Amnesty International Report 1997 - Australia

A political activist was imprisoned; he was a prisoner of conscience. Alarmingly high rates of death in custody of Aboriginal people raised concerns about ill-treatment. Australia's policy of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers who arrive without proper documentation continued to infringe the country's obligations under international law. A National-Liberal Party coalition under Prime Minister John Howard replaced the Labor government in federal elections on 2 March. In negotiations on a "Framework Agreement" with the European Union the new administration refused to agree to a binding clause on the respect of "basic human rights as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". In January, the Tasmanian State Government announced plans to increase the maximum penalty for private homosexual acts between consenting male adults from 21 to 25 years' imprisonment. Following state elections in February, these plans were dropped. In June, the Tasmanian Legislative Council voted against a bill aimed at bringing the Criminal Code into line with Australia's international human rights obligations (see Amnesty International Reports 1993 to 1996). At the end of the year the High Court had not decided on a submission made by gay activists in November 1995 to determine whether the disputed sections of the Criminal Code subjected homosexuals to arbitrary interference with their privacy and were therefore inconsistent with federal laws protecting sexual privacy. Amnesty International remained concerned that the law allows for the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience, solely on the basis of their sexuality. In February, political activist Albert Langer was sentenced to 10 weeks' imprisonment for breaching a court injunction ordering him to stop advocating an alternative but legally acceptable way of filling in federal election ballot papers. He was a prisoner of conscience. On 7 March a Federal Court reduced his sentence to three weeks' imprisonment. By the end of the year no decision had been made on a bill introduced in October to repeal section 329a of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 which provides for up to six months' imprisonment for anyone who publicly encourages voters to fill in ballot papers other than in the way prescribed by Parliament. Although they make up two per cent of the population, Aborigines accounted for more than 20 per cent of all deaths in custody. At least 17 Aborigines died in custody or during police attempts to detain them. There were numerous reports of physical ill-treatment, harassment or intimidation of Aboriginal people by law enforcement officials. In the Northern Territory, an Aboriginal woman suffered treatment which Amnesty International considered to be cruel, inhuman or degrading in January when police held her in custody for more than 15 hours after she complained of having been raped by two men. Police justified her detention with their discovery of an outstanding warrant for her failure to appear in court on a minor charge. Despite instructions by senior police officers to treat her primarily as a complainant in a rape case rather than as a suspect, officers delayed her medical examination, which recorded internal injuries, and discouraged a counsellor sent by the doctor from seeing her. She was brought to court in the rain, locked in the uncovered cage of a police van. During an Ombudsman investigation into her complaints police officers reportedly justified her treatment on the grounds that she had been better cared for in the lock-up than she would have been in her "primitive" Aboriginal community home. The Speaker of Parliament ruled against publishing the Ombudsman's findings. In February, charges were dropped against six police officers who took three Aboriginal boys, aged from 12 to 14, from central Brisbane to an industrial wasteland 14 kilometres outside the city to "reflect on their misdemeanours". Police had detained the boys in a shopping mall after 3am on 10 May 1994, but did not charge them or take them to a police station. The boys told a Criminal Justice Commission of Inquiry that the police officers had threatened them with torture and drowning in a nearby river and then left them to find their way home in the dark. During committal court hearings of the case against the officers, the boys were reportedly intimidated by the police officers' lawyers and were wrongly addressed as "defendants" by the magistrate. There were developments in two cases from previous years involving the ill-treatment of non-Aboriginal Australians. In June, a parliamentary committee called for an independent judicial inquiry into the death of Stephen Wardle who died at East Perth Police Station in Western Australia within hours of his arrest in February 1988 (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The state government told Amnesty International in November that it would not initiate an inquiry into the case. In October, two police officers in Perth, Western Australia, faced charges of perjury and assault after allegedly ill-treating Geoffrey Young and then claiming he had injured himself in a fall. Geoffrey Young alleged that in June 1994 police had twice punched him in the face and kneed him in the stomach after they learned that he had been to a nightclub frequented by homosexuals. In September, the state parliament voted against proposed legislation to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Australia's policy of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers who arrive without proper documentation continued to infringe the country's obligations under international law. Since 1989 more than 800 children, among them more than 70 babies born in detention, had spent up to two years in detention. International standards stress that, in view of the hardship which it involves, the detention of asylum-seekers should normally be avoided and should only be used in specific, exceptional cases. In March, the Department of Immigration refused to deliver letters sent by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) to asylum-seekers who the Commission said were held incommunicado at Port Hedland detention centre, informing them of an investigation into alleged violations of their human rights. In June, the Federal Court ordered the Department to pass letters from HREOC to the detainees. Two weeks later the government introduced a bill in Parliament to remove immigration officers' obligations to inform unauthorized asylum-seekers of their legal rights and to exclude them from independent scrutiny under human rights legislation governing HREOC and the federal Ombudsman. Asylum-seekers often do not know, and are not informed of, their rights under Australian and international law to interpreters, legal assistance and communication with refugee assistance agencies. In February, Amnesty International called for the immediate and unconditional release of Albert Langer. In March, an Amnesty International delegation visited Australia to investigate violations of human rights in the context of the over-representation of indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system. Delegates met prisoners, victims of alleged human rights abuses and their relatives, and held discussions with local organizations, senior police, prison officers, government officials and ministers. Amnesty International repeatedly expressed concern about Aboriginal deaths in custody and urged the federal and state governments to increase efforts to address the factors giving rise to abuses against Aborigines in prison and police custody. It called upon the new Federal Government to demonstrate its stated intention to make the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody a priority and recommended that all investigations into deaths in custody should be based on the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. In October, the organization released a report, Australia: Too many open questions – Stephen Wardle's death in police custody, expressing concern that Stephen Wardle had suffered from lack of care amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, with fatal consequences. The organization also highlighted the lack of independence in previous investigations into his death and called for a thorough and fully independent judicial inquiry. Amnesty International wrote to the Tasmanian Government and to each member of the Legislative Council calling for the Tasmanian Criminal Code to be brought into line with Australia's international human rights obligations. In February and July, the organization published two reports on its concerns about the Tasmanian legislation.