Comments on: Mandatory detention (sort of) scrapped

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:50:45 +0000

Franklin, why do you keep bobbing up everywhere with your ill informed drivel?

There is not such thing as an illegal arrival in Australia and you have had the reference given to you about a million times by now.

There is an ugliness in the assumption that people might be pulling a swifty so lets quote Guy Goodwin Gill on refugee law.

“genuine refugees simply have no way to travel “legally”, it would be the death of them if they tried.

By: Zen

Zen — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:57:16 +0000

FRANKLIN
The article by Alexander Cassela is hardly a reliable resource material. First of all, is out of date. Deaths and suicides in detention centres came later as much as Cornelia Rau, Vivien Alvarez, and many other mistaken identity cases.
Howard did employ some bureaucrats not necessary on their merit.

Cassela makes following mistakes:
He expresses total disrespect to internationa laws Australia is signatory to.
and total disrespect to the Australian public expressing their concern.
He states in one paragraph that asylum seekers are ‘entitled to illegal entry’ but ‘Australian law provides for automatic ( thus, arbitrary) detention for anyone entering the country illegally.”
Australia is NOT the country which accepts the highest intake of refugees
The Australia processing claims never found 95% of claims to be bogus. Quite the opposite.
The right to flee persecution DOES entitle to choose his country of asylum
There have never been in Australia ‘hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are intercepted every year’.
The term ‘illegal immigrant’ is a silly misnomer. “Immigrant’ is a legal status thus, cannot be ‘illegal’.
There is no ‘inshore visa’ category.
The argument that ‘people fleeing war are not in danger of persecution and hence in need of asylum’ is beyond belief.
The author has never heard about a ‘non-refoulement’ policy. Howard pretended that none exists.
Probably due to his poor English, the author wants us to believe that ‘ALL ( a farmer and a shopkeeper’s son) had to pay more than $2mln.”

(FRANKLIN, Are you aware that to bring both of ones’ parents to Australia one has to pay about seventy thousand dollars to the government? )

What Casella fails to understand is that any applicant for a protection visa has the same right to apply as anybody else without being labeled ‘a terrorist’ in the process.

By: GZG

GZG — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:21:57 +0000

Zen: Please excuse the simplicity of my question, but isn’t it generally the case that the detainee is unable to establish their credentials as refugees or “Victims of International Armed Conflicts”?

And rather than responding on an article by article basis, just one:

#9 ” No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”

It would depend on one’s definition of arbitrary. I’d figure that if people were randomly arrested as they exited “passport control”, then that would be arbitrary. However, a boat full of people without visas claiming refugee status seems worth a closer look.

I do recognise that legitimate victims may well be ill-equipped to prove their case, but expect any nation to exercise some form of border protection.

It could be useful to read up a little on the life and times of Genghis Khan before bandying the name around so indiscriminately. I know who I’d rather have around for a dinner party with the wife & children.

By: Zen

Zen — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:01:09 +0000

FRANKLIN

Article 74 of the Protocol additional to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, and relating to the protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) – adopted on June 1977 states:

“The High Contracting Parties and the Parties to the conflict shall facilitate in every possible way the reunion of families dispersed as a result of armed conflicts and shall encourage in particular the work of the humanitarian organisations engaged in this task in accordance with the provisions and of this Protocol..

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (adopted and proclaimed by the UN):

Article 1; ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Article 2: “Everyone is entitled to all rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national and social origin, property, birth or other status”
Article 9: ” No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”
Article 10: ” Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair, public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations..”
Article 13: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Article 14: “Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum for protection”
Article 23: Everyone has a right to work

DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
Principle I: The child shall enjoy all the rights set forth in this Declaration. Every child, without any exception whatsoever shall be entitled to these rights
Principle 7: “The child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free..he shall be given an education which will promotehis general culture… and shall have full oportunity for play and recreation..`

Could you tell me which of the above have not been violated by the Genghis Khan Howard? Anti- whale hunting laws?

By: Dolphin

Dolphin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:11:36 +0000

I’ve seen some claim that the introduction of mandatory detention actually led to the tragic deaths on the ‘leaky wooden boats’. Their argument is that the beginnings of Australia’s move away from the International Law we had signed up to (i.e. the end of the hope that the men could get here first, be accepted as legitimate asylum seekers and then send for their hapless wives and children, mothers and sisters) led directly to the families then setting out in little boats, in despration, since they could not stay where they were if their menfolk were not able to go out into the commuity and send back money to support them, and then, ultimately, rejoin the family.

I don’t know enough about the figures and legal manoevreings of the time to have an informed opinon … will we ever know the truth? I doubt it. One day, maybe, we will know the extent of our national shame. Shayan Badraie, Viliami Tanginoa, Vivian Solon, Peter Qasim … many unknown people locked away in Woomera, Port Hedland, Curtin, Baxter, Manus Island and Nauru. In the meantime, we hear of rumblings that this change will not get through the Senate. May it not happen that once again our nation will be dipped in the sewer of the rancid xenophobic fears of those who apparently have forgotten out national origins.

I am the descendant of Jews who left Europe in the late 1840s to escape war and economic hardship, and of Scots who did the same thing 20 years later, of an Irish Potato Famine Girl, of an Irishman who left racial oppression and religious intolerance for a better life here in the 1890s, and someone who appears to have changed his identity so thoroughly in the 1830s that we have no idea of who he really was, but he was almost certainly ‘undocumented”, “unauthorised” and possibly from an alien country ( maybe Sweden). All of those fought in various ways for a better life for themselves and their kids … and for the rule of law in their new homeland. When will that fight end?

By: Naomi Cartledge

Naomi Cartledge — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:26:32 +0000

FRANKLIN-I’ve just read the review as you noted.There’s some flaws in it in fact,and I’ve also watched the documentary from Captain Rinnan of the Tampa’s perspective.Father Frank Brennan’s ‘Tampering with Asylum’ Heather Tyler(journalist)Seeking Asylum?From Nothing to Zero;Following Them Home(about certain asylum seekers after they were deported).I have every 4Corners,Current affairs and many news items on tape since the Tampa travesty,and of course there’s SIEV X and the deaths of 353 asylum seekers with a myriad of questions unanswered. David Marr,co author of ‘Dark Victory’ has spoken to survivors, and told Richard Glover ABC 702,that many survivors heard and saw at least 1 plane and ship.
Unlike the review you mentioned,the HREOC Report called, ‘A Last Resort’ asserted that 92% of children from Iran and 98% of children from Iraq were found to be refugees during the years covered by their inquiries-it follows their parents were too. Also, to claim that Indonesia was a ’safe haven’ and therefore to travel on to Australia was a “secondary movement’ omits to mention the fact, that Indonesia is not a member of the International body protecting refugees, and people were thrown in jail or cruelly treated while in that country-hardly a safe haven?The author of the mentioned review scathingly asserts that asylum seekers are even “entitled to illegal entry or even the use of forged documents” – I recall people being recognised as heroes for doing just that in order to remove thousands of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis-and they were!
It’s disingenuous to accuse Saddam Hussein of being a monster(he was) to justify an illegal invasion, but not to acknowledge the desperation of those who were able to flee, or too terrorized to remain. Those who helped them were also heroes in my book -not criminals?The use of words like “queue jumpers’ is in the same mould – I don’t recall hearing of any ‘queues’ in Iraq – outside Saddam’s palace perhaps, in the town square?

By: Mark Thomson

Mark Thomson — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:26:18 +0000

I agree with Andrew’s views. A naked pitch to bigotry and fear was behind the Howard border security construct. As someone who was involved with the implementation of the Pacific Solution I was alarmed by the tawdry misuses of official aid and by a political strategy made up on the run by bureaucrats doing their level best to engineer ‘immigration’ outcomes from bad political motives. The perfunctory official approaches adopted toward self-harming detainees were another disturbing aspect.

As the Party that put in place the legislative framework (in particular ‘mandatory detention’) within which Howard evolved his refugee ‘house of horrors’, it is appropriate that Labor put Australia’s human rights compliance at the top of the international agenda and put our domestic ‘house’ back in order.”