Human Rights Abuse In Australia : Australia’s Handcuffing of Asylum Seekers for Court Visits
Dated : 12 Dec 2020 (IST)
The continued handcuffing of asylum seekers to attend minor civil court matters is gross violation of Human Rights. It is gross abuse of power flowing from the concept of WHITE RACIST SUPREMACY ”. Such practices are not only humiliating but also creates a barrier to accessing justice.
says Asylum Seeker Resource Centre principal solicitor says that Detainees are even restrained for visits to bathroom and to eat lunch. The world has started wondering on the kind if people in Australia making and enforcing such Colonial era laws.
The use of handcuffs on those in immigration detention, a gross abuse of Power, has come under scrutiny once again after a landmark test case initiated by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) argued that handcuffing detainees to attend medical appointments was illegal, inhumane, traumatising and created an unlawful barrier to healthcare.
This also proves that those in authority in Australia care two hoots for Human Rights but certainly start jumping around in case a citizen of theirs is put behind by other Asian Countries
The overuse of restraints has already been criticised in reports by the Commonwealth Ombudsmen and even the Australian Human Rights Commission but to no avail. Does the Australian Government wants to be thrown out of the Commonwealth ? UK will not be able to save their expulsion.
In many cases, handcuffs are also being used to transfer detainees to routine visa matters in the civil courts, including the administrative appeals tribunal. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says the practice is common and the threshold for deeming a detainee to be a threat is too low.
The centre’s principal solicitor, Carolyn Graydon, said the handcuffing of detainees in public areas of the civil courts can be humiliating. In fact it is gross violation of Human Justice System.
“Once they’re actually in the hearing room, my understanding is that it’s then the jurisdiction of the decision-maker, the judge or the member in the AAT, to decide whether the restraints can be removed or not. In my experience, they are, they usually are,” saud Graydon
“But as soon as a person leaves the hearing room, the judge or the member no longer has that jurisdiction, and they’re usually put back in restraints, even to visit the bathroom, or to just eat lunch in the hallway.
There is no readily accessible data on the use of restraints, but 2017 documents released through freedom of information suggest that the use of force, which includes restraints, was increasing significantly.
A recent ombudsman’s report on immigration detention, which monitored activities between July and December, warned the way the government was assessing a detainee’s risk was flawed for transfers and escorts. The report was resulting in an overuse of handcuffs.
“We are concerned that current policies and risk assessment processes support a decision to automatically apply mechanical restraints to a detainee during T&E [transfers and escorts] activities, rather than considering alternative mitigation strategies like more escorting staff or closer escorting practices,” the report said.
Graydon said authorities were giving detainees a “higher risk rating in many cases than what is objectively warranted”.
“I’ve had clients that have been transferred by car, in bodycuffs and handcuffs, all the way from Sydney to Brisbane, with two stops at police stations to go to the toilet,” she said.
The case brought by Piac concerning medical appointments alleges that the use of handcuffs creates a barrier to healthcare access, particularly in cases where there is a history of trauma or torture.
