Immigration detention in Australia

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Asylum seekers protest against immigration detention at Villawood Immigration Detention Center (April 22, 2011)

Immigration detention ( Australian-English : "Mandatory Detention" or "Immigration Detention") is the political practice of the Australian government to detain non-Australian citizens without a valid visa or persons suspected of having visa violations, illegal immigration or unauthorized entry to take.

There are camps for asylum seekers in other countries, but immigration detention by law is only available in Australia.

A distinction is made within asylum seekers between those who come to Australia on boats and those who come to Australia, for example, by air. The boat refugees come into immigration custody in any case. The others receive a temporary residence permit, the so-called "Bridging Visa E", in which they can raise their concerns. You can move freely in Australia.

development

Immigration detention is an Australian policy against immigration by non-Australians arriving in Australia by boat. That is why they are referred to as boat people in Australia . The first boat people were five young Vietnamese who fled to Australia on a wooden ship - using a map from a school atlas - in April 1976 after the Vietnam War . From 1976 to 1981 just over 2000 boat people arrived. At the end of the 1970s there were three refugee camps in Sydney , Perth and Melbourne , where the boat people who had arrived were granted refugee status relatively quickly and without a procedure.

Under Prime Minister Bob Hawke of the Labor Party , a law was passed in June 1989, the Migration Legislation Amendment Act 1989. For the first time in Australia there was a legal regulation according to which arriving boat people could be detained. Immigration detention only came into use in 1992 under the new Prime Minister Paul Keating of the Labor Party, who came to power on December 20, 1991 and the Migration Amendment Act 1992 was enacted during his term of office. From November 28, 1989 to January 27, 1981, 18 boats with 735 boat people arrived, mostly Cambodians . Some of them ended up in immigration detention at the Port Hedland Immigration Reception and Processing Center established in 1981 in a remote area of Western Australia . Mainly Cambodians were interned there. On January 1, 1985, there were only 5 boat people in the Australian internment camps. The number of boat people fell in the following years. It only rose again in 1992. In June 1992 there were 478 asylum seekers in Australia, including 421 boat people. 306 Cambodians were counted among the 421 boat people.

A new development began in 2001 under the National Liberal coalition government of John Howard of the Liberal Party , which had its origins in the Tampa affair , when the Australian government brought 438 boatpeople, who captain Arne Rinnan from a distressed wooden ship to the Norwegian Rescued freighter MV Tampa , denied him access to Australian territory for days. When he entered Australian waters, his ship was boarded by a special unit of Australian soldiers and the boat people were deported to third countries in New Zealand and Nauru . This policy found its legal expression in the "Border Protection Bill 2001", which was passed in the course of the eight-day affair and which became known as the " Pacific Solution " ( German : "Pacific Solution"). The internment camps in third countries were set up in 2001: the Nauru Regional Processing Center in the small island state of Nauru and the Manus Regional Processing Center on the island of Manus in Papua New Guinea . A total of 1637 boat people were housed in these camps from 2001 to February 2008, around 1153 were recognized as refugees (around 70 percent). 61 percent of them settled in Australia and the others left Australia for Sweden, Canada and the United States.

The immigration detention ended Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party in his reign from 2006 to June 2010. In 2009 60 boats with 2726 boat people reached Australia, in 2010 134 boats with 6555 boat people and in 2011 69 boats with 4565 boat people.

When Rudd had to hand over his post to Julia Gillard of the Labor Party in 2010, the Labor Party tried to negotiate a barter between asylum seekers and boat people with the Malaysian government. She wanted to significantly minimize the number of boat people housed in Australian camps at the time. The so-called “Malayian Solution” (German: “Malayic Solution”) she was striving for was strictly prohibited. Now Gillard continued again on the "Pacific solution" with immigration detention that national conservative governments had introduced. In 2012 and 2013, around 38,000 boat people came to Australia.

Government campaign poster, 2013

Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party carried out a “stop the boats” election campaign from 2010 to 2013, also known as Operation Sovereign Borders . When he won the election in 2013, as Prime Minister he tightened the conditions of immigration detention. All boat people, including those who entered Australian territory, were immigrated by this government. After Abbott was voted out, Malcolm Turnbull came to power from the Liberal Party. He will continue to pursue this political path set by Abbott. The internment camp on Manus is to be closed until October 1, 2017. But only because the Constitutional Court of Papua New Guinea declared it illegal. Turnbull refused to take the 860 asylum seekers in the camp to Australia.

After the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled that the Manus Detention Progressing Center was unlawful to operate on its territory, that court ordered the camp to be closed. Numerous inmates filed a class action lawsuit against the Australian government in the High Court of Australia in 2014 . In order to avert the impending conviction, the government submitted a settlement proposal in June 2017. This proposal stipulated that the approximately 1,900 asylum seekers who had been detained in this camp since 2012 should receive A $ 70 million (about 47 million euros) as compensation for their illegal detention. The Australian state also wants to pay the court costs of around 13.5 million euros. On September 6, 2017, the High Court of Australia approved the above settlement proposal. 70 percent of the 1923 camp inmates have made their demands so far. The deadline for filing a claim is October 13, 2017. In autumn 2018, a refugee camp on Christmas Island that had existed since 2008 was closed.

Internment camp

View of the interior of the internment camp in Villawood internment camp in the greater Sydney area , which is divided into sectors by high fences, 2012

The placement of asylum seekers in internment camps has been a source of criticism since it was set up. There were numerous civil unrest, breakouts from the camps, hunger strikes, self-harm and suicide . Some camps are in remote areas. The warehouses were managed and operated by privately owned service companies on behalf of the Australian government. In addition to the above-mentioned points of criticism, the camps are also criticized because they have the character of a prison and are divided into fenced security areas. Furthermore, the current processing of applications is taking too long.

While there were only three Australian immigration camps in the late 1970s, there are currently (March 2017) eight operating internment camps located on Australian territory. As of December 31, 2016, 1,364 asylum seekers were detained in Australian camps in Australia, including 263 on Christmas Island .

In Australia there are currently (March 2017), according to official figures for asylum seekers in Australia, an accommodation in the so-called "immigration detention centers" (IDCs) ( German : "immigration detention centers"), there is carried out a review of the criteria health, Character and safety concerns. If accommodation in these IDCs is not required due to personal circumstances (abnormalities, behavior, illness, etc.), they are placed in so-called “Alternative Places of Detention” (APD). For this purpose, suitable private houses, hotels, motels and hospitals are provided where asylum seekers are looked after with supervision. However, you cannot move freely. There are furthermore in addition, the possibility that asylum seekers relatively freely in the so-called "community placement" ( German : be housed "community housing"), which are operated by non-profit and faith-based organizations. However, asylum seekers are not allowed to leave the location or accept work.

In 2015, a commission set up by the Australian government put the annual costs for each individual boatpeople outside the mainland of Australia at $ A 400,000.

According to statistics kept by Monash University , there were 1992 boat people-related deaths between 2001 and March 8, 2017.

See also : Australian camps for asylum seekers

outlook

Numerous human rights organizations such as Amnesty International , Australian Human Rights Commission , Human Rights Watch and the United Nations protested against the immigration of boat people in camps . There were also cases where journalists were not allowed to enter the camps.

Australia does accept asylum seekers, for example 12,000 refugees from Syria, and issued visas to 13,800 refugees between 2013 and 2014 and 20,000 refugees between 2012 and 2013. It should be noted, however, that immigration custody for boat people outside the country is relatively undisputed among the Australian public.

In an interim report by the Australian Commission on Human Rights dated March 30, 2017, it noted that overall significant progress had been made in two areas of Australian migration and asylum policy . This applies to both Australian policy and Australia's international legal obligations on this issue, including reducing the number of asylum seekers in immigration detention and ending the detention of children in detention centers. The facilitation of work for refugees living in the Australian community was also to be welcomed.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b What is Mandatory Detention? , o.A., on The Asylum & Refugee Law ''. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  2. ↑ a b c West Phippen: Australia's Controversial Migration Policy , April 29, 2016, on The Atlantic. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  3. ↑ a b c Janet Phillips, Harriet Spinks: Immigration detention in Australia , March 20, 2013, on aph.gov.au. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  4. ↑ a b Marcus Mannheim: Cabinet archives 1992-93: Forget Tampa, boat people panic began under Keating , from January 1, 2017, on Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved March 28, 2017
  5. ↑ Eric Tlozek: Chief Justice finds Manus Island detention center is actually closed , on ABC News. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  6. ↑ Australia has to pay asylum seekers $ 70 million in compensation , June 14, 2017, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved September 6, 2017
  7. ↑ Ben Doherty: Manus Island: judge approves $ 70m compensation for detainees , theguardian.com. Retrieved September 7, 2017
  8. ↑ spiegel.de February 13, 2019: Australia wants to reopen notorious refugee camp
  9. ↑ Australia's asylum policy, August 31, 2001, on BBC. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  10. ^ Immigration Detention Villawood , 2011, on Australian Human Rights Commission . Retrieved March 29, 2017
  11. ↑ Detention facilities locations , o. A., on Department of Immigration and Border Protect. Retrieved March 10, 2017
  12. ↑ Immigration Detention and Community Statistics Summery ( Memento of March 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), of December 31, 2016, on the Department of Immigration and Border Protection . Retrieved March 29, 2017
  13. ↑ Immigration detention locations ( memento of April 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), o. A., on Department of Immigration and Border Protect. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  14. ↑ Immigration detention ( Memento from April 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), o. A., on Department of Immigration and Border Protect. Retrieved March 28, 2017
  15. ↑ Ben Doherty, Nick Evershed: Australian immigration detention costs double that of US and Europe - report , October 1, 2015, on The Guardian . Retrieved March 29, 2017
  16. ^ Australian Border Deaths Database , at Monash University . Retrieved March 29, 2017
  17. ↑ Angela Antenero: Lack of media access into detention centers is shaping the asylum seeker conversation in Australia , March 18, 2016, on International Business Times . Retrieved March 28, 2017
  18. ↑ Updated: immigration snapshot , dated March 30, 2017, on Australian Human Rights Commission. Retrieved May 5, 2017