Megan #FREEAssange · @GraffitiExpert
5th May 2016 from TwitLonger
Still only the Financial Times calls on Australia to #CLOSETHEILLEGALCAMPS
Editorial Financial Times [1/5/16]:
That Papua New Guinea, a country with questionable human rights credentials, is publicly shaming Australia over its offshore detention of refugees and asylum seekers illustrates how far Canberra has deviated from moral and ethical norms on this issue.
Last week, the PNG government asked Australia to close a detention centre run on PNG’s Manus Island that holds about 850 asylum seekers. The request came after the PNG Supreme Court ruled their detention illegal.
It also followed shortly after a 23-year-old refugee living at Australia’s other main offshore detention centre, on the island of Nauru, set himself on fire over his long unresolved detention there. The Iranian man later died of his injuries as a shocking video spread across the internet of his self-immolation in front of visiting UN officials.
His death was the latest tragedy to emerge from a system that has become a serious blot on Australia’s international reputation.
Australia is the only country in the world to enforce mandatory offshore detention of asylum seekers. Canberra’s offshore camps have been decried as cruel and inhumane by the UN, human rights groups and even Australian parliamentary inquiries.
Conditions in the camps, most of which are run at taxpayers’ expense by for-profit private contractors, are abysmal and deteriorating.
The camps and the limbo in which detainees find themselves are calculated to serve as a deterrent to future potential asylum seekers. Critics say this deterrent is particularly targeting migrants from the Middle East and north Africa.
Australia has a poor record on these issues. Discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity was legally sanctioned in Australia until the mid-1970s. Today it is the poorest and most vulnerable refugees from countries torn apart by war who are bearing the brunt.
The string of deaths, attempted suicides and human rights abuses in the offshore detention centres should make clear how untenable the present situation is.
Australia is a signatory to the UN convention relating to the status of refugees: the prolonged detention of refugees runs counter to that convention. The UN Human Rights Committee has found against Australia regarding its detention of asylum seekers on multiple occasions.
Rather than address its disregard for international treaties, Canberra passed legislation last year making it illegal for employees at detention centres to disclose information about the camps to the media. Those who violate this law can be sentenced to two years in prison.
The fact that neither major political bloc in Australian federal politics is willing to take a stand to clearly oppose these policies in the run-up to a general election reflects badly on a nation of immigrants that depends on continued immigration for its economic growth and future prosperity.
It is also an indictment of the Australian media and the wider public discourse that racism and fear-mongering is so popular among a significant portion of the electorate.
The government should act immediately to process rapidly the detainees languishing in the camps. It should then, as a matter of principle, announce before the election in July its intention to shut down permanently all of its offshore detention centres.
As Europe struggles to respond to a far bigger and more serious influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East, Australia should finally start to set a positive example and exorcise the ghosts of a xenophobic past.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ad4db22-0df7-11e6-ad80-67655613c2d6.html#ixzz47lyGW8ZQ
http://www.springhillvoice.com/unhcraustralia.html