DEar List Members

I don't make a habit of posting off-topic info but as we're talking
about something that goes to the core of just about everything
that's relevant, I will do so on this occasion. 

Best Wishes
John K

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ANNUAL REPORT 1997: Australia
[The report covers the period January-December 1996]

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.






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