Australia’s medical fraternity wants an independent monitor to stop abuse in immigration detention, juvenile justice, psychiatric and aged care facilities

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Australia’s immigration detention centres, juvenile justice facilities, and prisons should be opened up to an independent monitor to stop abuse and mistreatment of detainees, Australia’s medical fraternity has argued in a landmark joint statement.

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Eighteen of Australia’s peak health bodies issued the statement urging the Australian government to ratify the UN’s optional protocol to the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, known as Opcat.



The Opcat was passed by the UN’s general assembly in 2002 and came into force globally in 2006. Australia is in the unusual position of having signed the treaty in 2009 – an indication of support for the purposes of the treaty – but not ratified it, which would make the country legally bound to adhere to it.

The Opcat requires countries to set up an independent and sufficiently-resourced monitoring body that has unrestricted access to all places of detention, including prisons, police lock-ups, juvenile detention centres, immigration detention facilities, locked psychiatric facilities, and secure disability and aged care facilities.

In a joint statement issued on Friday, the 18 peak health bodies – including the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, the Public Health Association of Australia, the Australian Psychological Society, and Children’s Healthcare Australasia – said current systems of oversight of detention centres were failing, and needed urgent strengthening.

“The lack of consistent and comprehensive monitoring has contributed to ongoing incidents of mistreatment and human rights abuses in places of detention,” the statement said.

“A succession of parliamentary inquiries, royal commissions, coronial inquests, and reviews from international bodies have highlighted gaps in monitoring across different places of detention in Australia, and the need for improved oversight to protect the health and human rights of people deprived of their liberty.

“The government must act now and ratify the Opcat to prevent further instances of harm.”

A spokesman for the attorney general’s department said the government was considering whether to ratify the protocol “and bring it into force in Australia”.

Australia has been a party to the Convention against Torture since 2009, and so is obliged to ensure that no torture, inhumane or degrading treatment takes place in detention centres under its control. Bodies such as the Commonwealth ombudsman, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Red Cross and the UNHCR are able to scrutinise Australian detention facilities.

Doctors have spoken out previously about the abuse of people in detention: more than 40 signed an open letter in June condemning the Border Force Act that imposed a two-year prison sentence on whistleblowers who spoke out about conditions in detention, and last weekend, staff at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne protested at detention conditions, arguing they were inherently harmful.

Earlier in the year, doctors at the hospital refused to discharge a patient and her daughter in order to prevent them being sent back to detention.

Sixty-four human rights and social welfare organisations wrote to the attorney general, George Brandis, last year urging Australia’s ratification of the treaty.

Australia’s immigration detention network has been the subject of consistent controversies, with reports of violence against asylum seekers, medical neglect and sexual harassment and assault.

It is unclear whether Australia’s offshore detention regime would fall within the scope of the Opcat. The government and its Australian contractors maintain the detention centres are the responsibility of the Nauruan and PNG governments, but a parliamentary inquiry found Australia had effective control of the centres, and was legally responsible for them.

Those offshore centres have been consistently mired in controversy. A series of government reports and parliamentary inquiries have found: systemic sexual abuse, including rape, of asylum seekers; violence against detainees by guards and police, including the death of Reza Barati and others being shot; insufficient medical care and delays in treatment, contributing to sustained illness and the death of Hamid Kehazaei; and inadequate and expired food and medicines given to asylum seekers.



Nauru ratified the Opcat in 2013 but has not yet set up the monitoring body to oversee detention conditions as it is required to.



But there have also been issues of abuse in prisons and police lock-ups, in particular of Indigenous prisoners and of minors. Abuse in mental health facilities and in aged care homes has also been reported across Australia.

Former medical officer for International Health and Medical Services in the Christmas Island detention centre Dr John-Paul Sanggaran told Guardian Australia the Opcat would establish a national preventive mechanism that would safeguard the rights of those held in detention.

Australia had had six years to ratify the treaty he said: “it seems like there needs to be action now”.



“It all comes down to transparency, as things stand there is no transparency and deliberately so. Transparency is likely to deter human rights abuses in the first place.”

Sanggaran said those in detention were often especially vulnerable to having their rights abused.

“People only seem to value human rights once those rights are in danger of being lost, people don’t value the human rights we enjoy every day.”

He said asylum seekers in detention had often already suffered grave human rights abuses.

“Coming from a place, often a very traumatic or dangerous situation, to experience a difficult and dangerous journey to another place and then to be taken and put into what is essentially indefinite detention, it’s these people who value human rights, who know what they mean and how important they are.”

The chief executive of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, Kim Ryan, argued the ratification of the Opcat was even more pressing in light of the UN special rapporteur on on the human rights of migrants abandoning his visit to Australia.

François Crépeau cited provisions in the new Border Force Act which carry a two-year prison sentence for detention centre whistleblowers, as preventing people from speaking to him, and him from being able to work freely.

“We are now in a position of no external scrutiny of what is happening, which may have health and mental health implications for all those detained and working in detention centres. If we are to continue to detain people we need to limit the harm caused to asylum seekers and to staff.”



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Michael Moore, the chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia said the Opcat would prevent human rights abuses among some of society’s most vulnerable and marginalised.

“The Opcat is fundamental to ensuring the human rights and dignity of people in places of detention are protected. By opening up places where people are detained to regular independent scrutiny, human rights abuses can be prevented and the secrecy and silence of abusive systems can be confronted and reformed.



“Examples of abuse, neglect and ill-treatment in places of detention continue to proliferate – whether it is harsh conditions in immigration detention, physical and sexual abuse in residential disability and mental health facilities, neglect in secure dementia care facilities, the use of solitary confinement in juvenile detention, or inadequate mental health care in overcrowded prisons. Ongoing instances of abuse, neglect and ill-treatment in places of detention undermine Australia’s credentials as a leader in human rights.”