Australia plans powers for guards to ‘beat asylum seekers to death’

Fresh authority recommended for Australia’s immigration detention center guards would allow them to “beat asylum seekers to death,” a former Victorian supreme court judge has said.

Testifying before a Thursday Senate hearing on Australia’s proposed amendments to the migration bill 2015, Stephen Charles SC emphasized that the amendment I, which maintains the good order of immigration detention facilities, would greatly expand the officers’ authorities at the detention facilities in ways that would “inevitably encourage violence by guards against asylum seekers,” the London-based Guardian newspaper reported.

“These amendments to the Migration Act will in effect authorize guards to beat asylum seekers to death on the basis they reasonably believe it is necessary … to do so,” he said.

According to the report, the new powers suggested for the prison guards – which may include private contractors – would allow them to use “reasonable force against any person” if the guards believe it is necessary to protect the life, health or safety of people or maintain order or security of a detention facility.

Such authorities potentially allow officers with little training a greater level of immunity than those granted to state and federal police officers, the report adds.

Charles, who sat on the Victorian court of appeal until 2006, further emphasized that the standard recommended in the bill would offer a similar test to those who have been considered in the US, “and drew parallels with the recent shooting of Walter Scott by the police officer Michael Slager,” the report added.

“Time and again police in the United States have been acquitted in circumstances such as these,” Charles was quoted as saying. 

In February, Australians held candlelit vigils to commemorate the beating to death of 23-year-old Iranian man Reza Barati while held at Australia’s Manus Island detention center in Papua New Guinea. He was reportedly killed by the guards during three days of attacks by locals and rioting that he was not even involved in.

Following the surging violence at Australian detention centers, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez examined the nation’s asylum seeker policies. He reported various violations of the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, signed 30 years ago at the UN Human Rights Council.

“The Government always assures the Australian people that it complies with its international human rights obligations. But here we have the United Nations once again, in very clear terms, telling the government that Australia’s asylum seeker policies are in breach of international law,” said a press release issued by Australia’s Human Rights Law Center.

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