Posts Tagged asylum seekers
Abbott heading for a clash
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on February 13, 2012
Young men and women join the Royal Australian Navy for a variety of reasons: to fight for their country against its enemies, to learn a trade, to see the world, in the hope of adventure, or even to experience what Winston Churchill described as the tradition of “rum, sodomy and the lash.”
But it is a safe bet that none of them enlist in the hope of being ordered to turn leaky Indonesian fishing boats full of the wretched of the Earth back across the seas they have already braved rather than conduct them the much shorter distance to Australian territory.
quite apart from the obvious dangers such a course poses for both the hapless asylum seekers and the navy personnel who may well be called upon to risk their lives if the desperate boat people decide to sabotage their vessels rather than attempt the return journey, there will always be a feeling that this is not what they signed up for. The defence of Australia was never – at least until now – supposed to involve using violence against those who not only pose no threat, but are actually pleading for help.
and by doing so they would also be breaking the oldest and most venerable law of the sea: the first duty of sailors is to rescue those in danger, irrespective of whether they be friend or foe. to refuse to do so – in fact to send them into deeper peril – would be a violation of the ultimate moral code, as well as being a clear breach of international law.
so it is hardly surprising that the navy is less than enthusiastic about Tony Abbott's latest plan to end what he describes (hysterically) as “the crisis in Australia's border protection.” The central plank is for the navy to turn back all – not some, but all – craft bearing asylum seekers to Indonesia. Given that the Indonesians have stated bluntly that they are happy to take back their own crew members but they regard the asylum seekers as Australia's responsibility, this will presumably leave the hapless victims to drift until they founder.
Since they are unlikely to accept that outcome, the Australians will be faced with a choice: continue to repel them in accordance with Abbott's policy, risking sabotage, mayhem and the inevitable loss of life, or do what they have in the past-escort the boats to Christmas Island, arrest the crew and deliver the asylum seekers for detention and eventual processing, knowing that about nine out of 10 of them will be found to be genuine refugees and therefore entitled to protection under international law.
Abbott says that he would expect the navy to obey orders – the boats are to be turned back, no ifs and no buts. Sailors who refused to co-operate would presumably lay themselves open to a charge of mutiny against the Australian government, which might be better than being charged with breaking international law and possible crimes against humanity, for which, as we have known since Nuremberg, “I was only obeying orders” is no defence.
The policy has been condemned by naval personnel, lawyers and foreign affairs experts who have warned that apart from its dangers and illegalities, it would irrevocably sour Australia's always delicate relations with Indonesia, our nearest neighbour and our most important diplomatic link to ASEAN and through it to the whole of Asia.
Abbott's immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, has defended it, but without any great enthusiasm. Abbott's deputy and shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop, and his shadow Defence Minister, David Johnson, have maintained deafening silence. The policy has been dismissed by former naval chief Chris Barrie as both illegal and unworkable, and denounced by others as silly, callous and possibly homicidal.
so how did Abbott come up with it and why does he persist with it? well, simply to show he's hairy chested; he has balls while Julia Gillard self-evidently does not.
Note the timing; when Abbott announced his brainwave, Morrison was supposedly in discussion with Gillard's Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, to try and find a compromise which would allow off-shore processing of asylum seekers – the policy supposedly espoused by both sides – to be implemented.
Bowen was indeed prepared to compromise; he offered to reopen Nauru, in spite of advice that it would not act as an effective deterrent to the people smugglers a second time around, and of what (he revealed later) were exorbitant cost estimates for refurbishing and running the place. he even suggested resurrecting the cruel and inhumane device of Temporary Protection Visas, the form of psychological torture whereby even those found to be genuine refugees were prevented from enjoying the rights of normal citizens for an indefinite period. Bowen put TPVs on the table even though they had proved to have disastrous unexpected consequences: those unable to seek reunion with their families, or even overseas visiting rights, persuaded wives and children to follow them through the asylum seeker route, adding greatly to the numbers risking their lives on the voyage.
Bowen was prepared to take on policies which he knew to be at best pointless and at worst positively dangerous in the cause of bipartisanship. Morrison, however, was prepared to concede nothing: Abbott's way or no way. he knew Bowen could not and would not surrender totally, and was therefore content to let the impasse continue and blame the government. But since that made him look both stubborn and cynical, and reinforced the general feeling that the opposition was so obsessed by the thought of power that it had forgotten policy altogether, Abbott decided that he had to do produce something positive – anything to prove that he was not really the black hole of negativity the government was successfully portraying.
so ‘Stop the Boats!' morphed into ‘Turn Back the Boats!' with no serious thought of either context or consequences. Illegal, unworkable, silly, callous and possibly homicidal; also thoroughly nasty at every level. But not negative – no one can accuse him of that. Action Man is back. Or should that be Stupefaction Man?
Asylum-seeker policy at its worst
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on January 7, 2012
WHEN some future historian tells the story of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers since the introduction of mandatory detention in 1992, one of the saddest and cruellest elements of that story will be the plight of Ali Abbas. Ali, who turned 18 on December 31, was accepted as a genuine refugee by the Immigration Department last April. Yet he has also received a negative security assessment from ASIO, so he is denied the resettlement that, as a refugee, he is entitled to receive. As a refugee, he cannot forcibly be repatriated to his country of origin, Kuwait. Yet as a declared security risk, he must remain in detention or be deported. It is Catch-22 in its most perverse form.
ASIO has not explained its negative assessment of Ali, presumably for security reasons. Reasonable people will wonder, therefore, just what someone so young could have done to be deemed a threat. Ali was only 13 when he and his family fled from Kuwait to Indonesia. he was 16 when he arrived at Christmas Island by boat, travelling unaccompanied. he has lived in detention for more than a year, during which time his mental health has deteriorated and he has repeatedly attempted suicide.
According to Professor Jon Jureidini, professor of psychiatry at the University of Adelaide, who conducted two assessments of Ali by video link, his ”significant psychological impairment” is ”a reaction to being in immigration detention exacerbated by what he must experience as the cruelty of having refugee status but being denied a visa”. a Federal Court judge who is hearing a case challenging the long-term detention of recognised refugees has urged the Immigration Department to move Ali out of the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation Centre to a ”supportive residential or family-based environment”.
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It is not only Ali’s youthfulness that makes the ASIO assessment a puzzle. Ali was officially informed of the assessment on December 15, the day his lawyers began the Federal Court challenge and when he had not yet turned 18. Yet on December 16 ASIO told a parliamentary inquiry that ”as of 22 November” it had not refused security clearance to a minor. did ASIO’s evidence simply rely on outdated information? or was the agency trying to mislead?
Ali and his lawyers deserve to know answers to these questions, and so do the Australian people, in whose name both ASIO and the Immigration Department act. The adverse security assessment strains credulity, and Ali’s continued detention shames the nation.
The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011
Find More Stories The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection 
The Opposition is obsessed about re-opening Nauru as a place of offshore processing.
The Government has signalled the possibility of using Nauru, as long as the Opposition agrees to the use of Malaysia as well.
Asylum seekers continue to provide a useful political football. there are a few questions which have to be answered if we are to resolve the problem of dealing with boat people.
The first is: What is the problem we are trying to solve? is it that boat people might come to harm on the way here, or is it just that they get here?
It is tempting to think that the Opposition’s expressed concern for the safety of boat people is feigned: that their real concern is to show the electorate that they can stop boat people from getting here at all. Talk of deterrents suggests that they do not want boat people arriving here. but if you want deterrents, the risk of drowning on the way has got to be about as powerful a deterrent as you can get. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that their true concern is the safety and well-being of boat people.
If the safety of boat people is the issue, then the second question is: What is the best way of preventing asylum seekers from risking their lives by getting onto leaky, over-crowded boats? the answer is some form of offshore processing. but what does that mean, and where should it happen?
“Offshore processing” is a phrase which has been used to mislead the public. the proposal was not simply to send people off to Malaysia so their claims for protection could be processed: it was to send them to Malaysia and close the door behind them. Refusing to even consider their claim for protection is hardly consistent with a concern for their well-being. So, the Malaysian Solution as currently envisaged is not the answer.
Neither is Nauru the answer. this is so for a number of reasons. first, people do not get to Nauru unless they first get on a boat, to be intercepted by the Australian Navy as they approach Australian territorial waters. this does nothing to protect them from the perils of the boats. the SIEV-X, which sank with the loss of 353 lives, sank on October 19, 2001 – weeks after Nauru had been commissioned as a place of detention and the Pacific Solution had begun.
In addition, Nauru is too small to be a place of permanent settlement of asylum seekers who are taken there and are assessed as refugees. it has a population of about 10,000 people; it does not have a local supply of food or water sufficient for its own people; it does not even have a stable electricity supply or telephone service. Asylum seekers taken there and assessed as refugees would have to be resettled somewhere, and quickly. That would almost certainly mean in Australia. All the use of Nauru does is make the process unbelievably expensive. Tony Abbott’s insistence on using Nauru as a place for offshore processing is simply a way of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.
Sending people to Malaysia for processing after they have arrived here is not the answer, because (by definition) the people caught up in the Malaysian Solution have already arrived in Australia safely. this model is simply intended as a deterrent.
Any offshore processing which has the interests of refugees in mind must involve not only fair processing but also resettlement of those who are found to be refugees.
One possibility is to process protection claims while people are in Indonesia. Those who are assessed as refugees would be resettled, in Australia or elsewhere, in the order in which they have been accepted as refugees. if Australia increased its annual refugee intake, with a guarantee of at least 10,000 places for those processed in Indonesia, the incentive to get on a boat would disappear overnight. at present, people assessed by the UNHCR in Indonesia face a wait of 10 or 20 years before they have a prospect of being resettled. during that time, they are not allowed to work, and can’t send their kids to school. no wonder they chance their luck by getting on a boat. this proposal would reduce the waiting time to one or two years, and Australian officials would have an ample chance to warn people of the dangers of a trip with people smugglers.
Genuine offshore processing, with a guarantee of swift resettlement, was the means by which the Fraser government managed to bring about 80,000 Vietnamese boat people to Australia in the late 1970s. it worked, but it was crucially different from the manner of offshore processing being proposed by both major parties.
Unless offshore processing is done fairly and is coupled with swift resettlement, it is nothing but a sham to mask a desire to keep refugees out.
Christmas is a good time to reflect on whether we are, as a nation, genuinely concerned about the welfare of asylum seekers. if we are, then offshore processing can work, and would avoid the hazards of unscrupulous people smugglers and leaky boats. but only if it is done fairly, in Indonesia, and with a guarantee of swift resettlement.
Julian Burnside AO QC is an Australian Barrister and an advocate for human rights and fair treatment of refugees.
Boy refugees’ treatment under fire in courts
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 24, 2011
“There are 463 asylum seekers in immigration detention waiting for ASIO to complete security checks and more than 50 people with negative ASIO assessments that have condemned them to indefinite detention.” Photo: Angela Wylie
THE federal government has come under renewed judicial attack over the way it treats unaccompanied teenage asylum seekers.
A 17-year-old boy, who was hospitalised in Darwin after trying to hang himself from a double bunk bed, is at the centre of a challenge in the Federal Court to the prolonged detention of recognised refugees waiting for ASIO security clearance.
The High Court has meanwhile ruled that the Immigration Department was wrong to refuse to let an Afghan teenager, who arrived unaccompanied as a child in Australia, later bring his mother here.
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And, in the Federal Court, law firm Slater & Gordon has sought the release of a Kuwaiti teenager into community detention and questioned the Immigration Minister Chris Bowen’s duty of care to unaccompanied children left to deteriorate into mental illness.
There are 463 asylum seekers in immigration detention waiting for ASIO to complete security checks and more than 50 people with negative ASIO assessments that have condemned them to indefinite detention.
Lawyers for the boy, who has been detained for more than a year despite being granted refugee status in April, cannot be told whether ASIO has issued a negative security clearance or are still investigating his case.
A Slater & Gordon associate, Andrew Baker, said the court case ”highlights very clearly the problems caused when ASIO determinations aren’t announced to the people that are affected … they are effectively held in limbo and indefinite detention”.
Jon Jureidini, professor of psychiatry at the University of Adelaide, has conducted two assessments via video link of the boy as he was held in Darwin and then moved to Melbourne.
He concluded his ”significant psychological impairment” is ”a reaction to being in immigration detention exacerbated by what he must experience as the cruelty of having refugee status but not being granted a visa”.
The boy, who cannot be named, was born in Kuwait and fled to Indonesia with his family when he was 13. last year, he disobeyed his father, who wanted the family to wait for UNHCR resettlement together, and boarded a boat to Christmas Island alone.
The suicide attempt on November 26 was thwarted when fellow detainees at Darwin Airport Lodge broke down a door to force their way into his room. the boy is under constant watch by guards, but Professor Jureidini said his situation had worsened in Melbourne and he needed to be released to a family setting.
Pamela Curr, of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, has told the court she met the Kuwaiti boy through a church group when she took a group of children to the beach in July and has been alarmed at his deterioration.
In the High Court case, Sayed Abdul Rahman Shahi was 17 when he applied for his mother to come to Australia on an immediate family visa but had turned 18 by the time the department made its refusal nine months later.
Only minors can nominate parents for the visa. the High Court ruled the department was wrong to discount his age at the time of the application.
The Immigration Department said it was considering the implications of the decision.
The Greens welcomed the ruling. the opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said that the Coalition’s policy of issuing temporary protection visas would prevent minors from later sponsoring family members and this would deter unaccompanied teenagers from making boat journeys as ”anchors” for their families.
The Federal Court case has been adjourned until today.
Australian rights body to probe child people smugglers
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 16, 2011
AFP Monday, Nov 21, 2011
SYDNEY – Australia’s Human Rights Commission said Monday it would hold an inquiry into the treatment of suspected people smugglers who claim to be children, with an immediate focus on Indonesian crew.
Commission president Catherine Branson said she had concerns that at least 20 people now held in adult jails and who claimed to be children had been wrongly assessed as adults.
“I have been concerned for some time that errors may have been made in the processes used to determine the age of these individuals,” she said.
“These errors may have resulted in children being detained for long periods of time in immigration detention and in adult prisons.”
Lawyers for Indonesians hired to crew asylum-seeker boats say mistakes about their clients’ ages, combined with the government’s tough stance against people smugglers, has resulted in children being placed in adult jails.
Branson said the individuals of immediate concern were Indonesians who crewed boats bringing asylum-seekers to Australia and who have subsequently been investigated for people smuggling offences.
Australia generally sends suspected people smugglers found to be minors home but imposes a mandatory five-year jail sentence on adults involved in people smuggling – making age determination critically important.
Branson said the inquiry would look at the use of wrist X-rays as evidence of age, a method whose accuracy has been called into question and which the Greens Party has proposed banning.
Wrist X-rays are a relatively common age-profiling tool which compares an individual’s bone growth against a standard “atlas” developed in the US in the 1950s chronicling the appearance of children’s bones at different ages.
Branson said Australia had a responsibility to ensure that unaccompanied children who came here were protected.
“Australia is also obliged to ensure that children deprived of their liberty are separated from adults in detention or prison,” she said.
Minors were often used as crewmen and cooks on people-smuggling vessels.
The controversy comes as a 14-year-old Australian boy is facing up to six years in prison in Indonesia after being caught in Bali last month with nearly seven grams of marijuana while on holiday with his parents.
