Sept 20 2002 – A former Federal Court judge yesterday compared the “thuggery” of guards at the Woomera detention centre and other immigration detention centres to the behaviour of SS guards “in the name of the Third Reich”.
Justice Marcus Einfeld said the Australian conscience had been hijacked by the political establishment, which had deliberately misled the public over asylum seekers in an effort to win the Pauline Hanson vote.
The judge, who is also the national vice-president of the
International Commission of Jurists, said an undercurrent of racism had found its way into debate about asylum seekers.
He said a “lack of moral fortitude, compassion and understanding of divergent cultures and peoples” had given rise to a “frenzied almost hysterical reaction to our asylum seekers”.
In an address at the University of Newcastle, Justice Einfeld referred to folders he had that were full of the “most disgusting treatment of detainees” in detention centres, and revealed cruelty and brutality of a kind “Australians only ever read as happening overseas”.
These were matters of which the Australian public was largely ignorant, he said.
“The point about this is the people don’t know anything about this because the politicians have made sure that they didn’t know anything about it,” he said.
“They close off the camps to the media and to visitors so nobody knows what’s going on inside except odd bits and pieces that filter out.
“They don’t tell people the truth.”
Justice Einfeld also condemned the Federal Government over its detention of children.
Referring to visits he had made to refugee camps, he said: “I have looked in the tear-filled eyes of many parents of different nationalities and religions as they nursed sick and frightened children whom they could do nothing to help in their pain and suffering.”
Saying he had detected in those parents no different standards or levels of love and hope for their children than are held by any Australian parent, he asked: “If we can do nothing else, can we just tone down the arrogance a fraction?”
He accused the media of lazily mouthing the expressions of the politicians in stereotyping asylum seekers.
Words like “illegal” and “migrants” were misused in respect of asylum seekers, he said.
“When they apply for asylum, they’re doing something that’s expressly permitted by Australian law, so it’s not illegal – it’s legal.
“They’re not migrants, because they’re not coming to live here, they’re coming here to make an application for refugee status. They’re not queue jumpers, because refugees never form queues; people who form queues have time to wait – refugees are escaping persecution.”
A spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, said: “If there is any evidence of inappropriate action, there are plenty of avenues along which complaints can be followed, and if he has evidence, he should put it before the proper authorities”.
