Mandatory detention of asylum seekers condemned

March 29, 2000
Issue 

By Sean Healy

SYDNEY — Asylum seekers coming to Australia hoping for protection from persecution are suffering at the hands of "our national obsession with locking people up and our paranoia about Asia", human rights commissioner Chris Sidoti told a symposium in Granville on March 25.

The government's policy of detaining all unauthorised arrivals in camps where they have little or no contact with the outside world is a "gross violation of the human rights of those subjected to it", Sidoti said. He called for a comprehensive parliamentary inquiry into mandatory detention.

The symposium, "Misunderstanding Asylum Seekers", was organised by the Detention Working Group and asylum seeker advocates.

Opening the symposium, Sylvia Winton, convenor of the Asylum Seekers' Centre, told the 120 people attending that the federal government had sought to apply labels to those who came here seeking refuge from persecution, labels which robbed them of their humanity, such as "illegals" and "queue jumpers".

Dr Mary Crock, a former president of the Law Council of Australia and now a lecturer at Sydney University, ridiculed the idea that Australia was being "swamped" by refugees. She compared Australia's intake of 8257 refugees between 1989 and 1998 with that of Germany, which accepted 98,644 refugees in the same period, and North America, which accepted close to half a million.

Crock spoke about government policy to deliberately "narrow the gateway" to Australia. Standard migration categories, such as family reunion schemes, through which poorer people could migrate, were being reduced, she said, forcing more people to try to gain refugee status.

Policies like mandatory detention, which seek to make life as bad as possible for new arrivals, are designed to deter others from following, she said. Federal immigration minister Philip Ruddock is seeking to amend the international refugee convention to make it even harder for refugees to gain a protection visa.

"The 1990s might be called the lost decade" for refugee rights, Amnesty International's Des Hogan told the forum. Governments the world over have sought to "deny access to their countries, to the application process and to [citizen] rights within [each] country".

"New laws will come", Hogan warned, that will make life even more miserable for asylum seekers. The Australian government has started aggressive lobbying for a new international convention against "people traffickers", known as the "Vienna Convention", which will mask greater restrictions, he said.

Bilateral agreements are also being reached with governments in countries such as Iran, Turkey and Jordan — systematic human rights violators — under which asylum seekers who pass through such countries can be sent back without any right of independent legal review, Hogan reported. He also pointed to government plans to gazette a "white list" of countries from which refugee applications will be summarily dismissed as invalid.

Naser Zuway told the conference of his own experience inside the Villawood detention centre in western Sydney, which he described as "draconian". Zuway fled Libya, where he feared political persecution, and finally arrived in Australia after stays in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. He did not expect to be placed in a prison on his arrival simply because he didn't have the proper papers.

"All my dreams were shattered", Zuway said. "I didn't expect five-star accommodation when I got here, all I wanted was my freedom". Refugees flee "inhuman treatment", he said, but "they get inhuman treatment when they get here".

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