The Guardian 13 December, 2006
Further immigration scandals
Peter Mac
The latest report into Australia’s treatment of immigration detainees has again highlighted the shocking abuse of immigration detainees under the Howard Government’s immigration policies.
The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Amanda Vanstone, had given assurances that failings in her Department had been rectified. However, the report reveals a further ten cases of wrongful detention of people with mental difficulties. Five of these people were Australian citizens, three were permanent residents and one held a temporary visa order.
The report also dealt with the cases of ten child detainees, eight of whom were either Australian citizens or were entitled to live here. One child was detained for 282 days.
The institutional racism which has become identified with the Government’s immigration policies has been compounded by a seemingly widespread immigration practice of discriminating against people with emotional and behavioural difficulties. This was demonstrated last year by the terrible treatment of Cornelia Rau, who was detained for months before being identified by relatives, and the equally appalling treatment of Vivian Solon, who was deported to the Philippines before being identified by a sympathetic priest.
The latest report, compiled by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Professor Jonathon McMillan, was particularly critical of the treatment of one detainee, identified only as "Mr G", a Timorese man who had attained Australian residency, but who now suffers from schizophrenia.
In 2003 Mr G was arrested in Fremantle and was detained for 43 days. After his identity was discovered, an internal Department memo noted that he was "not educated enough to consider suing us for unjustified detention, however I think we need to be very careful in regard to how long we continue to detain him".
The report criticises certain members of the staff of the Department for this level of cynicism, but in fact their behaviour simply reflects the government’s racism and contempt for asylum seekers, whom it has treated as a pawn in its battle to retain in power.
On a recent broadcast of the ABC’s 7.30 Report, Senator Vanstone repeatedly refused to accept any ministerial responsibility for the appalling treatment of illegally-detained people, or for asylum seekers in general. She simply attributed these misdemeanours to failings in the Department’s "systems".
The Howard Government continues to treat asylum seekers as criminals, saying that it is because they have arrived here without the appropriate papers. In reality, it is the Howard Government which has committed crimes against humanity, and on a mass scale, by imprisoning hundreds of these people (including children) for indefinite periods, with the prospect of being returned to the countries from which they often fled in terror, and with no rights to legal assistance under Australian law.
Federal Court Judge Rodney Madgwick recently said that a decision by the Refugee Review Tribunal, which rejected one application for asylum because of an adverse newspaper report, had caused him "considerable unease". In such cases the current immigration laws prevent the court from stating that natural justice has been denied.
The Ombudsman has now examined 140 out of 247 alleged cases of "irregularities" by the Department of Immigration. Doubtless there will be more shocking cases of official abuse. It is, however, doubtful whether the government will accept any responsibility for these shocking misdemeanours. That will be done by others, in the fullness of time.
Door slammed on key conference speaker
The Howard Government appears to be extending its discrimination against asylum seekers to other visa applicants. Last week Malek Triki, the London correspondent for Al Jazeera TV, was denied an electronic visa when he checked in for a flight to Australia, where he was to address a conference on journalists and Islam.
Mr Triki noted that airport staff were astounded at the refusal to provide this sort of visa, which is normally given automatically to British passport holders. Mr Triki concluded that the refusal stemmed from the fact that he was born in Tunisia.
The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs later claimed that Mr Triki had been identified as a "possible match with the movement alert list", i.e. that he was a terrorist suspect.
However, a more likely explanation is Mr Triki’s connection with Al Jazeera, which reported much of what our media covered up and great sympathy for the Palestinians and other people of the Middle East, and which is deeply resented by the Bush, Howard and Blair Governments. Although he was later cleared for travel, the delay at the airport caused Mr Triki to miss his flight, and therefore to miss the conference altogether.