Government response to report on immigration detention unacceptable
19 August 2009, 01:45PM
Amnesty International rejects as unacceptable the Federal Government’s announcement that it will maintain its policy of mandatory detention and offshore processing on Christmas Island of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.
The Government’s reaffirmation of its commitment to what Amnesty International regards as an inhumane and unsustainable policy was announced yesterday by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, in response to the findings of a report by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration.
“This Government has taken a number of positive steps to date in relation to asylum seeker policy. However, if it is serious about its stated intention to make Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers more humane, offshore processing must cease and the Christmas Island facility must be closed,” said Dr Graham Thom.
Amnesty International welcomes aspects of the Committee’s report, including its call for greater transparency, increased media access to detention centres, greater public education and awareness about immigration detention and immigration processes. Amnesty International also welcomes the report’s identification of the need to upgrade Australia’s rundown immigration detention facilities, many of which fail to meet the Government’s own standards.
The organisation believes, however, that the report does not adequately deal with a number of key issues, including the ongoing detention of children on Christmas Island and specific human rights failings of mandatory detention, in particular the lack of access to judicial review for asylum seekers to challenge the need for their ongoing detention.
“It is unconscionable for the Government to continue to promote its policies as humane when detainees are held in conditions described by the Committee as ‘extreme and inhumane’ and lacking the support services that are crucial to people who are fleeing traumatic circumstances, persecution and violence,” Graham Thom said.
“Amnesty International fully endorses the Committee’s view that people in detention in offshore facilities, such as Christmas Island, should be provided with the same level of service as those detained on the Australian mainland. However, because of the remote location of the island, the difficulty and huge financial cost of providing these services on Christmas Island is immense,” Graham Thom said.
The report noted that as of 29 May 2009, 61 children were being held on Christmas Island. While the Government has stated its commitment that no child be held in an immigration detention centre, the Phosphate Hill facility on Christmas Island is clearly intended to accommodate family groups with children. The report states that when the Committee visited the Phosphate Hill facility, apart from one children’s playground “no other part of the immigration detention centre would be considered suitable for children” and there was “no suitable family accommodation space”. While Phosphate Hill is not considered by the Government to be an immigration detention centre as such, Amnesty International believes both Phosphate Hill and the nearby Construction Camp facility, where families with children are currently being held, are unsuitable and do clearly amount to detention.
“It is difficult to imagine that the children being held in these highly inappropriate facilities understand the Government’s semantic distinction between an immigration detention centre and any other type of detention,” Graham Thom said.
“These children and young people are subject to very harsh security measures including severe restrictions on their freedom of movement and an unacceptably high level of surveillance by guards. Amnesty International believes that the Government should immediately remove children and minors from all forms of detention on Christmas Island and move them, along with their families, to more suitable arrangements on the mainland,” Graham Thom said.
A Nielsen poll conducted for Amnesty International Australia in July 2009 found that 69 per cent of Australians believe all asylum seekers should be given access to the same legal protections, regardless of their method of arrival in Australia. Currently the Government is not providing equal services or rights to asylum seekers who are subject to offshore processing. They are, for example, denied the right to access the independent Refugee Review Tribunal and the Australian court system.
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yvesmarie.perot
27 August 2009, 10:46PM
I hope that the Christhmas island facility be closed
Marilyn
20 August 2009, 05:18AM
In their much vaunted people smuggling talk fest only 7 of the 32 nations are signatory to the refugee convention and some of them have shocking human rights records themselves.
Like Australia and China. The others are countries who force people to leave and we lock them up.
It beggars belief that this government still fails to understand that these people have an absolute and inalienable right to seek asylum without punishment.
Yet they keep insisting on an expensive failed policy while 9 million kids die of starvation every year.
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