“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In Australia there exists a shameful conjunction between injustice and ill-health involving foreseeable, avoidable and possibly irreparable harm to the most vulnerable of all, the legacy of previous Liberal and Labor governments. I speak of the indefinite detention of people — including children — charged with nothing, guilty of nothing, in Australia’s very own Gulag Archipelago stretching from Christmas Island through our remote deserts and on to malaria-blighted islands to our north.
Some of those children have been there from birth, born in Australia but denied their birth right of citizenship, knowing no crib but one bounded by razor wire, denied the protection of the state’s child protection legislation we all take for granted. Considering the abrogation of Australia’s moral, let alone treaty obligations, it seems we could do no worse.
Today we awoke to the news the Abbott government has decided to axe the Immigration Health Advisory Group, or IHAG, established by the Howard government in 2006 after recommendations made in the Palmer and Comrie inquiries into the handling of the cases of Vivian Alvarez and Cornelia Rau. It was populated by well-regarded medical and other health professionals who gave competent and independent advice to whatever government of the day. Therein, I suspect, lay the problem for a government such as that with which we now find ourselves.
Coming hard on the heels of a highly critical Amnesty International report into conditions at the Manus Island detention facility, it begs the question: what have they to hide? I think we know. So does the Australian Medical Association, hardly a hotbed of left-wing social activism.
New research published in the AMA’s Medical Journal of Australia found substantial unmet health needs and levels of psychiatric morbidity among asylum seekers in immigration detention in Darwin. The poor level of transparency and the lack of independent scrutiny of detainees’ healthcare were of major concern. The conditions in Australia’s offshore facilities, where there is even less (now virtually none) independent medical oversight, are even worse.
The Australian government is obliged, as a signatory of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to provide the same standard of healthcare to detainees as is available to the general population. Following the Amnesty report, there is little doubt that we are in breach of that convention.
Suicide is the leading cause of death among detainees in Australia, as one would expect from a policy that leaves people in indefinite detention, unaware of their ultimate fate, in conditions arguably unfit for human habitation. If we were to deliberately design a system so cruel as to entice death, we could do no better.
Is it by design, Mr Abbott? Mr Morrison? Or is it simply the wilful indifference, the turning of the blind eye to which Bonhoeffer referred?
In an accompanying MJA editorial, Australian Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs wrote:
“… it is often the detention environment itself that causes mental illness … Accordingly, it is the removal of people from closed detention that will have the most powerful effect in mitigating mental illness.”
I cannot see her holding her job for much longer under the current government.
Out of sight and largely out of mind, Australia is building a generation of damaged people — almost all of whom, statistics and history show, are entitled to be granted refugee status under our international treaty obligations. In our deserts and on isolated islands, our government is building a legacy to haunt and shame us for generations. We must now consider our response in the light of Bonhoeffer’s declaration, for we too will be held accountable by history.
*Dr Michael Gliksman (@MGliksmanMDPhD) is a physician in private practice in Sydney. He is a member of the federal council of the AMA, a committee member of Doctors for Refugees and a member of the Australian Red Cross International Health Law Committee. The views expressed here are his own.
22 thoughts on “A generation of damaged people government wants to ignore”
Elyce H
January 1, 2014 at 11:08 pmIt’s bad enough that our government is able to justify the treatment of asylum seekers in the name of “border protection” but it’s even worse that many Australians actually support Australia’s asylum seeker policy. It would seem that many Australians have been conditioned to fear and think negatively of asylum seekers and this has enabled people to be able to justify the way that we treat them and the conditions that they are subjected to. Political leaders and the media far too often distort facts and statistics. We have been told that asylum seekers who arrive by boat are “flooding” our country – Australia actually receives a very small number of asylum seekers compared to other countries. Asylum seekers who arrive by boat are referred to as “illegal immigrants” – this is not true, in fact the UN Refugee Convention stipulates that refugees have a right to enter a country with the purpose of seeking asylum, regardless of how they arrive or whether they hold valid travel or identity documents. We have been led to view asylum seekers as threats and criminals and led to believe that our treatment of them is necessary in order to protect our borders.
Genevieve Gibney
January 4, 2014 at 10:06 amThe current policy in Australia requiring the mandatory detention of all asylum seekers arriving via boat in offshore processing detention centres has had an uneasy implementation. As a policy platform of the democratically elected Liberal Government, it is reasonable to propose that is it is line with the views of the majority of Australian voters however this point in time support is not of itself a mandate for implementing blanket change. Change of this scale on issues of such importance to the Australian people requires extensive consultation and engagement to ensure the right balance is struck and the expectation of the community is met.
The subject of asylum seekers will continue and evolve, as a consequence of both changing Australian societal attitudes and the wider political, social and economic conditions of global nations through wars, famine, political upheaval and natural disasters etc. As such there is need for related policies such as offshore processing to be tested, reviewed and revised over time in consultation with the Australian people through the appropriate mechanisms to ensure the human rights of every individual seeking asylum are both recognised and protected.