Tampa cruelty continues — but there's hope

by Peter Mac

The second anniversary of the Tampa crisis passed recently, with the 
situation for desperate asylum seekers now seemingly as terrible as ever. 
The Tampa refugees have, in effect, been subjected to a two and a half-year 
prison sentence, for the "crime" of attempting to come here by unorthodox 
means and/or with inadequate documentation. Other asylum seekers have been 
detained even longer.

But the real crime was perpetrated by the Howard Government, which 
established the camps to begin with, and has used every means possible to 
incarcerate the asylum seekers there, or to deport them to their countries 
of origin.

And the Government now seems determined to overturn the recent order by the 
Family court for the release of five children from South Australia's Baxter 
Detention Centre. As a result of this decree, the children enjoyed their 
first night of freedom together on August 26, some two and a half years 
after they first arrived in Australia. They have now rejoined their mother 
in Adelaide, and will at last have access to education and other basic 
facilities that most Australians take for granted.

They will also have access to rehabilitative therapy, which psychologists 
have stated is a necessity. The Court accepted submissions that the 
children had been subjected to violence and inappropriate behaviour, which 
had led to two of the boys escaping from the Woomera camp, and later to 
attempts at self-mutilation.

With extreme legal understatement the Family Court judges described the 
Howard Government's 13-month campaign to retain the children in the camps 
as "curious". They queried whether the Government could have any legitimate 
interest in retaining the children other than "ensuring (their) 
availability if and when the time comes to have them removed from 
Australia."

Two hundred children are currently being held in Australian detention 
centres. Some have been imprisoned in these camps for more than three 
years, and others were born there and know of no other environment.

Children released — for how long?

The Family Court decision regarding the "Baxter five" has been hailed as a 
precedent for the release of the other children. However, a government 
appeal to the High Court over an earlier Family Court decision against the 
indefinite detention of children is scheduled to be heard on September 30.

Welfare workers caring for the Baxter children and their mother say they 
are aware that their freedom may not last. A return to confinement would 
surely constitute a most terrible mental cruelty.

Significantly, the Howard Government is not contesting the Family Court 
judgement on the basis of human rights, but on the constitutional right of 
the Court to deal with the welfare of children in custody. After the 
judgement Ruddock declared truculently that "(The Family court) judges are 
unelected and they're in effect determining policy — rather than 
establishing what the law is."

And in an act of particularly despicable meanness, Ruddock also sought to 
drive a wedge between the asylum seekers and the Australian public. Despite 
the two and a half-year delay experienced by the Tampa refugees, he 
maintained that the courts had given their cases priority over Australian 
citizens with cases before the Court.

But if you think the situation of the asylum seekers in camps such as 
Baxter and Woomera is bad, spare a thought for those in the "Pacific 
solution" camps such as the 402 detainees on Nauru.

Access to the Nauru camps is now extremely difficult. Journalists seeking 
to visit the camps have been denied visas. A Catholic priest gained a visa 
but later had it withdrawn because his visit was deemed not to be for 
pastoral reasons.

Others have been more successful. The leader of the Australian Democrats 
expressed shock after a recent visit, and noted: "The (government's) policy 
seems to be aimed at grinding down the will of the detainees until they 
give up and go home."

But even this is now problematical, as many of the Afghan birth records 
were destroyed during the conflict of the last 23 years. As a result, some 
60 of the Afghan detainees who have expressed a desire to go home have not 
been able to have their national status confirmed, and therefore appear 
destined to remain in limbo in the camps for the indefinite future.

The Afghan ambassador to Australia, who also visited Nauru earlier this 
year, stated that many of the detainees with whom he spoke would now need 
lifelong counselling.

He commented: "A number are highly traumatised and very sick because of the 
prolonged detention and uncertainty about their future.

"Rehabilitating them will be a major task. It is particularly tough on the 
young children. Some of these kids arrived when they were seven or eight 
years of age and now they are nine or ten.

"They have been held behind barbed wire and the schooling they receive is 
far from adequate. Others have been born in detention and know no other 
life."

The acute emotional stress from which the island's detainees are suffering 
resulted in riots and some damage to the camps last Christmas eve. Some 
parts of the camps are now deemed by the Nauru authorities to be unsafe to 
enter.

Lawyers denied entry

A number of male detainees from two of the Nauru camps are to be tried for 
their alleged involvement in the riots. They're facing prison terms of 
seven years, but lawyers seeking to represent them have been refused entry 
to Nauru.

It is now widely believed that the bans are the result of pressure from the 
Howard government. Nauru, a poverty-stricken state, is largely dependent on 
Australian aid, even though the majority of this goes to funding the 
operation of the camps.

The holding of what is in effect a "kangaroo court" would not be so easy in 
Australia. It is apparently no problem in Nauru, which although holding the 
detainees for the Howard Government, is not subject to Australian law, and 
is not a party to any international treaty on refugees.

In this respect the situation has some parallels with that relating to 
United States prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay, and others who are flown 
to countries with no concern about human rights, for "special questioning".

Women and children comprise more than 100 of the Nauru detainees. The 
plight of the women in these lawless camps, surrounded by men driven half 
mad by frustration and hopelessness, is unthinkable.

Families split up

Several of the women detainees and their children have been denied 
permission to resettle in Australia, even though their husbands are already 
in Melbourne and Sydney. This contravenes the policy of the UN High 
Commissioner for Refugees, which Ruddock promised to observe with regard to 
the Nauru detainees.

Some of the men detainees who have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan 
and other countries have disappeared without trace. Amnesty International 
has now issued a global alert about the deteriorating human rights 
situation for the Nauru internees.

The Uniting church has condemned the enforced return of refugees to Iran 
and other countries from which they originally fled. The National Director 
of Uniting Justice, the Rev. Elenie Poulos, stated with regard to a 
recently-signed secret deal between Australia and Iran that: "The Minister 
for Immigration has been unwilling to release the Memorandum of 
Understanding he signed with the Iranian Government.

"That forced deportations should be conducted in such secrecy is a serious 
indictment of the government's commitment to open government. . That the 
Australian Government would return people to a country so close to a war 
zone, and to a place where persecution and torture are a fact of life, is 
an abrogation of our responsibility to decent people not to endanger 
people's lives", Elenie Poulos said.

"The Uniting Church of Australia calls on the Federal government to halt 
plans for forced deportations and to make alternative arrangements for 
every Iranian currently held in immigration detention. We do not want the 
blood of innocent people on our hands."

Other asylum seeker tragedies are also being played out in the infamous 
"Pacific solution" camps. One 24-year-old Palestinian refugee who landed by 
boat on Thursday Island via Papua New Guinea was forcibly returned to PNG, 
and detained in an Australian camp on Manus Island, only to find himself 
left alone when it was closed in July.

The Australian authorities declared that he would henceforth have to look 
to PNG for his sustenance in the camp, in which he remains confined. For 
their part, the PNG authorities have continued to supply him with 
provisions, but deny that he is their responsibility.

Unable to move forward to a new life, he has been left, like many of the 
remaining Tampa refugees, in a terrible futureless limbo. Unlike them, 
however, he has no fellow inmates with whom to share his unbearable 
detention.

Australia's asylum seeker camps constitute a hideous official crime, and 
the treatment of these desperate people who turned to Australia for 
assistance, is a national shame. However, there are some hopeful signs, 
apart from the Family Court decision to release the five Baxter children. 
Despite the Government's declaration that none of the 1118 Tampa detainees 
would ever set foot on Australian soil, 329 of them have now been settled 
in Australia.

And mounting political pressure from the Australian people and concerned 
organisations may yet force the Government to end its shocking denial of 
basic human rights for those who seek asylum on our shores.