Imprisonment For Crime Victims?

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Thursday May 15, 2008 15:22 by Ms. L

Stop "detention" of refugee applicants

Applicants for asylum are the latest targets in efforts to quietly legalize imprisonment without trial for people who have never been accused of any wrong. Two EU countries have now followed the lead of the US: where this policy was the first legal stepping stone in the nefarious "rendition" program of kidnapping, imprisonment, disappearance and torture without cause.

Imprisonment without charge is specified by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as one of the abuses which in itself qulifies victims for refugee status. It is precisely the type of abuse which the 1951 Geneva Convention was created to eradicate.

Why is the Ministry for Justice (i.e. the law enforcement branch of our government) eager to imprison those who report crime and apply for victims' assistance? Is it only where governments are the perpetrators?

What ramifications must we foresee in this for all other victims of crime? For all victims of war crimes by governments and other human rights abuse?

The record clearly warns us that legalizing such imprisonment without trial, without even the suspicion of wrong-doing, based on national origin, was the first tactical step in the gradual, insidious introduciton by the CIA of de facto carte blanche to imprison anyone for no reason (in which practices the EU has censured the Irish government's collusion.)

In view of said collusion, how can the Justice Ministry be entrusted with anything to do with refugees whatever? Why is the Justice Ministry so keen to have total control over the lives of all who come here to report human rights abuse abroad?

In view of the Justice Ministry's collusion with the CIA in making victims of human rights abuses "disappear" (i.e. assisting in illegal rendition) how can anyone consider appointing that Ministry as the jailer of such victims?

Human rights experts are unanimous in their strident opposition to imprisonment of applicants for asylum. Recent reports by Integrating Ireland and Nasc Immigrant Support Centre speaks of abundant testimony of revolting abuses in Justice "accommodation centres" (which we can now clearly recognize as a stepping stone to this proposal to imprison outright.) These abuses have included forcing applicants from their housing without cause, and then fraudulently reporting them "missing."

Institutions in England imprisoning non-nationals without charge have been frequently censured for their deleterious effect on traumatized children's access to proper diet, health and medical care. Such children's lives have been endangered by such imprisonment's arbitrary limiting their parents' freedom to move, act and communicate on their behalf.

What about the 7000 asylum applicants who have already disappeared while in Justice care?

The proposal to imprison future applicants is entirely based on Justice unsupported assertions that these alleged victims of human rights abuse should be blamed for their own disappearance without investigation.

Now Justice contends that future applicants should be imprisoned for these shocking failures by Justice to account for the fate of vulnerable crime victims in their care.

Meanwhile, Justice alone has the power to decide which asylum claims are valid: and its refusal of 90% does not match the statistics of any other source.

Justice claims that these thousands of people flee their country without any good reason. But their "findings" are belied by every other country in the EU, by the UN, and by every refugee crisis in history.

WRITE, RING, TEXT OR E-MAIL YOUR T.D. TODAY:

-NO IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT TRIAL

-NO DETENTION FOR ASYLUM APPLICANTS