The Guardian 11 May, 2005
Wrongful detainee arrests:
now it's more than a hundred!
The ABC TV's Lateline program has revealed that more than a hundred people have been
wrongfully held in Australian detention centres over the last three years.
The figure has been leaked from the government's secret inquiry into wrongful detention, which
was prompted by the shocking case of German-speaking Australian Cornelia Rau. A
schizophrenia sufferer, Ms Rau was discovered wrongfully incarcerated in Baxter Detention
Centre last year by her sister, who had searched for her since her disappearance nine months
earlier.
The inquiry, which was originally only required to examine a recent seven-month period, has
now heard that another Australian was forcibly deported to the Philippines, her country of origin,
in 2001.
The woman, who gave her name as Vivian Alvarez and spoke little English, had married an
Australian and become an Australian citizen. However, he later abandoned her, after which she
said she was imprisoned and forced to act as a sex slave in a Brisbane suburb. She escaped,
only to be arrested after being injured in a traffic accident in Lismore, NSW.
Her story was so confused and appalling that she appears to have been deemed either mentally
unwell or untruthful by officials prior to her deportation. And now, despite extensive (and
belated) investigation by Australian officials, she has disappeared altogether.
Her case is not unique. According to Phil Glendinning, President of the human rights group, the
Edmund Rice Centre, deportees are typically denied the chance to say goodbye to friends and
relatives, and are frequently deported to countries where they have no connections. He
commented bitterly: "When Australia deports people it hasn't got a clue about what happens to
them."
As a result of the racism underlying government immigration policies, people with mental
problems who speak foreign languages now appear to be at significantly greater risk of unlawful
detention than other people.
Keith Wilson, a spokesperson for the Mental Health Council of Australia, commented: "On the
basis of their mental illness, on the basis of their speaking a foreign language, they're at risk of
being picked up, incarcerated and deported, even though they're Australian
citizens."
It is not surprising that the government is holding the inquiry in secret. They describe this as
necessary to protect victims and their families. However, lack of openness is emerging as one
of the major factors in cases of wrongful incarceration, especially those involving people with
mental disorders.
To date, the two most notable cases only came to light because of actions by concerned
members of the community and by asylum seekers, not by government investigators. Ms Rau
was discovered because sympathetic inmates described her plight to members of refugee
support groups, who attracted media publicity to the case. Ms Alvarez's family only began to
investigate the possibility of her unlawful detention after they heard of Ms Rau's terrible
ordeal.
The decision to hold the inquiry in secret stems from political cowardice rather than
compassion. Facing a potentially huge embarrassment over the inquiry's findings, acting
Minister for Immigration, Peter McGauran, last week refused to answer media questions about
the Filipina victim, and cancelled an ABC interview on the subject.
And now, just to cap the whole terrible business, a judge of the Federal Court has found that
detaining asylum seekers for long periods at Baxter Detention Centre was — surprise, surprise —
contributing to an alarming decline in their mental condition. The government had ignored
psychiatrists' recommendations that two prisoners be transferred for treatment to Adelaide's
Glenside Psychiatric Unit until just before the court was due to order that this be
done.
One psychiatrist afterwards commented that continued incarceration was actually driving many
detainees mad. Between 10 and 15 percent of Baxter inmates are believed to be taking anti-
depressants. Visits by psychiatrists are infrequent, and one three-year-old child has had to be
restrained from repeatedly banging her head against the wall.
Of course, some would rightly say that it is not just the one hundred detainees in question who
have been wrongfully incarcerated, but the vast majority of those currently languishing in
Australia's appalling detention camps. The government now stands condemned in the eyes of
world's people for detaining so many people for months, or years, or even indefinitely, for the
"crime" of arriving here without the appropriate papers.