BY SARAH STEPHEN
On July 24, the Australian government voted against the adoption of an optional protocol to strengthen the United Nations convention against torture. The government claimed its decision had nothing to do with preventing international scrutiny of its treatment of detained asylum seekers.
The UN convention against torture has been in force since 1987, but until now it has not given independent experts access to prisons, police stations and other places of detention. After 10 years of debate, an optional protocol was adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council on July 24 that establishes a system of regular visits to places of detention. It will be presented for adoption by the UN General Assembly later this year, before being opened for ratification by individual countries.
The vote on the protocol was delayed by the US government's efforts to reopen debate on its content, which the US considers too "intrusive". Its proposal was defeated with 29 votes against, 15 in favour and eight abstentions. The final vote on the protocol was passed with 35 in favour, 10 abstentions (including the US) and eight against. Australia was one of the eight.
Amnesty International applauded the adoption of the protocol, noting that "unlike the other international mechanisms against torture, which mainly react to torture after it has taken place, this will focus on preventing torture from occurring in the first place".
In opposing the protocol, some countries claimed it was a violation of national sovereignty. The US government on July 24 stated: "The United States deeply regrets being placed in the position of abstaining on the draft decision ... its overall approach and certain specific provisions are contrary to our constitution, particularly with respect to matters of search and seizure".
The US government fears international scrutiny of its detention facilities, especially Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, where more than 500 prisoners are being held without trial in deplorable conditions.
Interviewed on ABC radio's AM on July 26, foreign minister Alexander Downer denied that Australia's objection to the protocol on torture had anything to do with the detention of asylum seekers. He explained Australia's key objection: "UN officials ... would be able to come into an Australian prison, such as Pentridge Prison, ... without the permission of officials in order to examine whether there is any torturing going on in that prison. Well obviously, there isn't torture going on in Australian prisons. I must say I do think that goes without saying."
According to Human Rights Watch's Rory Mungoven, the protocol ensures consultation with governments, prior notification of visits and the confidentiality of reports.
Andrew Byrnes, a law professor at the Australian National University, told ABC's PM on July 26: "[A UN inspection team] will draw up a program of visits in advance, it will notify them to states... Yes, they have an obligation to comply, to open access to places of detention, but it's not as if they can just turn up, as Mr Downer said, at Tullamarine and hop in a cab and arrive at Pentridge and say 'Let us in'. That's not how it would happen, and I'm sure Mr Downer knows that."
Paris Aristotle, director of the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, told PM on July 26 that Australia's opposition would undermine attempts to prevent torture elsewhere in the world. "Certainly, whatever criticisms people may have of detention in Australia, and there are obviously a great many, it still doesn't justify not signing a protocol that is going to protect people who are being tortured, or possibly killed, in other parts of the world."
Aristotle is not so sure Australia has nothing to hide. "In the Australian context, there are serious concerns about some aspects of the way in which asylum seekers are being detained and held, and those concerns have some legitimacy", he said.
The government has good reason to be concerned about increased scrutiny of its mandatory detention regime. Whichever way you look at it, the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia's detention centres amounts to torture.
According to Zachary Steel, a clinical psychologist who is documenting the effects of detention on asylum seekers, "we are seeing some of the most horrific human rights abuses that we've seen for a very long time".
Some critics have labelled the indefinite detention of asylum seekers as "time torture". Emotional and psychological torture is most pronounced and well documented. The use of beatings and solitary confinement by guards as punishment also amounts to physical torture. Children are especially vulnerable to these horrors.
Since 1999, more than 5000 children have been detained in Australian immigration detention centres. In 2001-02, 2291 children who arrived in Australia claiming asylum spent time in detention. All are likely to have been scarred by the experience, some irreparably.
As of July 18, there were 120 children in Australian immigration detention centres, three quarters of them in the remote Western Australian, South Australian and Christmas Island facilities. Around 90% have been imprisoned for at least six months. Of those, 50% have languished in detention for more than a year and one in three of those for more than 18 months. The majority are from Iran, closely followed by those from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over the past five months, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) has been hearing submissions as it conducts its inquiry into children in detention. Many of those submissions reveal the degree of emotional and psychological trauma torture suffered by children at the hands of the Australian government.
Louise Newman, director of the NSW Institute of Psychiatry, presented the findings of a study published in the journal Australasian Psychiatry, titled "Seeking refuge, losing hope: parents and children in immigration detention", to the HREOC inquiry. Newman pointed out: "Parental depression and despair leaves children without protection in an already terrifying and unpredictable place".
The study cited the case of a family in detention, which included two teenage children and a son aged three: "The father and daughter cried through much of the interview and repeatedly expressed the wish to die. She said: 'All the time I think about how I can kill myself. Life here has no meaning for me, all the time in my mind, over and over, how can I do it? My [younger] brother doesn't know what flowers look like. This is not a life.'
"The teenagers had witnessed their father make a significant suicide attempt when their application for refugee status was refused after seven months of waiting. After this, he reportedly spent several days in isolation in a police cell. He did not seem to have been offered psychiatric assessment or help. He said: 'Even if we get our freedom, we will be mad people by then ... Eight years of witnessing war and blood in my country are better than one year in this camp."
The study also noted: "Detention centre staff are sometimes threatening and insulting, reportedly calling the children 'towel heads' or 'little queue-jumpers'. One mother asked for clothes to fit herself and her children and was told: 'Make them out of the curtains'. ACM behavioural management strategies are frequently coercive. Independently attested accounts by detainees suggest that when particular children or their families are regarded as troublemakers (eg engaging in violence and self-harm), the children have been placed in solitary confinement for extended periods.
"One father said: 'The situation here is turning us all into savages. Whatever laws we had in our own places are breaking down here where we are treated as less than human'."
A submission to the HREOC inquiry from the Sydney-based group Children Out of Detention (ChilOut) gathered accounts from Villawood detention centre inmates which highlight the degree of degradation that detainees are subjected to: "A lactating mother asked if a ChilOut supporter could provide her with some food for her baby. When asked why, she reported that the evening meal was at 5pm and breakfast was at 7am the next morning. A lactating mother needs to eat regularly, every two to three hours during the day, in order to produce enough milk for her baby and to satisfy the overwhelming hunger so many lactating women experience. The mother had to resort to stealing food from the dining room to take back to her room. This was an embarrassment to her and caused her some stress."
Other accounts in the ChilOut submission included:
"A five-year-old child was crying from hunger. His/her parents asked the guards if they could have some food for the child. They were refused. Later that night, one of the other detainees witnessed a female guard taking leftover pies from dinner to a cat who lived near the centre."
"At Port Hedland [detention centre], [a detainee] witnessed a child asking for more food who had not said 'please'. The guard's response was to shout, using obscenities. On occasion, when children were given fruit, guards would throw the fruit at them, as if the children were animals, rather than hand it to them."
"Many guards do not recognise the special needs of children in the way that they behave and speak with children. Children living in detention are treated the same way as adults. One example ... was a small girl who was longingly watching an officer eat an ice cream in front of her. The guard became angry that the child continued to focus on his ice cream and told her to 'Get lost'. The child began to sob. A 23-page transcript of an interview with a now-released detainee describes how he witnessed a burly guard kick a 4-year-old toddler away from a fence when she was playing too close to it."
From Green Left Weekly, August 7, 2002.
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