Government fails to hoodwink UN's Woomera inspectors

by Peter Mac

The Howard Government has attempted in vain to convince UN inspectors of 
the excellent conditions for inmates at the Woomera Detention Centre for 
asylum seekers. The camp was inspected by the United Nations Human Rights 
Commission envoy, Justice Natwarhal Bagwhati, and the UN Working Group on 
Arbitrary Detention, headed by Louis Joinet.

Just for the occasion, the camp was spruced up by removing the most 
intrusive section of razor wire, improving the quality of the food, and by 
the guards adopting a new practice of addressing the inmates by their first 
name, not their serial number.

The Government had also planned to take inmates on an excursion to see a 
demonstration of sheep sheering prior to the UN visit. However, inmates 
refused to take part in this transparent ruse, an initiative made 
particularly cruel by the fact that those interned have been denied the 
opportunity to engage in meaningful employment, in many cases for years.

Lawyer for the detainees, Elizabeth Boxal, said that the detainees 
understood immediately that the excursion would be used to produce photos 
of smiling asylum seekers for the benefit of the UN team.

Inmates also refused to allow their children to attend school outside the 
camp on the day of the visit, in order to reveal to the UN team the actual 
number of children currently in the centre, and their conditions of 
incarceration. There are currently 54 children held at Woomera.

Organisations concerned with the mandatory detention issue have taken steps 
to ensure that the UN team sees the reality of life in the detention 
centres, and in particular that they interview men held in isolation, women 
separated from their husbands, and traumatised children.

A spokesperson for the inmates stated that no amount of money could 
convince the Afghan inmates to return to Afghanistan, and that the UN team 
should "take (the inmates) away from this jail and put them somewhere 
safe."

Scandal continues to dog the Howard Government over the asylum seeker 
issue. The Government has now declared (under intense questioning) that it 
achieved a deal with the Papua-New Guinea Government to house asylum 
seekers on PNG's remote (and unobserved) Manus Island on October 8, just 30 
minutes before the it was due to go into "caretaker" mode before the 
federal elections.

The federal Opposition, mindful of the patently phoney "children overboard" 
allegations, immediately questioned the Government's credibility with 
regard to the legitimacy of the Manus Island deal.

If discussions in the issue had not been concluded at this time it would 
have been impossible to reach the agreement before the federal elections 
without negotiations with the federal Opposition, and revelations resulting 
from those discussions might have caused the ALP to alter its support for 
the Government over the mandatory detention issue.

Many observers believe that the ALP lost the election as a result of its 
leadership's unwillingness to take a moral stand and oppose the policy.

The issue is one of particular sensitivity for the ALP, whose "locked-in" 
federal leadership continues to cling to its support of a policy of 
mandatory detention.

The gap between the ALP leadership and the rank-and file over this issue is 
widening with every passing day.

Two weeks ago federal ALP leader Simon Crean, and NSW Premier Bob Carr were 
trounced by delegates to the NSW conference of the party over the issue.

Last week Crean was openly heckled by angry Queensland ALP members, who 
followed their NSW counterparts in passing motions condemning mandatory 
detention and supporting alternative approaches.

Meanwhile, statistics arising from last August's national census have 
confirmed what many have long suspected, i.e. that the number of asylum 
seekers is vastly outnumbered by the number of illegal "overstayers", i.e. 
the real illegal immigrants.

The Department now estimates that there are some 60,000 persons in 
Australia who have overstayed their visas, and that more than 10 percent of 
these are backpackers from Great Britain.

The Government has so far not revealed any plans to establish detention 
centres for this very large number of illegal immigrants to Australia's 
fatal shore.