By Bill Rowlings, CEO of CLA.
Civil Liberties Australia is taking the opportunity with federal parliament resuming to re-launch the OPCAT element of our Better Justice campaign.
In late-August, CLA delivered a hard-hitting letter to PM Turnbull calling on him to activate OPCAT*. The letter also went to the Attorney-General, Foreign Minister, Opposition and Greens justice spokespeople as well as state and territory AGs and ministers responsible for justice.
See BELOW for a copy of the letter, and an overview of the Better Justice campaign.
In September, we will be briefing new MPs particularly on the campaign, highlighting OPCAT as a way to safeguard Australian kids against abuse by detention and prison guards. MPs can put pressure on the government to finalise OPCAT negotiations which have been under way since 2009.
Both Labor and Liberal governments have been beyond slack on the issue…while both sides have claimed to have been working on ratifying OPCAT “actively” for nine years.
Signed in 2009, progress to secure state and territory plans for prison and detention centre inspections regimes has been glacial.
With scandals revealed in juvenile centres like Don Dale centre in the NT (Four Corners expose) and in Tasmania and Queensland, federal and state/territory MPs have a clear-cut responsibility to act…now !
CLA’s 10-point Better Justice plan, released in January 2016, had three key aims relating to prisons and detention centres: ratify OPCAT, begin annual external inspections of all centres, and improve education.
* When Australia ratifies OPCAT – the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture – all juvenile detention places and jails under Australia’s control will be opened to mandatory, external inspection.
Even the UN is alarmed at Australia’s treatment of children in detention:
‘Shocked’ UN asks Australia to compensate abuse victims”
A “shocked” United Nations has called on Australia to compensate victims of abuse in youth detention and extend the royal commission into juvenile justice nationwide.
The global body noted children as young as 10 were “being held in inhumane conditions and treated cruelly”, activities that could amount to a breach of Australia’s human rights obligations.
“We are shocked by the video footage that has emerged from Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory in Australia,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said through a spokesman.
“Most of the children who were held at the detention facility are deeply traumatised.”
The Commissioner said the disturbing footage aired by the ABC could violate the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention Against Torture. Australia has signed both treaties.
The UN called on Australia to financially compensate victims of abuse in detention, as well as identify and punish the individuals responsible for such acts. http://tinyurl.com/hz8dg29
As I’ve noted several times, there is no point whatever in recommendations regardless of how commendable they might be because the grubs in authority have demonstrated they will only ignore them. It is blatantly obvious that those of us who challenge the establishment need to develop considerably more persuasive ways of bring our elected officials to account. Since the media rarely chooses to name and shame politicians and bureaucrazies who clearly believe they are vastly superior to us, I suggest we need to do the naming and shaming ourselves. One thing is certain …. grubs don’t like exposure, and as Justice Louis D. Brandeis remarked, the best disinfectant is sunlight.