RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Contractor Abused Immigrants, Gov’t Admits

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bob Burton

CANBERRA, Aug 1 2005 (IPS) - A security contractor that runs prisons in Australia, Britain and South Africa, is facing increased scrutiny after a damning report of abusive treatment of five people it transported between two Australian government immigration prisons.

An Australian government investigation, released last Friday, found ”serious violation” in the movement by the contractor, Global Solutions Limited (GSL), of five unnamed detainees between two immigration prisons in September 2004.

Refugee coordinator for the rights group Amnesty International, Australia, Graeme Thom, welcomed the vindication of the prisoners’ complaints. ”There has been a culture that the detainees aren’t deserving of respect and also that both GSL and the department are beyond scrutiny when it comes to investigating complaints like this,” he said.

Though built up by immigrants, Australia has a policy of compulsory detention for all people, including political asylum seekers, arriving on its shores without adequate documentation.

The investigation by Keith Hamburger found that during the first leg of the transfer, the detainees were held in the back of a ”totally unsuitable” van for the entire 6.5 hour journey covering 560 kms between the Maribyrnong prison in Victoria and the town of Mildura.

At Mildura, the five detainees had a one-hour break and were offered food but had no opportunity to sleep before being driven for a further six and a half hours by a new escort group to the Baxter immigration prison in South Australia.

Hamburger found that during the first leg of the journey there had been a ”failure to provide medical assessment and/or treatment for detainees upon whom force had been used and who may have been injured prior to them being placed in the escort van”.

He also recorded ”inadequate provision of basic amenities including food and fluids”, ”sensory deprivation”, ”disregard of appeals for assistance from detainees in obvious distress”, ”treating detainees in an inhumane and undignified manner” and their ”humiliation”.

The report, late Friday afternoon in what critics say was designed to bury the story, also found that the five were denied ”access to toilet facilities resulting in detainees having no option but to urinate in their compartments” in the back of the transport van.

Spokesman for GSL, Tim Hall, said that he was unable to comment on a report that one of the detainees suffered a broken arm before being put into the transporting van. However GSL, which has a four-year contract worth 68 million US dollars a year with the Department of Immigrations and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), has stated that it accepts the ”report in its entirety” and blames the treatment on the failure of staff to follow procedures.

GSL, which runs both the Maribyrnong and Baxter prisons, as part of the contract, has been fined over 378,000 dollars over the incident. Victoria Police are also investigating the incidents for possible criminal breaches.

GSL is a British company which, through subsidiaries and joint ventures, operates four immigration prisons for the British government and runs a prison in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

In 2004, the company, which employs 8,000 people, earned 647 million dollars. In Australia, GSL earned 110 million dollars in the same year from the two immigration prisons as well as a general prison for each of the Victorian and South Australian state governments.

In its 2004 annual report the parent company states that ”GSL is committed to promoting best practice in human rights in its policies, procedures and practices”.

However, GSL has been involved in controversy elsewhere too. In March 2005, an undercover British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) investigation revealed racism and violence by GSL staff at Oakington immigration detention centre.

In the programme, a GSL employee told one inmate ”you think you’re not going to do anything ‘cos a white person tells you what to do. Well I’m afraid you’re wrong. My great-grandfather shot your great-grandfather and nicked his f****** country off you for 200 years,” he said. Following the BBC’s revelations 15 GSL employees were suspended.

While globally GSL insists that its contracts ”include benchmarks against which GSL performance can be judged”, an Australian National Audit Office investigation into the immigration prison contracts released in early July disagreed. ”In particular, clear and consistent definitions are not provided for health standards that are central to detainee welfare,” the report stated.

While GSL claims in its annual report that it invests in the ”selection, training and development of front line workers, supervisors and managers” Hamburger found that unnamed GSL officers involved had no training in key areas necessary to plan the transfer of prisoners. It also found that the initial complaints made by three of the detainees were ”quickly dismissed by the relevant GSL officer without rigorous investigation”.

”Inadequate and misleading information was provided to a DIMIA officer by the relevant GSL officer which resulted in the detainees’ valid complaints being dismissed by DIMIA,” Hamburger’s report notes.

The investigation also found that the incident report by GSL officers present during the use of violence against one of the prisoners was ”so inadequate as to be useless as any meaningful record of what occurred”.

The Secretary of the DIMIA, Andrew Metcalfe, issued a statement late Friday expressing ”deep regret” over the incident and promised that the GSL contract would be reviewed.

While the opposition Labour Party believes the investigation demonstrates the need to terminate the private management of the prisons, Amnesty International believes that in part that misses the point.

Transparency and accountability, said Amnesty’s Thom, have been frustrated by the government and GSL claiming the contracts are ‘commercial in confidence’.

”The critical issue is protecting human rights – changing who runs the (detention) centres doesn’t address the fact that people who have often fled oppressive regimes or been the victims of torture can still be held indefinitely at the discretion of the Minister for Immigration,” Thom said.