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‘Cruel, unnecessary’: Legal groups call for end to indefinite detention
Alongside human rights organisations, legal groups have thrown their support behind a proposed bill that would end indefinite and arbitrary immigration detention and eliminate the current “inhumane, unnecessary and unlawful” system.
Naomi Neilson
In submissions to the Ending Indefinite and Arbitrary Immigration Detention Bill 2021, legal groups have reflected on Australia’s “cruel, unnecessary” immigration system, which sees refugees and asylum seekers spend an average of 689 days in offshore detention. In comparison, the United States holds an average of about 55 days.
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Not only does this detention cause extreme harm to the people detained, the legal groups have warned that it also contravenes numerous international agreements, including the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Public Interest Advocacy Centre’s senior solicitor Lucy Geddes said in a statement prior to the submission deadline: “Australia is a global outlier in its cruel and degrading treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. Locking people up indefinitely is inhumane, unnecessary and tantamount to torture. It must stop.”
Rachel Saravanamuthu, the acting principal of the Human Rights Law Program at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, added that Australia’s ongoing treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees is a “national shame”. Not only does it have a devastating impact on their mental and physical health, but it is “tearing families apart”.
Refugee Advice and Casework Service director and principal solicitor Sarah Dale mirrored this, calling on the Australian government to put an immediate end to the “dehumanising and manifestly unjust” policies affecting people in detention.
“The exercise of an immigration system, whereby people can be detained indefinitely on an automatic, non-reviewable and indiscriminate basis is inimical to the core principles of the legal system and international human rights principles,” she said.
Despite Australia’s obligations under international law not to deprive people of liberty arbitrarily and not to subject people to “cruel and inhuman treatment in the form of indefinite detention”, UNSW Law senior research fellow Madeline Gleeson said the domestic laws do not reflect that position, leaving few remedies to the victims.
National Justice Project director and principal solicitor George Newhouse added: “Our government knows they have a legal and moral duty to asylum seekers and refugees, yet instead of offering protection and care, they have slowly and painfully drained their mental and physical health, their hopes and their dreams.
“Enough is enough. It must stop.”
