Amnesty International Report 1996 - Australia
- Document source:
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Date:
1 January 1996
A highly disproportionate rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody heightened concern about the detention and ill-treatment of indigenous people. At least three people were shot dead by police officers in disputed circumstances. Federal legislation on the detention of asylum-seekers who entered the country without immigration documents failed to meet international human rights standards. The government proposed legislation which, if adopted, would remove any legal obligation for officials to consider human rights commitments under international treaties which Australia had ratified but not incorporated into Australian law. In April the High Court decided that the ratification of a human rights treaty by Australia created a "legitimate expectation" that the government and its officials would take into account the treaty provisions, even if they had not been incorporated into Australian law. However, in May the government proposed new legislation, the Administrative Decisions (Effect of International Instruments) Bill 1995, "to eliminate any expectation which might exist that administrative decisions" at any level will conform "with the provisions of ratified but unimplemented treaties." Under this legislation, people who complained that a decision was not consistent with a treaty ratified by Australia, but not incorporated into domestic law, would not be able to seek administrative review of that decision. If passed, the bill would undermine the status of Australia's human rights obligations under the international treaties it has ratified. Law and order issues increasingly dominated state elections, and some parliamentarians called for a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty in Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. The new Human Rights Commissioner announced in August that he would make juvenile and Aboriginal justice issues a priority in his work. The newly elected New South Wales (NSW) State Government announced plans in July to review laws that led to disproportionate numbers of arrests, detentions and deaths in custody of indigenous Australians within its jurisdiction. By the end of the year these reviews had not been completed. The Federal Government's Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994, adopted in December 1994, enshrined the right to sexual privacy in Australian law. The Human Rights Act, passed after a UN Human Rights Committee decision in 1994, prohibits any arbitrary interference with privacy. However, under Tasma-nian law homosexual activities between consenting adults in private remained a criminal offence. The Tasmanian Attorney-General reportedly stated in February that the new federal legislation neither made the Tasmanian law invalid nor affected the way in which it would continue to be applied. In November gay activists appealed to the Australian High Court to make a decision on the legality of criminal prosecution for homosexual activities in Tasmania. There had not been a substantive hearing by the court by the end of the year. Despite federal and state government commitments to implement the vast majority of recommendations made in 1991 by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) (see Amnesty International Report 1993), 21 Aboriginal people were reported to have died in custody or during police operations the highest number in any single year since records were first collected in 1980. Between the end of the period investigated by the RCIADIC and the end of 1995, at least 87 indigenous people died in custody. Although indigenous people make up only 1.3 per cent of the total adult population over 14 years of age, they accounted for at least 24 per cent of all custody-related deaths and more than 14 per cent of the prison population. The majority of deaths occurred in prison, with the highest increase reported in South Australia. In December Maurice Roland Fisher, a 17-year-old Aboriginal prisoner in Brisbane, was found hanging from a bedsheet tied to a cell window during a routine cell check. It reportedly took guards more than 15 minutes to get the master key to the cell door. Although a cellmate who believed Maurice Fisher might still have been alive offered to cut him down, prison guards allegedly refused to hand him a knife. In October the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission started an investigation into new evidence concerning the death of Daniel Yock, an 18-year-old Aboriginal who died in a police van in 1993 (see Amnesty International Reports 1994 and 1995). The Commission rejected calls to hold hearings in public and banned publication of the evidence. By the end of the year no police officer had been disciplined or charged in connection with Daniel Yock's death. In September damages were awarded to the family of Mark Anthony Quayle, a young Aboriginal man who was found hanged in the remote police lock-up of Wilcannia, NSW, in 1987. This was the first such award granted for a death in custody. Mark Quayle was taken by his family to the Wilcannia hospital in June 1987. He was accepted as a patient but did not receive medical care. Subsequently hospital staff arranged with police for Mark Quayle to be kept in the police station overnight for "safe custody" as they believed he was disorientated and might wander off. He was arrested without charge and left alone in a cell. He was found hanged in his cell the following morning. Police then blamed the family for his death. Police reportedly continued to intimidate and harass friends and relatives of victims of deaths in custody who would not accept official explanations and called for further investigations into the deaths. In September the family home of Stephen Wardle, who died in the East Perth police lock-up, Western Australia, within hours of his arrest in 1988, was searched by police officers for the fourth time since 1993. In the same period, the office of the family's lawyer and the home of an aunt of Stephen Wardle were each searched twice. Some searches were allegedly carried out in the family's absence and later denied, but the latest search was captured on security video and the recording screened on television. After the screening, a family with a similar surname, whom the police apparently believed were relatives of Stephen Wardle, reported that they had been harassed and intimidated by police officers. After an internal po-lice investigation of the reports, various charges against the family were dropped. Investigations into 10 fatal shootings by police in Victoria in 1994 were started and partly completed and recommendations were made on ways to reduce the high incidence of these shootings. Five of those killed in 1994 had a history of mental illness (see Amnesty International Report 1995). In its annual report, the Victoria Police Force claimed to have successfully implemented five-day training courses for 8,657 operational police and to have established a more effective working relationship with the Department of Health and Community Services in dealing with mentally ill people. In November the Victoria State Government rejected calls by non-governmental organizations for a judicial inquiry into the record of fatal shootings by police officers in that state over the previous seven years. Despite revised operational procedures issued in September 1994 by the Minister for Police and Emergency Services in response to concerns over the high incidence of shootings of people with a history of mental illness, another three people, including a mentally ill man, were shot dead by Victoria police in controversial circumstances. Changes in immigration policy following application of the Migration Reform Act, adopted in September 1994, led to a slightly speedier processing of applications for refugee status from asylum-seekers who entered the country without immigration documents. Under the new policy, unauthorized immigrants seeking asylum could be released from detention if they met certain criteria for Bridging Visas including age, ill-health and experience of torture and trauma. The detention of unauthorized immigrants remained mandatory and was not usually subject to review. Unauthorized immigrants who claimed asylum were initially detained, in many cases for approximately six weeks, while their asylum applications were processed. However, the vast majority of them appealed against the rejection of their applications for refugee status and remained in detention for several months. The authorities stated that in August, 85 of the 726 people in immigrant detention centres had been detained for more than a year. A few people had reportedly been detained for between two and four years. Amnesty International believes that mandatory detention of unauthorized immigrants who claim asylum, as practised in Australia, may be in breach of the country's obligations under international law. Provisions introduced in 1994 on "safe third countries" were used to designate China as safe for all Vietnamese seeking asylum in Australia after previously being resettled in China, even though they expressed fear of persecution in China. Amnesty International raised concerns that the use of these provisions effectively obstructed asylum-seekers from gaining access to full determination procedures and denied them essential safeguards against refoulement. In October Amnesty International called on the South Australian State Government to investigate the marked increase in the number of Aboriginals who died in custody in this state. In a written reply in December, the State Minister for Aboriginal Affairs did not comment on this request or on the increase in Aboriginal prison deaths. He listed a number of steps taken in response to the issue and said he believed the South Australian State Government had been "extremely vigilant in undertaking its responsibilities towards implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission". In November Amnesty International welcomed the NSW State Government's proposed review of the state's criminal legislation. The organization also reiterated its concern about fatal police shootings in the state of Victoria.
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