In the last 10 years Australia has had an Inquiry into the detention of asylum seekers every year. Will this one be any different? Let’s hope it is not yet another of Kevin Rudd’s all-words-no-action stuff ups, in order to make us think he’s doing something – our PM’s way of keeping things patted down as seems to be his way – a review here, a Commission there, an enquiry here?
The last 10 reviews, with the exception of the Palmer and the Human Rights Commission into Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon, have all been tabled, then filed. We can but hope that this one goes somewhere, and soon.
For a start, our policy of mandatory detention has to go. once we’ve done with that, a whole New World opens up. It’s called a compassionate world. Human rights enters the picture. Asylum seekers are no longer a long list of numbers to be dispensed with if possible as fast as possible.
‘Compulsory jailing expressly abandons the internationally agreed principle of imprisonment as a sanction of last resort.’
And…
‘We are the only country in the world which practises indiscriminate, indeterminate, incommunicado detention of asylum seekers.’**
Refugees do not leave their home country just for the adventure; they are desperate people and immigration’s ‘red neck’ approach to them, deny them all human rights and dignity, must not be done in our name.
‘The people making these decisions are old immigration department officers, who handled Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon. They are still there and they are just saying no.’*
Our Immigration Department is, and has for some time, been stuffed. Let’s hope this Inquiry to scrutinise Immigration Detention does something positive.
Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith’s suggestion for an amnesty for asylum seekers until the Dept. of Immigration gets its act together is a good one. It encourages immediate action, instead of hot air, and the longer it takes to clean up the shambles, the longer the amnesty for asylum seekers. If the latter causes pain to those who have trouble living with that amnesty, then the sooner Immigration is reborn into a coordinated, responsible department, with staff who know what they’re doing and who give each application the care, the energy and the compassion these desperate people need and deserve, the sooner everyone will be satisfied.
Labor’s record under Rudd is more ruthless with asylum seekers than the Howard Government. Since coming to power, Minister Evans has rejected 97.6% of applications – the highest rate of rejection since 2001. The recent suicide of a man known as Mr Zhang, forcibly deported to China by Immigration when he was known to be at risk of torture and persecution, shows not only how hopelessly inadequate that department is, but how callous.
Stephen Blanks of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties says: ‘He (Zhang) was removed from Australia in breach of our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.’
This enquiry cannot drag on to next year. There’s no reason it should and every reason it should wind up before December when our contract with the obscenely expensive Global Solutions Ltd runs out. These are the bully boys, who, because they need to operate at a profit are unfit for the job of overseeing detention centres. They are part of the US Wackenhut Corporation, which operations in 100+ countries. They have 35,000 employees, most of them trained to control hardened criminals. Putting them in charge of refugees, who have committed no crime, cannot ever be condoned. Right now, they are in charge of the Christmas Island Detention. I suggest we don’t let them get too comfortable.
Marie Gordon
*Justice Enfield
**Pamela Curr, Campaign coordinator Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.