Australia’s hardline immigration policies yesterday overshadowed the launch of its bid to join the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR), with the government and rights lawyers arguing bitterly over a pregnant Somalian asylum seeker who says she was raped.
Australian Minister of Immigration Peter Dutton accused lawyers of fabricating stories about the treatment of the woman, who human rights advocates said was denied basic medical attention and likened her removal from Australia to CIA-style rendition.
Australia has decided to take 12,000 of the estimated 850,000 Syrians who have fled their homes devastated by war, including widespread air strikes by the US and allies, such as Australia.
Photo: Reuters
However, Australia’s controversial policy of turning back refugee boats and holding asylum seekers in prison camps in poor South Pacific island nations such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea has undermined any goodwill.
Pressure is mounting on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to act on the harsh detention conditions after reports of systemic child abuse and rape.
The UN also sharply criticized Australia after an observer cancelled an official visit to the detention camps, citing a lack of government cooperation.
“Our harsh and cruel treatment of asylum seekers and refugees is damaging our international reputation and damaging our ability to advance our national interest, whether it’s through being elected to the Human Rights Council ... or in other negotiations,” Human Rights Law Centre executive director Hugh de Kretser said.
De Kretser said UNHRC membership would enable Canberra to rebuild relations with the UN.
The UNHRC bid came as protesters took to Sydney streets, and as lawmakers and immigration officials scrapped with lawyers over the treatment of the 23-year-old Somalian woman, known only as Abyan, who is being held on Nauru and who claims her pregnancy was the result of being raped there.
She was brought to Australia last week for an abortion, a procedure banned on Nauru, but was returned four days later when Dutton’s office said she no longer wanted to terminate the pregnancy.
Her lawyers dispute that account and say the woman, who is 14 weeks pregnant, asked for counseling and more time to regain her health before undergoing the procedure.
“There are alleged facts that are being put forward by some of the advocates which are patently incorrect, if not fabricated,” Dutton said.
He said the woman saw doctors, nurses and mental health assessors on Nauru, mostly with interpreters.
Immigration officials questioned in parliament said her lawyers had requested her medical records, but they were not able to hand them over until the woman gave written authorization.
However, one of the lawyers, George Newhouse, said that he wanted to seek a court order keeping her in Australia before the government suddenly flew her back to Nauru.
“When we heard an hour before she was being removed from the country without treatment — that that was going to happen — of course we tried to stop her for going back without treatment,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
They were seeking a temporary injunction, not an effort to keep her in Australia permanently, he said.
The government had flown her to Sydney on Sunday last week on a commercial flight, but she was flown the 4,000km back to Nauru on Friday in a chartered private jet, in what some critics suspect was a hastily arranged bid to beat a potential court order allowing her to stay.
Neil Skill, first assistant secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, yesterday told a Senate committee that he decided to charter a flight because there were no commercial seats available on the day and he was worried about the disruption that Abyan might cause on a commercial flight if she did not want to return to Nauru.
Additional reporting by AP
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