Australia is one of at least 30 countries that “illegally forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger” last year, Amnesty International has found in its human rights report for 2015, arguing Australia’s boat “turnbacks” policy has acted as an example for other countries in the region to force asylum seeker boats back to sea.

While global attention was focused on refugees migrating from conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa into Europe, forced migration across south-east Asia remained one of the most prominent rights abuses in the region.



“People smuggling and human trafficking in the Bay of Bengal exposed thousands of refugees and migrants to serious abuse on board boats,” the report said. “Some people were shot on the boats, thrown overboard and left to drown, or died from starvation, dehydration or disease.

“People were beaten, sometimes for hours, for moving, begging for food or asking to use the toilet.”

In May 2015 as many as 8,000 people were left stranded on boats at sea because south-east Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia refused to let them land and, in some cases, towed their vessels back to sea.



Asylum seekers on board fought each other to death over dwindling food and water supplies, observers said, and the UN warned the vessels would become “floating coffins” if they were not allowed to land.



The Philippines broke the impasse by offering to accept several thousand refugees, and spurring other countries to allow boats to land on the condition they would be resettled in third countries within a year.



Most of those asylum seekers have not been resettled.

Amnesty’s Australia national director, Claire Mallinson, said Australia’s policy of boat-turnbacks – forcibly returning asylum seekers in boats to their countries of transit or origin – was providing an example, and a justification, for other countries to do the same. Boat-borne asylum seekers have been forced back by Australian officials to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

“Last year we saw Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia refusing to allow boats to land, or towing boats back to sea,” Mallinson said.

“In essence, what these countries are doing are copying Australia’s bad practice, and this raises real concerns for the region and the world. If you take that policy to its full conclusion, where boats are being stopped from landing, or where countries are closing their borders, then nobody would be safe, nobody could seek protection anywhere.”

Amnesty’s annual report into the state of the world’s human rights found that at least 30 countries – including Australia, Netherlands, Russia and Saudi Arabia – illegally forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger in 2015. Other countries may be involved in the practice undetected.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, has convened a high-level meeting for September to address the world’s growing refugee crisis and Mallinson argued Australia could be at the forefront of helping to establish a framework for providing assistance and protection to the world’s 60 million displaced.

“Australia has a proud record of defending human rights,” she said. “It helped form the UN, it helped draft the universal declaration on human rights, but before it can be that constructive player again, it needs to get its own house in order.

“All over the world, people can’t believe this is a country that sends people to offshore detention, or is considering removing babies to Nauru.”



Mallinson said developed countries such as Australia should bear more of the responsibility for hosting refugees; 80% of the world’s refugees are hosted in developing nations, usually those adjacent to the countries they have fled.

The report also condemned Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples and called on the Turnbull government to set justice targets to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prisons.

Aboriginal people make up 3% of the population but 27% of the prison population.

Roxanne Moore, Indigenous rights manager for Amnesty Australia, said the high incarceration rate was the single biggest human rights issue facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and needed a nationally led response. But the Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, has dismissed suggestions of including incarceration rates in the Close the Gap targets, saying it should be led by the states and territories.

This month the Northern Territory set a target of reducing the incarceration rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults and children by 2030. Aboriginal people make up about 30% of the general population in the NT and 86% of the prison population.

Moore said the Western Australian government’s decision to expand mandatory sentencing for burglary offences would disproportionately put more Aboriginal people, particularly Aboriginal young people, in jail.

She said the extent of the impact was not known because the WA government did not release transparent data.



