Posts Tagged asylum seekers
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.
Boy's people smuggling charge dropped, can return to Indonesia
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 6, 2011
a boat load of asylum seekers arrive at Christmas Island after being intercepted near Ashmore Reef. Picture: Toby Zerna Source: The Daily Telegraph
a 15-YEAR-OLD boy who has spent months in immigration detention will return home to Indonesia now a people smuggling charge against him has been dropped in a Melbourne court.
The Commonwealth scrapped an aggravated people smuggling charge against the boy after Victoria Legal Aid obtained evidence to prove he was under 18.
Dion Domun had been in youth immigration detention for several months in Darwin and Melbourne and was facing a mandatory jail term of five years.
He was charged in September. The Commonwealth had relied on wrist x-rays to maintain he was 19.
Legal Aid lawyers travelled to Indonesia last month to gather evidence to prove he was a minor while working on a boat intercepted by Australian authorities off Ashmore Reef in March.
Today, the Commonwealth agreed to drop the charge in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, without proceeding to an age determination hearing.
Legal Aid lawyer Gavin Green said Dion was now looking forward to being reunited with his family in Indonesia.
"Our client is anything but the stereotypic wealthy people smuggler," Mr Green said.
"Like the overwhelming majority of people charged in Australia with aggravated people smuggling, he was an easy and expendable target, recruited as a cook into what he thought was a fishing trip."
Mr Green said Dion was from an impoverished Indonesian fishing village, who left school at year eight to work as a cook on fishing boats to support his family.
It was essential police acted fast to gather evidence in cases where age was in dispute, he said.
"The Commonwealth do not themselves travel to these communities to obtain first hand evidence," he said.
"as well as ensuring that a 15-year-old boy is returned to his family, the evidence we sought has saved the taxpayer the significant cost of a trial."
Fifty-five men are detained on aggravated people smuggling charges in Victoria, including two others whose age is in dispute.
A second hearing to determine the age of another alleged people smuggler will resume in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday.
Boy's people smuggling charge dropped, can return to Indonesia
Give up illegal refugees deal with Australia, lawyers group tell Najib
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on November 23, 2011
Lawyers for Liberty once again calls upon Prime Minister Najib Razak not to dilute the protection that international law accords to refugees.
With the purported agenda of busting people smuggling and combating human trafficking, the Malaysian Government, has reiterated its determination to revive the scandalous refugee swap deal despite the Australian High Court’s finding which declared the deal illegal.
Given the findings of the Australian High Court which found that the Minister in charge was unable to satisfy the Court that Malaysia had met three important criteria that would deem it safe for asylum seekers, the Malaysian Prime Minister’s insistence that refugees are treated very well rings hollow.The safe third country criteria are that the country must
1. be legally bound by international law or its own domestic law to: provide access for asylum seekers to effective procedures for assessing their need for protection;
2. provide protection for asylum seekers pending determination of their refugee status; and
3. provide protection for persons given refugee status pending their voluntary return to their country of origin or their resettlement in another country.
The Australian High court also stated that in addition to the above criteria the Migration Act requires that the country meet certain human rights standards in providing that protection.
Lawyers for Liberty maintain that as long as Malaysia remains non-committal to any form of meaningful protection to asylum seekers in Malaysia, as evinced by legal framework- such illegal deals should never be endorsed.
To start with, Malaysia has yet to ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention – which would declare Malaysia’s commitment to recognizing fundamental legal rights of asylum seekers.
Further to date, refugees and asylum seekers are not allowed to work, frequently vulnerable to arrests and held in deplorable conditions of detention and if found guilty and convicted under Section 6 of the Immigration Act, are liable to be punished with whipping.
-Lawyers for Liberty
Give up illegal refugees deal with Australia, lawyers group tell Najib
