Australia's High Court backed the government's tough policy on illegal immigrants yesterday by overturning a lower court decision to free five children from a detention center for asylum seekers.
In a landmark ruling, the High Court unanimously allowed an appeal by the immigration ministry against the release last year of the five siblings from a South Australian detention center on orders of the country's Family Court.
The Family Court ruled in June that the government's policy of indefinitely detaining child asylum seekers violated UN conventions on the rights of children and it ordered the release of the siblings, who were freed in August.
The government immediately appealed the ruling, which could have led to the release of more than 100 other children from detention centers.
The High Court yesterday ruled that the Family Court did not have the jurisdiction either to free the five or issue orders concerning the general welfare of children held in immigration detention.
The judges agreed with the immigration ministry that Australia's Migrant Act, which provides for the mandatory detention of illegal non citizens, included children.
"So far as Australian law was concerned, the respondent children were therefore lawfully detained," their judgment said.
Lawyers for the family of the five children at the center of the court case said they would seek a federal court injunction against their return to detention.
"We're most certainly concerned that the federal government will grab these children and re-detain them. We've certainly been put under that impression from what's been said to us," attorney Jeremy Moore said.
He said the matter would be heard today in the Federal Court in the South Australian capital Adelaide.
The five children, two boys and three girls aged seven to 12, have been living in Adelaide under the care of a Catholic relief group. Their identities cannot be revealed for legal reasons.
The parents of the children, who are believed to be either Afghan or Pakistani, are both in detention.
Acting Immigration Minister Gary Hardgrave said the government would leave the children with their caregivers for now, but did not exclude the possibility of ordering them back into detention.
"The current arrangements for the particular children will remain in place for the time being," he said.
The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard has detained hundreds of asylum-seekers of all ages in remote camps in Australia and the Pacific as part of a tough policy initiated in 2001 to discourage illegal immigration.
Under the policy all asylum-seekers face mandatory detention pending legal reviews of their status and eventual deportation.
The practice has been repeatedly condemned by the UN and human rights groups, notably over its inclusion of children.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of