In the space of a week, the federal government shocked the world by voting against an optional protocol to the United Nations convention against torture, then aggressively dismissed a UN report which was highly critical of Australia's policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
The government's supporters argue that it is simply standing up to "outside pressure" and that international bodies like the UN have no right to tell "us" how to run "our" country.
The government's response to the UN report was to dismiss it as "emotive" and "fundamentally flawed". The government was compelled to aggressively respond to the UN report because it has given further weight and authority to criticism of its anti-refugee policies by churches, doctors, lawyers, teachers, psychologists, academics, social justice groups and former detention centre staff.
The government's aim is to whip up hostility to the UN among the Australian people by resorting to the crude nationalist argument that the UN is "interfering" in domestic issues. Signing the torture protocol would mean that Australia's "sovereignty" would be violated by having "foreign" inspectors waltzing in to look around "our" detention centres and prisons whenever it takes their fancy.
The Australian government's hypocrisy is starkly exposed by its willingness to join the US in a deadly war against Iraq because that country's government has refused to allow its sovereignty to be violated by UN weapons inspectors who demand unconditional, unrestricted, unannounced access to every nook and cranny of Iraq.
The government says its policy of mandatory detention doesn't breach international law and that it is happy for the UN to inspect detention centres with its prior approval. But the truth is, the government voted against the optional protocol to the torture convention, and worked overtime to dismiss and discredit Justice Prafullachandra Bhagwati's report because it does have something to hide.
The government has been able to maintain support for mandatory detention of asylum seekers by maintaining a wall of silence around the detention centres, so that the majority of people in Australia don't know what goes on inside them.
If the government was not afraid of the Australian people finding out about the treatment of asylum seekers, why would it house the majority of asylum seekers in isolated detention centres in the desert or on remote Pacific islands? Why would it severely restrict the media's access to detention centres, refusing them the right to film or speak to detainees, even with detainees' permission? Why would the government have curtailed the powers of the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, to limit their access to detention centres?
The government's detention policy is designed to ensure that the plight of asylum seekers isn't humanised by allowing people to see their faces and hear their stories.
The only body which has unfettered access to detention centres is the Immigration Detention Advisory Group, a body appointed by and answerable to immigration minister Philip Ruddock.
What is unacceptable to the government is a wholly independent body, such as UN investigators operating under the torture convention, who would not have to seek authorisation to enter detention centres.
Foreign minister Alexander Downer, in explaining Australia's vote against the optional protocol, denied that the scrutiny of detention centres was an issue. Instead, he used the example of investigators walking in to Pentridge Prison without asking the government, which he argued was unacceptable.
But it's not prisons that UN investigators would be interested in, it's immigration detention centres and with good reason. Prisons are regularly scrutinised by independent authorities who have the powers to take action and press charges if they find any regulations being breached. Detention centres have no such mechanism for independent monitoring and accountability.
From Green Left Weekly, August 7, 2002.
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