Just weeks after another uprising at the Port Hedland refugee detention centre, federal immigration minister Philip Ruddock introduced the immigration detainees bill into federal parliament, which proposes to allow guards to conduct strip searches of any detainee aged over 10, up to three years' jail for anyone found with a weapon in a centre, and an increase in the penalty for escaping from a centre to five years.
These measures, if introduced, will amount to a massive escalation in the continuing violation of asylum seekers' human rights. For these draconian measures to even be proposed as legislation, Ruddock and the Coalition government have had to mount a sustained misinformation campaign against refugees coming to Australia outside officially-sanctioned channels. The most outrageous of Ruddock's lies are exposed by SARAH STEPHEN.
1. People arriving illegally are real criminals not genuine refugees.
The vast bulk of people arriving in Australia by boat are refugees. The government's own figures prove it. When detainees' applications for refugee status are eventually processed, more than 90% are granted temporary protection visas.
People who are wanted criminals can be tracked very simply using the Interpol database.
Having enough money to pay an Indonesian fisher A$2000 for a place on a boat does not make a person's claim to be fleeing persecution any less genuine. Nor does it mean they are particularly rich. In most cases, they have had to use up their life savings to escape oppressive conditions.
The horror of people smuggling will continue so long as people fleeing persecution have no other choice.
Ruddock's colourful allegations of "illegal arrivals" coming ashore off Western Australia dripping with gold jewellery and suitcases full of money, are part of a cynical and groundless scare campaign — an attempt to undermine sympathy for asylum seekers.
The point being overlooked is that rich people who wish to migrate to Australia don't need to risk their lives on dangerous, rickety fishing boats. There is increasing provision for them to come to Australia legally, based on their skills or wealth. The rich have far more freedom of movement around the globe than the poor.
2. People arriving by boat are queue jumpers; they take places from other refugees. Genuine refugees would wait to come here legally.
Many refugees don't have that luxury. It is either impractical or impossible to go first to a neighbouring country and then seek resettlement from there. Neighbouring countries may be sympathetic to the oppressive regime, and send those fleeing it back to their country of origin. In these cases, a refugee may decide to travel to a country they know will offer them protection. Most people choose countries they can get to easily. A small number choose Australia.
There is simply no queue to jump in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. A country may have no embassy through which to apply for refugee status. On the other hand, the very act of visiting an embassy can result in imprisonment, torture or death.
Australia's annual humanitarian intake has clear provisions for on-shore applicants — one third of the 12,000 total places for the refugee intake. Ruddock is fully aware that asylum seekers will come to Australia by whatever means they can — whether it be on another type of visa, or without any documentation at all — and the existing quotas allow for this reality.
Those who make their way to Australia before applying for refugee status are often more immediately in need of protection than those who apply overseas.
A study by researchers at the Psychiatry Research and Teaching Unit at the University of New South Wales, entitled "The mental health and well-being of on-shore asylum seekers in Australia", made a broad comparison between Sri Lankan Tamils held in detention and those applying for refugee status who had been able to come to Australia through "legal" channels. The detained group reported greater exposure to torture and other forms of persecution in their home country, and they manifested much higher levels of depression, panic, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and suicidal urges.
The results of the study suggest that asylum seekers who face extreme threats are most likely to leave their homeland in haste and without documentation.
The cruel irony is that instead of providing special care for the most traumatised people fleeing persecution, the Australian government treats these asylum seekers as frauds.
3. There are no viable alternatives to mandatory detention.
Australia is the only country in the world which automatically detains asylum seekers who arrive in Australia without documentation. Other wealthy countries that detain unauthorised arrivals seeking asylum do so only in particular circumstances, and the detainees have rights to judicial review and temporary release. In Portugal, for example, those who request asylum within 48 hours of arriving cannot be detained at all.
In several countries there are provisions for a weekly review of detention cases, as well as accountability and appeal procedures when detention continues beyond a certain time. In 1994, Luxembourg reduced the maximum allowable detention period from six months to one.
Other countries also have strict provisions against imprisoning minors: Sweden recently raised the minimum age of detainees from 16 to 18.
There are many possible alternatives which treat asylum seekers with compassion rather than brutality. For example, issuing asylum applicants with bridging visas while their claims are being processed, and allowing them to live in the Australian community, perhaps in cheap hostels, as well as allowing them to work and access health care and welfare, and providing them with access to English-language classes. All these measures would be more humane and less costly than the current policy of mandatory detention.
Some may breach the conditions of their visa, but this is not a reason to detain all unauthorised arrivals without trial for months, let alone years, as happens now.
A simple health and character check, and an assessment of a claim for refugee status, is not a time-consuming task. The current delay in processing claims is a deliberate policy by the immigration department to keep already desperate people waiting for as long as possible.
4. Illegal refugees are a burden on Australia's welfare system.
In 1996, the Coalition government commissioned a study on welfare recipient levels by country of birth and time of arrival in Australia. It found that a slightly lower proportion of overseas-born people receive welfare benefits than do their Australian-born counterparts.
Many refugees are well-qualified, educated people. Far fewer refugees would be reliant on welfare if their qualifications were recognised in Australia.
5. The conditions in the detention centres are luxurious compared with the places asylum seekers come from.
Most Australians have no idea what detention centres are like. This is the only way Ruddock can perpetuate the myth that detainees live in luxury.
Australia's detention centres can only be described as prison camps. This is especially the case for those which house 90% of asylum seekers — Port Hedland, Woomera and Curtin.
Many stories have now emerged of how detainees are denied access to communications with the outside world, how they are forced to cook and clean for slave wages, how whole camps have access to only one copy of the daily newspaper, how detainees are addressed by identification numbers rather than by their names, are subjected to confinement to isolation cells, random searches of their belongings, racist taunting and beatings by guards, and denial of access to lawyers and legal advice.
A refugee from Afghanistan interviewed last December by the Melbourne Age described the experience of being incarcerated at Woomera detention centre for five months as dehumanising. The queues really got to him: queues to go to the bathroom, queues for the TV room, queues for meals.
"The conditions in detention were horrible. The food was inappropriate and the children had no toys or places to play. The conditions are similar to camps refugees stay in in Pakistan or Africa — Third World standards."
On May 11 ABC radio interviewed Zachary Steele, a medical researcher at the UNSW Psychiatry Research and Teaching Unit. Steele has co-authored an article carried in the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet, about the psychiatric effects of detention on asylum seekers.
"Research evidence confirms that there are extremely high levels of psychiatric distress amongst detained asylum seekers", Steele explained. "We're talking of rates of clinical depression getting up over 90%. A significant minority of people actually develop psychotic disorders. There are high rates of admissions to hospitals."
There is "evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder at very high levels... this is characterised by intrusive memories of trauma... nightmares... Often the [detention] setting closely duplicates the environment of torture ... prior to coming to Australia."
The May 5 issue of the Lancet also carried a testimonial from an Iraqi physician, Dr Aamer Sultan, currently incarcerated in the Villawood detention centre: "Of the 36 detainees who have been held for over 12 months at Villawood detention centre, my observations suggest that 33 are experiencing clear evidence of severe depressive illness with the remaining three experiencing mild depressive symptoms. Twenty two of the 36 detainees are receiving anti-depressant medication, with a further nine refusing to take medication. Six of the detainees have developed clear psychotic symptoms, as indicated either by their admission to acute psychiatric units or ... persistent self-harming behaviour. Most of these people displayed little if any of these symptoms when first detained at Villawood."
Dr Sultan concludes his remarks with this comment: "I and my fellow detainees came in search of freedom after suffering extreme persecution in our home countries. What has shocked us most is that our human rights have been profoundly violated again, this time by a country that is supposed to respect the principles of human rights. If a Western country can do this and get away with it, what hope do we have?"
6. We need deterrents to stop floods of people coming to Australia.
It is another of Ruddock's myths that there are floods of people coming to Australia. Because of its geographic isolation, this country is not a primary destination for asylum seekers. The government's asylum figures for 1999 confirm this. Only 1% of the 532,000 people seeking asylum worldwide applied for refuge in Australia. This is compared with 62% of applications made in Europe, and 20% in North America. In the 12 months to June 1999, 8257 asylum seekers arrived in Australia. In the two years since, the number is not significantly higher than this.
Retaining mandatory detention for "illegal" refugee status is not, and will not, reduce the numbers of people compelled to leave situations where they face government-organised terror. Most asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat in recent years are fleeing from Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and from the extremely repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan.