowd marched through city streets, chanting for refugees to be freed.
In March, an independent review into sexual abuse inside the detention centre on Nauru found evidence of rape and sexual assault of minors and guards trading marijuana for sexual favours from female detainees.
