Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Thursday, 6 September 2018

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

Australia’s treatment of refugees is a crime against humanity

Following is an article from the latest (5 September 2018) issue of the CEC’s Australian Alert Service magazine, by Richard Bardon. The CEC is committed to the principle of the common good, for all people—i.e. “people first”. For the same reason we fight for a Glass-Steagall banking separation and a national bank—to ensure the banking system serves rather than rules the public—we fight against the political agendas that lead to wars and the mass slaughter of innocent human beings, and the policies that lead to the deliberate mistreatment of innocent people. This includes Australia’s cruelty to asylum seekers. The very politicians of both major parties who have preyed on Australians’ fears to implement this policy, are the same politicians who have implemented the neoliberal economic policies that have enabled the too-big-to-fail banks to gouge, fleece and abuse the Australian people—and continue to defend those policies! Just as we must not tolerate the government’s complicity in the abuses of banks, we must not tolerate Australia’s mistreatment of refugees, and we must not tolerate our nation’s unquestioning participation in the geopolitical schemes and regime-change wars, typically based on lies, which force innocent people to flee as refugees in the first place.

4 Sept.—No decent human being could fail to be appalled at last week’s revelations of widespread mental illness, self-harm and suicide attempts among child refugees on Nauru. But what many Australians may not realise is that the plight of these children, their parents, and the other refugees detained on Nauru and Manus Island is not some unfortunate side effect, but the intended result of Australia’s immigration policy, which knowingly punishes innocent people with arbitrary and indefinite detention as a deterrent to others. Besides being morally repugnant, this is in fact a crime under international law, as enshrined in several United Nations conventions to which Australia is signatory.

ABC News reported 27 August that many of the 137 refugee children on Nauru “are facing an unprecedented [mental] health crisis and are at real risk of death”, according to whistleblowers recently employed on Nauru by the Australian government. “Leaked documents compiled by immigration workers and obtained by [ABC current affairs program] 7.30 reveal a shocking spate of recent self-harm incidents”, the ABC reported. These include a 10-year-old who “attempted to self-harm by ingesting some sharp metal objects”, likely pieces of fencing wire; a 14-year-old who “had poured petrol over herself and had a lighter”; and an 11-year-old who overdosed on an unknown medication. Child psychologist Dr Vernon Reynolds, who worked on Nauru continuously from August 2016 until April this year for the Australian government’s contractor International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), told 7.30: “Am I concerned … that some of these refugee children could die? I’m absolutely concerned. I’m reasonably surprised that no-one has.” Social worker Fiona Owens, IHMS’s child mental health team leader on Nauru in May-July this year, said that the detainees had been swept by a “wave of despair” after the virtual collapse of the October 2016 resettlement deal with the United States, which as of May 2018 had seen fewer than 250 refugees depart the island, leaving 939 stranded. “The children have given up hope because the parents have”, she said, “so the whole families implode with the knowledge that their only hope was to go to America and that’s now been dashed.” Now, “the only thing a lot of the children are thinking about is how to die. They Google it on the internet.”

Some have simply lain down to die. “They stop eating much, they stop drinking much, they stop looking after their day-to-day self-cares”, Dr Reynolds said. “They stop interacting with people, they stop talking; they stop doing anything they might have done for interest or enjoyment, and basically just exist in their beds.” The Guardian reported on 25 August that several children suffering this “resignation syndrome” had been brought to Australia for emergency medical treatment over the previous few days—but only after Australian authorities had neglected their condition as long as possible, in some cases for months. “Only the most critically ill cases are being addressed, Nauru sources say, and the situation is ‘dangerously chaotic’”, the Guardian reported. “A 12-year-old girl who attempted to self-immolate this week has not been moved. In the case of a 12-year-old boy who’d eaten no food for 20 days, he was reportedly just hours from death when he was moved by air ambulance on Tuesday. He weighed just 36 kilograms and could not stand up when he was taken to the airport.” One 14-year-old boy was flown directly to Brisbane on Friday morning “suffering a major depressive disorder and severe muscle wastage after not getting out of bed for four months”. He may never walk normally again. Later that day Australia’s federal court ordered that a girl be moved to Australia for urgent medical treatment after she had refused to eat or drink for most of the previous three weeks.

Dr Reynolds told the ABC that the government had repeatedly rebuffed his attempts to have children brought to Australia for specialist care. “My reports became probably stronger and stronger in their wording”, he said, “talking about … how we have a duty of care to treat these kids appropriately, and how by not doing these things we are increasing the harm and the long-term disability.” The Australian government responded by banning him from working on Nauru, the day before he was due to return there this April. “I was told by my employer [IHMS] that some of my statements were too personalised … and that I was potentially putting the organisation, or potentially the government, at risk by saying we were neglecting the care of these children”, he said. The Australian government tried to hive off some blame by telling the ABC that the care of the refugees’ health is a matter for Nauru, and that medical transfers abroad are managed by the Nauruan government’s Overseas Medical Referral (OMR) system. Documents obtained by 7.30 under Freedom of Information laws, however, reveal that Canberra runs the show: “the Australian Government is responsible for funding the [OMR] process for refugees and arranging treating specialists. Once Nauru’s OMR group signs off on a transfer, a powerful Australian Government committee, known as the Transitory Persons Committee, then considers clinical recommendations for transfer to Australia. A request is then made to the Nauruan secretary of multicultural affairs to approve the movement of a patient.”

Dehumanisation as deterrent

The same week that the Nauru reports emerged, Fairfax Media revealed that in 2015, Immigration (now Home Affairs) Minister Peter Dutton thrice intervened to prevent European au pairs from being deported for attempting to work illegally on tourist visas. On one occasion, the beneficiary was an Italian woman who worked for one of Dutton’s former Queensland Police colleagues. On another, Dutton intervened on behalf of a scion of the McLachlan family of South Australia, a set of Liberal Party blue-bloods that includes former defence minister (1996-98) Ian McLachlan, a co-founder in 1986 of the H.R. Nicholls Society, one of Australia’s most influential—and radical—neoliberal think tanks. Dutton wrote in his ministerial edict on the latter occasion, “As a discretionary and humanitarian act … it is in the interests of Australia as a humane and generous society to grant this person a Visitor visa.” (Emphasis added.) PM Scott Morrison defended Dutton’s interventions, saying at a 2 September press conference that he had made “hundreds” of such decisions during his own time as immigration minister in 2013-14. Said Morrison, “These are human beings, and their lives are affected by these decisions.”

Not so seaborne asylum seekers and refugees, apparently. “The government’s border protection policy is absolutely well known, and I’m not about to compromise our borders any day of the week”, Morrison said, before spouting the justification repeated ad nauseam by both Labor and Liberal governments for over 20 years, that Australia’s policies of mandatory detention, offshore processing, boat turnbacks and, since July 2013, blanket refusal to accept refugees who arrive by sea, are designed to deter others from risking their lives on leaky boats. (Except then-PM John Howard instigated offshore processing and turnbacks in 2001 before there were any deaths at sea.)

Even with the best intentions in the world, this is a crime. The UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the Australian Parliament ratified in 1989, demands that no person be subjected to “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted … by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity”, including for the purpose of “intimidating or coercing him or a third person”. By insisting that people who have been assessed as genuine refugees return to their countries of origin—as Morrison reportedly did, in person, on Manus Island five years ago—Australia also violates the 1954 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees’ prohibition against refoulement, the expulsion of vulnerable persons back into harm’s way. And by systematically denying asylum seekers entry to Australia, the government violates Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” There is in this regard no such thing as an “illegal entrant”.

Canberra’s motivations, however, are anything but humanitarian. As John Menadue, former head of the departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet (1974-76) and Immigration (1980-83), pointed out 20 August on his blog Pearls and Irritations, Australia’s part in illegal Anglo-American-led wars in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere makes us complicit in creating millions of refugees in the first place. Then, “To hide our inhumanity, we are told and some believe that this tough approach on refugees is to ‘stop drownings at sea’. … If the government was genuinely concerned about deaths at sea, it would be sending out the Navy to rescue those in distress on the sea. If it was really to save lives, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison would be queuing up for a Nobel Peace Prize. But they know that talking about saving drownings at sea is a device to hide their inhuman policies. Please spare us the hypocrisy that we are being tough on refugees to save lives.”

Menadue recommends that mandatory detention, introduced in 1993 by the Keating government, be abolished immediately. “It was designed to deter boat arrivals. It has not achieved this and is very expensive.” We should instead negotiate an orderly procedure for refugee processing with both source and transit countries, as the Fraser government did with Vietnam in 1983. This should include the extension of the “Operation Sovereign Borders” to ensure there are no more boat arrivals—but in cooperation with Indonesia and Malaysia, such that we take 100 vetted refugees for every 10 “boat people” returned. And in the meantime, “the remaining people who are being so mistreated in offshore detention on Manus and Nauru should be brought immediately to Australia for processing. There is no alternative and we should stop pretending there is.”

Click here for a free copy of the 5 September 2018 issue of the Australian Alert Service, featuring this article and important updates on the CEC’s fight for a Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s banks.

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