Australia is breaching international human rights conventions in its treatment of refugee asylum seekers, according to a highly critical report released by human rights group Amnesty International.
“People seeking asylum in Australia from human rights abuses in other countries are currently met with a system that further violates their human rights. These violations include administrative detention for a prolonged and potentially indefinite period of time,” says Amnesty International.
The report calls for urgent change, saying Australia’s mandatory detention regime continues to inflict psychological damage on detainees. It cites the case of Peter Qasim, Australia’s longest-serving immigration detainee, who was committed to an Adelaide psychiatric hospital after almost seven years in detention.
It also says that the lack of independent review of the lawfulness of detention, and the absence of maximum time limits, means that detention can continue indefinitely when circumstances prevent a failed asylum seeker from being removed from Australia.
“My impressions of Baxter is that it is a place where 197 detainees are yearning for freedom,” Amnesty president in Australia Russell Thurgood told the ABC, after conducting an inspection of the Baxter detention facility.
“It is a place where 40 to 50 of those 197 detainees are currently on anti-depressants.
“It is a place where people are anxious, people are confused, people are very stressed.”
The report comes at a difficult time for the Federal Government. The release of the Palmer Inquiry into the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau, expected to be highly critical, is due within several weeks.
Though it is not known whether Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone will allow the public to view the entire report, parts of it were leaked to The Australian and in it details that Ms Rau spent five weeks in the remote Baxter detention center before being assessed by a psychiatrist, despite arriving in a highly distressed and confused state.
“Our contention has been that the problems are inherent also in the structure of DIMIA [Department of Immigration] and the way they conduct their detention facilities full stop,” Cornelia Rau’s sister Christine told the ABC’s AM program.
“We’ve spoken to psychiatrists who’ve said that even if you had top notch psychiatric facilities within detention centers, it would be a bit like trying to treat sunburn in the sun, because the system itself leads to mental illness.”
Adding to the strain, Coalition unity has been challenged by rebel backbenchers concerned with Australia’s immigration detention regime. The Amnesty report says changes implemented to quell backbencher concerns, including the release of all women and children into the community, are a positive step but do not go far enough.
The report also criticizes Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’, an agreement with several South Pacific island countries to accept asylum seekers while their refugee claims are processed in Australia. It says the policy merely deports the practice of arbitrary detention to another state, allowing the Australian Government to deny responsibility for those detained in the Republic of Nauru, as does the Nauru Government.
Last month the Federal Government was also criticized for collaborating with the very regime that many are fleeing when Chinese officials were allowed into isolation units within Villawood to question Chinese detainees on the deportation list.
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