DARWIN REFUGEE HEALTH NETWORK
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The Darwin Refugee Health Network is a group of health professionals who are concerned about the health of refugees and asylum seekers who attempt to reach or are living in Australia. We warmly invite ALL health professionals - health workers, nurses, doctors, allied health workers, psychologists, social workers, health policy workers, health teachers, researchers and students - to join us in working towards the following aims:
1. TO STOP INDEFINITE MANDATORY DETENTION OF ON-SHORE ASYLUM SEEKERS IN AUSTRALIA.
2. TO OPPOSE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A DETENTION CENTRE IN DARWIN. IF SUCH A CENTRE IS ESTABLISHED, TO SCRUTINISE THE CONDITIONS FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS REGARDING THEIR HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS.
3. TO COUNTERACT THE VILIFICATION, MISINFORMATION, AND EVEN LIES WHICH ARE BEING PEDDLED ABOUT ASYLUM SEEKERS IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR CURRENT POLICIES.
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Our strategies are to:
1. LEARN - inform ourselves, decision-makers, and the Darwin community about the health and access to services of asylum seekers by sharing resources, inviting speakers, and monitoring the media and medical literature
2. LINK - with similar refugee health and medical networks throughout Australia; and with Darwin-based human rights groups with similar aims to our own
3. LOBBY - through letter-writing and other submissions
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STATEMENT
Australia's current 'policies of deterrence' relating to asylum seekers includes the indefinite mandatory detention of 100% of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia without a visa. WE BELIEVE THIS POLICY IS LEGALLY INDEFENSIBLE, ECONOMICALLY INDEFENSIBLE, LOGICALLY INDEFENSIBLE, MEDICALLY INDEFENSIBLE, AND MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE.
LEGALLY INDEFENSIBLE
Asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants. They have not been charged with any crime under any Australian law. They have not been given a trial. But they are nevertheless detained in a prison. Arbitrary indefinite detention in Nazi Germany in 1933 was the thin end of a wedge of unspeakable evil - when non-criminals were incarcerated without a trial, and with little community outcry. Genuine refugees have a right under international humanitarian law to seek asylum in Australia. Eighty-four percent of the arrivals in Australia without a visa are found by our own procedures to be genuine refugees. The remainder are deported because they have been unable to prove their case under the dictates of the 1951 Convention.
Australia is a signatory to the following international humanitarian legal instruments:
1. the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees;
2. the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
3. the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
4. the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Predicated on articles within these instruments, Australia has an obligation to provide protection and care for genuine refugees - not punishment. Only 1% of 12 million refugees languishing in poor countries are resettled in wealthy Western countries each year. This is not a queue - it is a lottery. Where protracted conflict or insecurity exists in their countries of origin, 99% of the world's burden of refugees exist for years without hope in the barest conditions for human survival. It is natural and understandable that a small proportion of this total attempt by other means than UNHCR resettlement to seek protection and opportunity in a wealthy country. Many of the countries of first asylum in the Middle East are not signatories to the 1951 Convention, and protection is not assured. Countries like Australia not only can afford to integrate these people, but states like Tasmania and South Australia actually need their contribution to maintain a growing and vital society.
However, the Australian government, buoyed by the approval of a majority of the community and the complicity of the opposition, have implemented the most draconian responses to flows of asylum seekers in the world. Not only does this abrogate our international human rights obligations, but a vicious cycle has been created where myths, misinformation, and just plain lies and deception have been utilised to maintain an ignorant and supportive public.
Australia mandatorily detains 100% of some 4,000 unauthorised arrivals by boat each year on our shores, an excessive response compared with every other Western democracy. The UK receives 100,000 asylum seekers each year. Only 2% of the total (mostly single men) are indefinitely detained on security grounds. The remaining 98% are processed with security and health checks in the first 2 weeks, and then located around the country in the community. In Sweden there is a law forbidding the arbitrary detention of children for longer than 6 days. Australia currently has in excess of 500 children in detention - an international human rights disgrace, and a contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
ECONOMICALLY INDEFENSIBLE
DIMA's own figures show that the system of closed detention cost on average $50,000 per asylum seeker from arrival to deportation. The costs of the Pacific solution are as yet unreleased, but the involvement of the Navy and gifts to Pacific nations make it likely that the above figure will have increased several-fold since August 2001. The 500 asylum seekers on the Tampa were relocated to Nauru at a cost of $70,000,000 - an average of $135,000 per asylum seeker, even before accomodation and processing costs have begun.
Accomodating health- and security-cleared asylum seekers in the community rather than in indefinite closed detention would reduce the pre-Tampa costs by 70 to 90%. It costs $100 per day per asylum seeker to keep them in closed detention. This could reduce to $30 per person for open detention, and to less than $10 per day for community placement with bail or bond arrangements.
LOGICALLY INDEFENSIBLE
Asylum seekers will flee their countries of birth when and because they are pushed. It takes an enormous upheaval and persecution to force people away from their ancestral and beloved homelands. Flows do not occur indefinitely. Indo-Chinese boat people do not still arrive in Australia. They have not stopped coming because of Australia's policies of punishment. They have stopped because the 'push factors' within their country have ceased, and civil and protective structures have been re-established there.
At the heart of current policies is racism and xenophobia, which is not logical but predicated on the emotion of fear. Australia prefers an immigration intake which is racially controlled, and particularly those migrants who can pay the government (rather than smugglers) to enter. Even our humanitarian intake under-represents those refugees from Africa and the Middle East, compared with their large proportions of the world's burden. There are in excess of 60,000 visa overstayers in Australia at any given time, breaking Australian law, and mostly originating from the USA, UK, and New Zealand. They are not rounded up and incarcerated as are the asylum seekers fleeing persecution in the Middle East.
MEDICALLY INDEFENSIBLE
It is well documented in the medical literature that asylum seekers have extraordinarily high levels of mental distress on the basis of their history of torture, witnessing murder of loved ones, and bearing systematic intimidation. Medical observations within the Villawood detention centre reveal extremely high levels of depression (80%) and suicidal ideation (60%) amongst the inmates. One study showed that Tamil asylum seekers in detention in Melbourne had higher levels of psychological distress than Tamil asylum seekers living in the community, even when adjustment for differing levels of pre-migration trauma levels was made. This suggested that the detention environment itself was exacerbating further the pre-existing high levels of distress. We believe that the long term consequences of this environment, particularly on the generation of children enduring it, can only be deleterious.
It is unacceptable that Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) both enforces imprisonment in the detention centres and is the health care provider. In enforcing security, allegations of intimidation and withdrawal of basic rights have been levelled at ACM. How do you seek health care from the same contractor whose staff may have brutalised you? Could health services be with-held as a punishment? We support the AMA's call for an independent health provider, preferably an agency with experience and understanding of refugee health.
Asylum seekers detained on Manus Island in PNG have recently contracted the life threatening form of malaria. Convicted prisoners in Australia are granted the human right that exposure to infection and disease should not be part of their punishment. But there is no safe preventive medication which can be recommended for the children and pregnant women in this Manus Island group. Since they have not encountered malaria in their countries of origin, a first infection will be severe. Members of the Darwin Refugee Health Network believe that these asylum seekers should be removed immediately to a non-malarious environment.
MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE
Our nation corporately has lacked a moral and compassionate stance on this issue because it lacks a moral direction from its leadership. We seem to have forgotten to treat others the way we would like to be treated in their circumstances. It is difficult for us to understand the terror of living in a country where the civil structures (police, military, judiciary) can no longer protect your human rights; or worse than this, where the civil structures themselves are the instruments of torture, murder, and arbitrary incarceration. Our leaders need to help us to understand these things. They are well-informed about the world. On this basis they are obliged to lead us into compassionate responses when our less well-informed worldview might engender selfishness and fear.
Part of our mandate is to lobby governments with our opinions, and to congratulate those leaders who break party ranks to bravely speak the truth. It would be naïve to believe that our leaders are not already in possession of the facts, and a conscience about the current shame. However, while it remains politically expedient to continue current policy, they will. On that day when 50.1% of Australians are found by poll to oppose the policies of deterrence, change will occur. So it is the wider community which we need to target as well. Intercurrent tragedies may unfortunately be the mechanism for hastening the turn of the tide of public opinion. Meanwhile, we try to promote accurate information, and plunge deeper into the knowledge of these injustices.
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To join us, or for more information, hit the CONTACT button and send us a message.
Updated 7 June 2002
*KEY PAPERS AND WEBPAGES:
The mental health implications of detaining asylum seekers - MJA, Dec. 2001
Detention of asylum seekers in Australia - The Lancet, March 2002
Malcolm Fraser - The big lies of border protection - The Age, 27 March 2002
Alternatives to indefinite Mandatory Detention - Europe
The mental health & well-being of on-shore asylum seekers in Australia
Experts respond to Curtin detention centre disturbances - 22 April 2002
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Copyright © 2001 Nathan Zweck. All Rights Reserved