Torture refugee deported from Australia to China commits suicide
Cheshire Noir writes, "Our government in Australia used to round up anyone who tried to seek asylum here and send them to appalling 'Detention Camps'. When they became too much of an embarrassment on the mainland we set one up on a Pacific island at tremendous cost.
This poor guy kept appealing being sent back to China because he was convinced he'd get tortured. They shipped him back anyway. He was so horribly tortured that he committed suicide rather than face it again."
Link
(Thanks, Cheshire!)
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i love how one commenter on the actual article says that australia will become the duping ground of the world's persecuted. that's even harsher than in the USA. of course that does show he has a highly inflated opinion of australia compared to other countries. besides surfing, what do they have there?
Migrants are discriminated against all over the world.
Well I understand - Australia is so crowded already. There's just no room.
/sarcasm
A former prison colony that puts people in detention camps? ehh, I'm not gonna touch that one.
I'm not understanding the timeline here. One of the first sentences in the article says:
And then:
So which is it? Something doesn't add up, and it's not just Australia's poor treatment of the guy. He got deported, beaten up by Chinese police and then talked to ABC? How did that happen? I'm so confused.
Dumping prisoners in Australia? Unheard of!
White people take over a country, exterminate
the people who were there, then say "Sorry,
we're full, go back where you came from."
Sounds familiar.
To #4: He was deported from Australia 1 year ago. Prior to that, he was detained for his final 2 years in Australia at the Villawood immigration detention centre, after having spent a decade arguing his case for asylum.
Under Australian law, in line with Australia's obligations as a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees, refugee applicants are assessed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to see if they satisfy the definition of refugee under that Convention. If they do, they are entitled to a "protection visa" - the visa given to successful asylum seekers. If not, they are entitled to apply to the independent Refugee Review Tribunal for a de novo reconsideration of the refusal of their application on the facts. Failure at this level still allows a law-based appeal to the Australian Federal Court.
If Mr Zhang was returned to China it is because this process determined that he was of no risk of being persecuted in China. It's possible that determination may have been wrong, but even our repellent previous government didn't deport people who had been found to be refugees back to their country of origin.
Without seeing the decisions made about Mr Zhang's case (which naturally are kept confidential as asylum seekers generally don't want the fact they've made such applications broadcast, let alone the details of their claims), it's not possible to say whether the decision-makers simply didn't believe Mr Zhang's claims or whether they believed that his past treatment was unlikely to happen again. Mr Zhang's suicide is tragic, but of itself is no more proof that he was a genuine refugee than his claims to be so - even if he subjectively believed them.
The Refugees Convention does not obligate nations to grant asylum to any person from a country with a poor human rights record, or ones lacking democracy or institutionally protected freedoms. (There are too many countries like that, and too many rich Western "democracies" allied to them. Note the Treaty was first drafted shortly after the Second World War as a response to the Holocaust, and even then governments couldn't bring themselves to make its scope broader than it is.) To be a refugee as the term is used in the Convention requires persecution, which is a higher standard than simply living under a repressive regime - it requires one to be the deliberate target of significant harm.
Detaining asylum seekers prior to determination of their applications violates Australia's treaty obligations under the Human Rights Convention - specifically the section against detention without trial - and cannot be justified by claiming asylum seekers who have entered the country without valid visas have broken Australia's laws - partly because detainees are never tried but also because the Refugees Convention does not require that asylum seekers enter the country by "legal" means, and the Human Rights Convention specifically enshrines the right to seek asylum without going through official channels to enter a country.
It's unfortunate that the current government persists with the canard that visa-less asylum seekers are somehow "illegal". However, only a small percentage of refugee aspirants are detained in Australia - even under the previous government's unpleasant policies the majority of those detained were the so-called "Boat People" coming to Australia via Ashmore Reef and Christmas Island. Most refugee applicants arrive in Australia by plane with valid visas (student, tourist, etc) and apply for protection visas after arrival. Even those whose original visas have expired before they claim refugee status are rarely detained. There would simply be too many of them.
The previous government's treatment of detainees was often peculiarly heartless (see, for example, the case of Peter Qasim), and their excuses for the policies were duplicitous - nonsense about "queue-jumpers", "terrorists" etc - but even Howard didn't "round up anyone who tried to seek asylum here". Such absurd claims undercut the valid work of those who'd like to see Australia take its international treaty obligations as seriously as possible, which, hopefully, the current government will make a better commitment to than the previous regime.
In Italy deporting a person to a country where they may face the death penalty is against our constitution (usually to the great anger of the US). More countries should enact this stance with regards to both the death penalty and to torture.
It's hypocritical for any country to consider the death penalty or torture crimes, yet give in to a foreign government that asks them to send over a prisoner to be tortured or killed.
I first heard of this from Greg Egan, who's quite active on the matter.
He also writes interesting science fiction.
Actually Australia is full.
You are forgetting that nearly all of it is desert.
They now have about 20 million people and that is thought to be too many.
Hell there are too many of us everywhere but let's try not to make out that there's bags of room in OZ.
Coz there ain't.
Doesn't get around sending a guy bac to be tortured.
But then, if the Chinese want change then they'll have todo it themselves.
Hard to change when that's the dead last thing the government wants and they're awfully good at cracking down on their people.
But hey, WOOO OLYMPICS!!
:p
Seems to me China holds some responsibility here.
@Error404
Have you been to Japan lately? Your 20MM could easily fit into the greater Tokyo metropolitan area (assuming that all the Japanese people living there agreed to a swap over a summer long weekend or something). How exactly are you defining "full"?
You stay classy Australia.
Couldn't he have applied to a few other countries while he was in Australia? Or is there a planet-wide rule that you can only apply to one country at a time? I agree that Australia did wrong, but if it was a choice between killing yourself or trying New Zealand, I'd maybe try New Zealand.
I'd say something along the lines of "utilising its full, sustainable environmental and economic population carrying capacity".
Some argue that Australia's current population is unsustainable in the long run: When the coal runs out, the money from China will run out and Australia can no longer afford to import food or the technology it needs to maintain high-intensity agriculture necessary to feed a large population on the driest continent on earth.
I'm undecided on the issue myself.
More here:
http://www.population.org.au/
Obviously, you've never been to Auckland.
Well yes, that's my point. Japan has extremely little arable land, let alone level ground. They seem to manage.
Australia has a lot of land and not all of it desert. It is also resource rich. Certainly all those cattle leases people were worried about around the time of Mabo weren't on entirely barren ground. As for sustainability, you might want to speak to the mining companies before you start talking immigration.
In terms of land mass, Canada is mostly tundra, and has a population not much larger than that of Australia. If we chose to, we could be nearly entirely self-sufficient for food. The problem is, we don't. Our main source of population growth is immigration, and we could easily take on more. We do need to make better choices about how we use our resources, but immigration is not even a secondary concern. Frankly, we could use more skilled people.
Japan and Canada have plenty of the one resource in short supply in Australia: Fresh water.
antarctic icebergs towed to Australia?
No he couldn't. He was locked up the last 2 years in Sydney and I'm guessing somewhere else for a while before that. When applying for asylum they don't generally say. "sorry buddy you're a bit full here, why not try New Zealand" it's either you get asylum or you get deported back to the country you came from. It's not like he could walk into a travel agents and book a flight.
____
Actually there is bags of 'room' in Oz. Even Sydney & Melbourne which are Australia's densest cities are hugely spread out and not actually dense at all. So yes there is plenty of 'room'.
If you’re arguing that we don’t have the resources to sustain our population I’d again argue that you’re wrong. There are lots of things Australia wastes vast amounts of fresh water on.
1st – Livestock. Australia is one of the world’s largest beef exporters. We could scale down the beef industry in Australia by about 30% without even putting a dent into our own meat eating habits. We’d save bucket loads of water and free up more arable land for growing crops. Beef is one of the least efficient forms of food regarding the amount of water needed to make it consumable. After all of this we’d still be able to export about 40% of our beef.
2nd – Rice! Why you’d choose the driest inhabited continent on earth to grow a crop that pretty much needs to be submerged in water I don’t understand. Especially when there’s a little thing called Asia directly above us! Yet I enter my supermarket and of the 25 different brands of rice on the shelf about 3 are not grown in Australia.
3rd – Irrigation. There is a massive hole in the ozone above Australia and the sun burns and dries out this place like nowhere else. Yet for some reason the vast majority of our irrigation channels have not been upgraded since about 1950. Nearly all of these channels are nothing more than concrete shaped like a half pipe. Building real pipes that can move large amounts of water without losing 40% to evaporation would do the country a massive world of good.
is there a planet-wide rule that you can only apply to one country at a time?
Basically, yes. To apply, you generally must reside, even if you're not in detention. And you generally must apply wherever you land first.
Torture is widespread in China. It is known to have taken place in every type of Chinese detention facility, from police stations to courtrooms. Those who stand up for human rights and talk about things the government wants to hush up – like democracy, Tibet and the Tiananmen Square protests – are at serious risk of being tortured.
Amnesty International Australia is campaigning on these issues – along with Internet censorship and the death penalty – check out our microsite http://www.uncensor.com.au .. Human rights matter more than anything, they are the basis for all human life.
Itsumishi, sure - if Australia completely restructured its agriculture (and hence its entire society) they could feed more people.
In the meantime...
I always liked my friends idea - set up a nationwide garbage disposal network that dumped garbage in the center of Australia and build up a mountain range that would cause clouds to shed water inland :)
Kaiza, I'm stealing that from you (or, I guess from your friend)
Spazzm -
That's an absurd response. For one I hardly see how our entire society would be restructured by reducing our beef exports and importing crops that really weren't meant to grow here in the first place. More than 50% of Australia's population lives in the capital cities without even factoring in rural towns, so it's not like we're all farmers.
As I pointed out in the first post we could reduce beef exports alone by 30% without affecting the amount of beef for our own consumption in the slightest. It doesn't need to happen instantly, but by increasing taxes on exporting beef the industry would take care of its self. Farmers would still profit from supplying meat to Australian's, some farmers would shift out of the export game.
Taxes should also increase on companies that use massive amounts of water. Instead they buy huge amounts of water at only a fraction of what smaller users do.
It's considered our most precious resource yet it is squandered constantly.
I am wondering whether it will be better to not apply for asylum. Simply destroy all your documents and stay illegally. When caught, claim you are from Taiwan.
It works for other countries as well. Genuine African asylum seekers in Europe could claim to be illegal economic migrants from a neighbouring African state. If they are not deported to their original state, they wouldn't be persecuted.
#8 posted by cubicblackpig , June 16, 2008 8:04 AM
... Mr Zhang's suicide is tragic, but of itself is no more proof that he was a genuine refugee than his claims to be so - even if he subjectively believed them.
But the fact is, after he was sent back, he *WAS* tortured; which does actually prove his claim that he would be tortured if he was sent back.