/REFUGEE DAY/AUSTRALIA: Child Asylum Seekers Not Spared Detention

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bob Burton

Canberra, Jun 18 2004 (IPS) - While the United Nations has praised the Australian government’s effort on resettling refugees, human rights groups are pressing Australia to end its hard line policy of imprisoning those who arrive by boats seeking asylum – including children.

At a World Refugee Day ceremony in Canberra, the regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, Michel Gabaudan, diplomatically praised the efforts of the Australian government in accepting a significant share of those found by UNHCR to be refugees requiring resettlement.

”Last year 56,000 were resettled in ten main resettlement designations. Australia is one of the very few countries that takes refugees under its resettlement,” he said.

”This (Australian) programme is a very high quality one which we consider at UNHCR to be absolute international best practice in terms of the services provided to rebuild their lives,” added Gabaudan.

While the UNHCR discreetly sidestepped the controversy over the ongoing imprisonment of over 500 mostly Afghani and Iraqi asylum seekers who arrived before late 2001, around the country community groups are staging protests against the government’s policy.

Howard Glenn, national director of the human rights organisation A Just Australia, is optimistic that by the time an election is called later this year the government will have conceded ground.

”Before the election all 160 people currently imprisoned in the Australian detention center on Nauru will be free, there will be no asylum seeker children left in detention and there will be barely a hundred long term detainees from the 510 that there are now,” he told IPS.

In August 2001 over 430 asylum seekers rescued from sea by the Norwegian vessel ‘Tampa’ were refused permission to enter and seek asylum in Australia.

In Australia a court case was mounted in an attempt to allow the asylum seekers to exercise their human right to seek protection in Australia.

As the world watched, the Australian government negotiated the ‘Pacific solution’, sending these and subsequent asylum seekers to New Zealand, Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Since the ‘Pacific solution’ was introduced, off-shore detention centres have been set up on Nauru and Manus Islands.

General elections in Australia are expected to be called sometime in October, and the opposition Labor Party is currently leading in opinion polls to takeover power form the current coalition conservative government.

Glenn views the stark contrast between the generosity of Australia’s resettlement programs and the treatment of asylum seekers who arrived by boat as a national disgrace.

”It’s a shame that Australia has such a split personality in its refugee programs,” he said.

”Australia does one of the best jobs in the world of resettling people from other countries’ refugee camps but one of the worst in the world dealing with people applying here for refugee status in Australia,” Glenn pointed out.

Last year the Australian government accepted 12,000 people out of a total of 56,000 resettled by the UNHCR.

Speaking at the World Refugee Day ceremony in parliament the Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Gary Hardgrave, focussed instead on the English language, housing and other support programs offered to those resettled in Australia.

”I don’t think it is an idle boast to make. But we do welcome people the way in which they can participate openly in their culture of choice – within a framework of laws that govern us all,” said Hardgrave.

”This perhaps shows the world a way in which we can end violence,” he added.

However, not all of the government’s own agencies are so upbeat about its performance in supporting refugees.

In mid-May the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission presented a damning report to parliament on its inquiry into the imprisonment of children seeking asylum who arrived in the country by boat.

”The Commonwealth’s failure to implement the repeated recommendations by mental health professionals that certain children be removed from the detention environment with their parents amounted to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of those children in detention,” the report found.

Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski called for the government to end the detention of children within a month and has proceeded to hold a series of regional launches of the report around the country.

While the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, rejected the recommendations of the report, the community campaign to free the refugees is gaining ground.

A Just Australia’s Glenn believes the government, while not yet publicly stating it is changing its policy, is desperate to neutralise the issue in what is expected to be a close election later this year.

”The community campaign has made this an issue that government has to sort out,” he said.

Revealed Glenn: ”Our market research shows that every time the issue is raised people think of ‘children overboard’ when the government deceived the public about what was really happening with a sinking boatload of asylum seekers.”

”What worked for the government in 2001 has come back to haunt them in 2004,” he added.

On Oct. 19, 2001, an overloaded fishing boat bound for Australia sank in international waters and 353 lives were lost – including that of children.

While survivors reported Australian navy boats appearing in the night and shining lights on them before departing, it was not until the following day – some 20 hours after the sinking – that Indonesian fishing boats plucked 44 survivors from the sea.

This was only revealed in an inquiry last year.

Last Sunday, a participant in one of the country’s highest rating national ‘reality’ television shows staged a protest against the Australian government’s policy on refugees.

Merlin Luck, who was born in Germany, walked onto the stage when he was due to be interviewed for 15 minutes with his mouth taped shut and holding a sign on a piece of white sheet which read ”Free The Refugees”.

”The vast majority (of refugees) have risked their lives to fight for the basic human rights we take for granted. This issue needs to be put back on the political agenda,” he later said.