Detainee rape claim tests policy
Paige Taylor, Joe Kelly
The Australian
April 30, 2011 12:00AM
THREE detainees accused of attempting gang-rape of a fellow asylum-seeker last week may become the first test of proposed "character" rules.
A guard called for help from Australian Federal Police at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre on April 21 after allegedly encountering a partially dressed detainee being held down by three others.
The alleged victim had appeared highly distressed, The Weekend Australian has been told. "The AFP can confirm it responded to a request to attend the North West Point Immigration Detention Centre on 21 April 2011," a spokesman said.
"The AFP can confirm a 22-year-old male and 28-year-old male and 30-year-old male were charged with indecent assault."
The men are now locked in a compound reserved for the most troublesome and disruptive among the approximately 1000 men in the centre.
On Tuesday, Mr Bowen announced that anyone who committed an offence in immigration detention would fail the "character" test and would not be given a permanent visa under proposed changes to the legislation.
Previously a person failed the character test if sentenced to 12 months or more in jail, which controversially allowed visas to be given to three asylum-seekers convicted over a riot at the Christmas Island detention centre in 2009.
Mr Bowen, who has said he would use the new rules vigorously, yesterday declined to "speculate or pre-empt the outcomes of the cases" involving the three men charged with indecent assault. But under his proposed law, which would be retrospective, Mr Bowen could rule someone out on more general grounds.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has urged Mr Bowen to use the discretion he has under the existing character test to take a tougher approach to detainees who riot.
So far, no detainee has been charged over the riots at Christmas Island on March 17.
"There is an independent review and an AFP investigation ongoing around the Christmas Island events," a spokesman for the Minister said.
Serious allegations about the conduct of detainees at Villawood immigration detention centre in Sydney were yesterday aired by 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley, which he attributed to an unidentified whistleblower with inside knowledge at the facility.
He claimed detainees engaged in a rooftop protest at Villawood were sleeping in rooms that could be entered via a rooftop cavity, that assaults were regularly committed, that drug abuse and other criminal activities occurred on a regular basis and that some detainees were allowed to make trips to rehabilitation centres where they obtained illicit substances.
Guards told The Weekend Australian they recognised one of the rooftop protesters at Villawood as a participant in the rioting on Christmas Island.
Amid the confusion during the Christmas Island riot, contractor Serco had taken detainees who wanted to escape intimidation and violence to compounds on the other side of the island.
But some of the men who got on the buses that night had actually been part of the riot and not in need of protection from the others, guards have told The Weekend Australian.
While federal police had been able to pick out some of them and return them to the main detention centre, others had escaped scrutiny.
Under Mr Bowen's new character test for asylum-seekers, those convicted of a crime while in detention but who have also been found to be refugees will get a visa with limited rights, such as a safe haven visa or "bridging pending removal" visa.
Sending them home would contravene Australia's international obligations under the refugee convention.
Labor’s preferred immigrants unable to contain their Godless behavior even whilst awaiting processing / RUBBER STAMPING,by their co conspirators the Australian Council of Trade Unions Financed,Labor /Green Loon,”Independent” Minority Socialist Government as they work to facilitate the Islamic Colonization of Australia.
More on these Godless SWINE and what the Australian Labor Party describes as “Cultural Diversity”,Multiculturalism,”All Cultures Religions are Equal”
This from 2002,The Muslim WAY or what the Australian Council of Trade Unions Financed,Labor /Green Loon,”Independent” Minority Socialist Government call the enrichment of Australian society via Multiculturalism and Cultural Diversity, hey Every Day is a “Harmony Day” in Australia.
Published: Monday 20 May 2002
Muslims Assault Non-Muslims in Immigration Detention
Centres
Country: AUSTRALIA
A deeply disturbing scandal has emerged in Australia’s immigration detention centres where Christians and other non-Muslim asylum
seekers have been “stoned, assaulted, sexually harassed and abused by Islamic fanatics”.
Reza, an Iranian Christian, was blinded in one eye last August when a group of Afghan Muslim men stoned Christians leaving the
dining hall in Woomera detention centre. In another incident a Christian man was kicked to the floor and his cross was ripped from his
neck. In December 2001 an eighteen-year-old Mandean girl (a small religious group which follows the teachings of John the Baptist)
was shouted at by Muslim men in a dining hall who called her a “dirty, filthy infidel” who shouldn’t be allowed to serve food to Muslims.
When she attempted to argue back she was “pushed to the ground and kicked and abused.” In a similarly shocking incident a blind
Mandean man was seized by Muslim men, held down and defecated on before being left in a locked toilet.
In other incidents non-Muslim girls have faced sexual harassment and verbal abuse because they do not wear Islamic headscarves, the doorways of
Mandean asylum seekers have been defecated in, and a local Islamic mullah has even called for a jihad (holy war) against Mandeans
at the Port Hedland detention centre.
Non-Muslim men, women, and even children, many of whom fled Muslim-majority countries like Iran in the first place because they
were being persecuted for their faith, are now facing widespread abuse of a horrific nature from Muslim conservatives in Australia’s
detention centres. The majority of asylum seekers in Australia are Muslims. Witnesses say that extremist Shiah Muslims, particularly
Iranians, Afghans and Iraqis, are often those behind the violence. The BBC quotes Dr Graham Thom, Amnesty International’s Refugee
Co-ordinator, as saying “The reports we’re hearing say that Mandeans, Tamils and other Hindus, Christians – in particular Christian
converts – are facing violence or threats of violence from certain Islamists within the detention centres.
They are being called infidels.They are being refused access to kitchens and things like that because people think they are unclean as infidels. This has escalated
at times when there is a serious breakdown of order within the detention centre when there are riots and things like that and these
groups, who often refuse to participate in riots, are physically assaulted.”
Chaplains, pastoral workers and staff at the Woomera, Curtin and Port Hedland detention centres in Australia have spoken up about
an atmosphere of Islamic intimidation and terror in which the authorities seem powerless to protect the non-Muslims. Whilst Muslim
asylum seekers have access to halal meat and mosques, many non-Muslims’ religious and dietary needs are not being met.
In Woomera Mandeans are now even allegedly forced to hold their religious meetings in secret, and in Curtin no Mandean services are
being held at all because the authorities simply cannot guarantee the protection of the participants, and even Christian services,
including baptisms, have been severely restricted.
The widespread suffering and “constant discrimination” is leading to deep emotional distress and psychological trauma.
Jim Monaghan, a Christian chaplain at Woomera, says that “at present the families there are very vulnerable. There have been attempted suicides and other forms of self-harm ... they are desperate.”
These shocking reports, which have been publicised by Australia’s The Age newspaper, the BBC, and Amnesty International, have
raised a new factor in the debate surrounding Australia’s immigration policy, which is often criticised as being harsh.
The reports also raise disturbing questions about the state of asylum centres in Europe, America and other countries in the developed
world.
Could Christians and other non-Muslim asylum-seekers be suffering similar discrimination in other contexts where Muslims also
make up the majority of asylum-seekers?
