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Michael Otterman is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, as well as an award-winning journalist and filmmaker.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Australia’s Guantanamo
I recently received a stirring essay from Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne. Curr identified numerous parallels between American "no touch" physical and psychological torture techniques and methods employed in Australian immigration prisons. Since the early 1990s, Australia has enforced a strict mandatory detention policy of all asylum seekers that arrive illegally. According to former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser-- a vocal critic of current policy-- mandatory detention:
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A teenager with the bones in his hand smashed by an iron bar sat in his room in Baxter for months rocking back and forth in terror. He was ignored by DIMIA and GSL guards. It was a detainee family who fed him and cared for him. It was detainees who notified advocates about the depth of his pain and ensured his release. The DIMIA officer who assessed and refused this boy, wrote in his file that it was clear that he had been tortured. By 2005, guards and DIMIA staff were so immune to the distress of asylum seekers that nothing moved them. Tortured and torturers sharing the same secret space. How could we expect these guards and officers to know the boundaries where torture begins when they could so readily disregard the visible evidence and pain of the tortured.
Now as 2007 draws to a close, a fourth detention centre has closed although not because of a change of heart from Government. Hundreds of soldiers are camped on the hill above Baxter Detention Centre waiting to move in. They are in training to go to Afghanistan as part of the coalition of the willing. In the ultimate irony they will sleep in the same rooms where young Afghanis who fled the Taliban, were locked up. City detention centres will now house the dwindling number of asylum seekers. Here it is less likely that methods used in isolated camps will be allowed now.
However an even worse threat to human rights lurks. This is the half a billion dollar detention prison built on Christmas Island. Being 2,400 very expensive kilometres from Perth, public scrutiny has been reduced to a minimum. The tried and true techniques may well be resumed in this highest security establishment ever built on Australian territory. Its CCTV cameras beam into “a remote control room” in Canberra. Its electric doors, fences and gates are designed to contain and break the human spirit. Its compounds even include a “babies compound” with a nursery with 8 little cots lined up. In the adjoining rooms are wet and dry play areas and classrooms, all separated from the family compound. A hospital with “resuscitation room” is located within the complex. People detained here need never leave unless the government wills it. Without access to Courts and judicial oversight, away from media and the public gaze, people will truly be at the mercy of guards and government. Will this be Australia’s Guantanamo where the ultimate partnership with the American torture system is played out? The answer lies with the Australian citizenry. Will they defy, deny or just stand by?
is indeed in breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Conventions. It would seem to be in breach of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. This view is supported by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. It is also in breach of the Convention of Rights of the child. Current practice runs counter to UNHCR guidelines on detention. Australia is seriously out of step in these matters.Below is an excerpt from Curr's powerful essay. You can read the full version here.
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A teenager with the bones in his hand smashed by an iron bar sat in his room in Baxter for months rocking back and forth in terror. He was ignored by DIMIA and GSL guards. It was a detainee family who fed him and cared for him. It was detainees who notified advocates about the depth of his pain and ensured his release. The DIMIA officer who assessed and refused this boy, wrote in his file that it was clear that he had been tortured. By 2005, guards and DIMIA staff were so immune to the distress of asylum seekers that nothing moved them. Tortured and torturers sharing the same secret space. How could we expect these guards and officers to know the boundaries where torture begins when they could so readily disregard the visible evidence and pain of the tortured.
Now as 2007 draws to a close, a fourth detention centre has closed although not because of a change of heart from Government. Hundreds of soldiers are camped on the hill above Baxter Detention Centre waiting to move in. They are in training to go to Afghanistan as part of the coalition of the willing. In the ultimate irony they will sleep in the same rooms where young Afghanis who fled the Taliban, were locked up. City detention centres will now house the dwindling number of asylum seekers. Here it is less likely that methods used in isolated camps will be allowed now.
However an even worse threat to human rights lurks. This is the half a billion dollar detention prison built on Christmas Island. Being 2,400 very expensive kilometres from Perth, public scrutiny has been reduced to a minimum. The tried and true techniques may well be resumed in this highest security establishment ever built on Australian territory. Its CCTV cameras beam into “a remote control room” in Canberra. Its electric doors, fences and gates are designed to contain and break the human spirit. Its compounds even include a “babies compound” with a nursery with 8 little cots lined up. In the adjoining rooms are wet and dry play areas and classrooms, all separated from the family compound. A hospital with “resuscitation room” is located within the complex. People detained here need never leave unless the government wills it. Without access to Courts and judicial oversight, away from media and the public gaze, people will truly be at the mercy of guards and government. Will this be Australia’s Guantanamo where the ultimate partnership with the American torture system is played out? The answer lies with the Australian citizenry. Will they defy, deny or just stand by?