White Australia Imprisons Refugees
By Gideon Polya
16 February, 2005
Countercurrents.orgRacist White Australia has had an appalling history of human rights abuse involving invasion, genocide, aboriginal dispossession, mass removal of aboriginal children from their parents, racism (such as the White Australia Policy) and participation in 2 centuries of British imperialism.
Since the Second World War, White Australia has been involved in Anglo-American Asian wars from Korea to Iraq that make it complicit in a post-1950 under-5 infant mortality in the victim countries that totals an appalling 34 million.
Internally, White Australia has been imprisoning thousands of innocent, non-European refugee men, women and children behind razor wire in privately-run detention camps in remote deserts and on remote Pacific islands.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, health workers, civil liberties lawyers, other professionals and numerous human rights activists have protested this horrendous, continuing abuse of traumatized, innocent people and the consequent serious health consequences, especially for children.
The latest - a mentally ill German-origin Australian woman Cornelia Rau (a former highly-recommended Qantas air hostess reported missing by her Australian family), was successively falsely imprisoned for 10 months by the Queensland Police and thence by Australian Federal Immigration at the remote South Australian Baxter Detention Centre.
As reported in Australian media, during her ordeal Ms Rau repeatedly declared her innocence of any crime deserving incarceration; was examined by Queensland hospital psychiatrists who found that she should be released but had to return her to custody; gave evidence to a prison inquiry indicating that she should not be incarcerated; was physically abused, periodically held in solitary confinement, denied required medical treatment and observed sleeping naked by prison guards in the Baxter Detention Centre; and continued to be imprisoned and untreated despite numerous representations.
For an account by Ms Rau's family in Australia see http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2005/02/06/1107625064599.html,
For a further recent report see
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1296993.htm.
In response to Parliamentary questioning it has been revealed that others have been wrongly detained like Ms Rau in immigration detention centres e.g. a French man and a Korean woman.
The responsible Minister has stated "There are powers for [officials] to detain people they believe to be unlawful citizens ... People are rightfully detained if officials at the time believe they are unlawful citizens" (Sydney Morning Herald, 16 February, 2005)
Racist White Australia has an appalling continuing record of participation in imperialism, genocide, human rights abuse and ecocide; however the Anglo-American mainstream media give sports-loving White Australia a "good press" and ignore the harsh external and internal realities.
Thus the horrendous avoidable infant mortality in Anglo-American Coalition-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan in which Australia is complicit - according to UNICEF (February 2005; http://www.unicef.org/) in 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in Iraq, 292,000 in Afghanistan and 1,000 in the invader and occupying country Australia (noting that these countries have populations of about 25, 24 and 20 million, respectively).
There are major concerns among decent Australians that human rights in the so-called Lucky Country are under acute threat due to foreshadowed legislative changes to constrain free speech. International exposure of the Black Crimes of White Australia may mitigate this threat to one of the world's oldest liberal democracies.
Dr Gideon Polya, 29 Dwyer Street, Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria, 3085, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html
Day & night telephone: +61 3 9459 3649
Credentials: Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality (numerous articles on this matter can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html)
