News
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Australian hearts need to be humane
"I am coming here to appeal to Australian hearts to be humane to the treatment of asylum seekers,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told a 1500-strong crowd that packed Sydney Town Hall last night.
“On one hand I am appealing, at the other hand, I am coming to remind the government of its' international obligations,” she said.
Ms Pillay joined Professor Patrick Dodson and Paris Aristotle AM from Foundation House in Victoria at the Commission’s Human Rights 2011 forum, to discuss the most complex, pressing and politically controversial human rights issues facing Australia today.
In a free-flowing and relaxed conversation driven by Indira Naidoo, and assisted by questions from the audience, the High Commissioner urged Australians to treat asylum seekers humanely.
Ms Pillay told the audience the recently announced policy of sending 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia over the next four years possibly violated international human rights laws and cautioned that individuals in Malaysia would have no protections.
"If Australia is serious about this policy of sending 800 people out to Malaysia, then I think it violates refugee law," she said.
"They cannot send individuals to a country that has not ratified the torture convention, the convention on refugees.
"So there are no protections for individuals in Malaysia. And if Australia, of all people, that upholds [international standards], should not collaborate with these kinds of schemes."
Commission President Catherine Branson QC said there was a pressing need in Australia for an informed debate on issues that touch on respect for individuals and groups in our community.
“The Northern Territory Emergency Response Act – and its future - is one such issue and immigration and refugee policy is another,” Ms Branson said.
“In each case we should have a policy that respects the dignity of those affected by it.
“There must be genuine engagement with Aboriginal people and effective communication which recognises their right to self-determination.”
Ms Branson said immigration and refugee policy needed to respect the dignity of those claiming protection rather than degrading them.
“It must be a policy that does not promote the trafficking of people but does respond in a fair way, in accordance with our capacity, to the consequences of persecution and conflict in other countries,” she said.
“A policy which does not lead to individuals, including children, being arbitrarily detained - and for far too long.”
Paris Aristotle suggested that faceless images of asylum seekers did nothing to encourage empathy and understanding of their plight among the Australian population and his story of a young South American refugee pleading for justice not pity, underscored the point.
Professor Dodson delivered a blunt assessment on the Northern Territory Intervention as a failure and warned that policies and programs would continue to fail as long as they were developed by Canberra and imposed on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
But the evening’s questions were not limited to asylum seekers and the Intervention with a Human Rights Act for Australia again being raised, along with homelessness and war crimes in Sri Lanka.
