Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Part 3 - Gitmo, the 't' word and domestic detention conditions (one cuppa's worth)

In the last five years there has been an increase in deaths in custody in Australia, and, as stated in previous posts, little transparency exists in coronial inquests regarding detainees and prisoners, or the related departmental 'investigation' process. Also well documented, is the reticence of Australia's government agencies to comply with coronial recommendations pursuant to those inquests. These measures would normally fine tune detention conditions to lessen the incidence of custodial deaths and torture (yep, I used the 't' word straight out, no apology - I can feel those spin doctors wriggling in their seats now). UN calls for independent monitors are routinely dismissed or sidestepped by Australian authorities. Realistically, prison officers ‘investigating’ prison officers, is even more far-fetched than police policing police, which has always drawn widespread criticism from social justice's frontline. In Australia only one independent prison monitor (with statutory powers) exists, in WA, although community faith in its independence appears to be waning, going by community feedback this year.

The minister for Corrective Services in WA last week announced a push for greater power to dismiss wayward staff, purportedly with a view to being able to sack corrections staff that are found to be involved in misconduct. The WA Prison Officers Union wields (and always has)  an enormous amount of power and subsequently, most policy moves by the department since the riot at Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre, have revolved around equalizing the power balance between these two secretive and unaccountable authoritarian interests.

Victorian prisoner, Craig Minogue(PhD), documented a shortfall in human rights safeguards in Australian prisons. These are run by state-based authorities, however, human rights monitors here are Federally-based (national laws) giving them authority only to act on issues relating to Federal prisoners.  Even in this, Federal prisoners, such as alleged people smugglers, are only able to be accommodated in state-run prisons. So, the related authority over even Federal detainees' and prisoners' human rights and detention conditions, in the first instance, is relegated to the state that houses them, which is, usually, a law unto itself under the present system of scrutiny (or overall lack thereof).  This presented a particularly worrying problem where Indonesian minors were detained with convicted adult sex offenders in Australian adult male prisons over the last few years. Inept 'wrist-bone scans' that the Australian government used to evaluate the age of these non-English speaking suspects, were wielded against these disadvantaged children by government workers well after they were known to be inherently flawed. Complaints were levelled against the state prison authorities and Federal government only after these children were repatriated to their towns and villages, and any damage already done.

The gap in investigating and policing human rights abuses and conditions in Australian detention/custody, is a problem that people dealing with rights abuses in custody will be well aware of, but few others know about it. This means that there is no pressure from society on the government to lift its game. Clearly, independent monitors are very needed and this has been a long-standing recommendation to Australia and its states from UN human rights agencies repeatedly over the last two decades, drawing virtually no response from the government(s) (both states and Commonwealth), or compunction to comply or explain inaction. Only one Attorney General placed any pressure on the reckless state-based systems to conform to the Convention against Torture. Unceremoniously, Robert McClelland was shanghaied by former PM, Julia Gillard, to rid her cabinet of ministers who might be sympathetic to her rival, Kevin Rudd. In 2008, McClelland, who implemented or commenced several human rights reforms, signed the treaty, but full ratification of the treaty was thwarted by serious stalling tactics from the states and his shortened term in office. Some of his successors went on to introduce off-shore processing; pre-emptive detention that treated Australians unequally before the law via pre-judgments of individuals and minority groups made in view of sub-culture and social status; and, several other legislative initiatives that contradicted fundamental democratic values and usurped the separation of powers.

Last month Western Australia’s Deaths in Custody Watch Committee put forward a motion in Parliament with the help of Noongar MP, Ben Wyatt, calling for the WA government to apologize to the Pat family for wrongdoing in the death in police custody of 16 year-old Roebourne boy, John.  It was unanimously accepted. This young man's death was examined at the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and central to the Royal Commission being called. 
[According to one prominent  journo (though it isn't spoken about publicly, anymore - industrial action - out of sight out of mind, maybe) - the death of the young man also caused a stop-work strike on the roof of the old ABC when Four Corners covered the story but management tried to suppress it (presumably after  the typically heavy handed flak levelled against independent journalism from the WA government). That would have been something to see - I wonder if any of you out there still have photos of those journalists striking? If so, email me and let's put up a piece about it - legendary! Now, I could stage roof top protests here when I experience dubious editorial decisions, but as I work from home it may not affect any significant changes - except perhaps falling off.]
In October, two Watch Committee representatives reported that they were refused entry by WA prison authorities to check on the welfare of a detainee at Casuarina Maximum Security Prison. This has occurred to WA prison advocates before. During the wrist-bone scan debacle an advocate who spoke to the media was banned from welfare checks on a minor who was alleged to be working alongside paedophiles in Hakea Prison, and the Watch Committee had access revoked after their submission to the UN of the WA Prison Torture Report (Cox, 2000).

In late September, a new Commissioner of Corrective Services was appointed - with an impressive background in the elite special forces (SASR), in business and, in peacekeeping forces,  James McMahon would have been a shoe-in pretty much anywhere he expressed an interest.  I gather advocates await positive changes to the quite troubled prison system, which has been ignored in the state for some years. It would appear, at least in the 24/7 news brief cycle (hungry for press releases), that there is some reform being planned, which is a lot more than has happened for quite a long time. That total ignore of detention conditions was reminiscent of the era that spawned the Fremantle Prison Riot, the RCIADIC and later, the WA Prison Torture Report (Cox, 2000).
Military training influences in DCS WA's past during those problematic eras, to expert analysts, equated to the militarization of corrections (without any balancing expenditure in other essential areas - such as infrastructure, i.e. basics like toilets, air-con and electricity in Fremantle Prison's cells). An honest and moving account of Fremantle Prison conditions, probably the only personal record in existence, was written by another SASR member. Veteran, Ray Mickelberg, along with his brothers, was wrongfully convicted of the Perth Mint Swindle by two corrupt Perth detectives and spent several years fighting the oppression and corruption within those walls. (I will try to get his prison diary hosted here in the sidebar in the near future, but will need to seek permission from the author who published it.) There have been several local SASR members who have similar service backgrounds who went on to achieve infamy and incarceration in WA prisons for reasons that won't be touched on in this post, but hopefully may be explored in the future. 

At the moment, many societies are seeing the militarization of almost everything from shopping mall security and other private security, to policing, intelligence collection and corrections. In the post-9/11 period the Australian PM (Howard) tried to emulate the ethos behind the nationalism and military indoctrination of the USA, despite Australia's unique background as a penal colony (i.e. a giant prison for political prisoners and slaves) and its resultant, long history of anti-authoritarianism. Irreverent and non-conformist foundations are deeply rooted in Australian mainstream culture, values and humour - flag waving (US style) is a relatively recent development. Like the accent, the mindset can be hard for outsiders to grasp, initially. PM Howard went as far as to make primary school funding conditional on the mandatory placement of Australian flags at primary schools and pro-military posters in classrooms (Some schools already hosted an Australian flag, but this was not so common among minority and community schools). His approach to the intelligence prompting Australia's involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan was soon followed by the 'NTER' (a police & military taskforce occupation of Aboriginal NT communities for which, he repealed the Racial Discrimination Act). Really sadly, Australia's military was hyped to the max in a govt-compliant pop-media during this period, thus rendering anything military, now, more or less synonymous with the obfuscation of unsatisfactory standards of government accountability. Nationalistic fervour has also created racial divisions where previously all refugees, immigrants, ancestors of political prisoners and ATSI people were united (not always harmoniously, but generally) under that one umbrella of anti-authoritarianism, as 'battlers' with a typically and distinctive, irreverent sense of humour.

In 2004 the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Van Boven, warned about the pseudo militarization of domestic govt security roles, such as policing and corrections. He perceived a risk that methods utilized in those roles, or adopted by departments headhunting (or even exploiting) ex-special forces personnel, may not be specific to domestic roles, but rather, mirror controversial military methods and treatment of detainees, which now form a notorious part of the post-9/11 era. More recently, even the govt use of Australian special forces personnel in training and supporting Densus 88 is controversial, and possibly opportunistic,  due to the allegations of and convictions for human rights abuses by Indonesian special forces personnel in that anti-terror taskforce. Are Australian special forces personnel the marketing point for unsatisfactory foreign policy?

The past methods of the MSU, the “paramilitary” unit of DCS WA were heavily criticized and were the focus of repeated attempted prosecutions relating to prisoner abuse, widely tolerated and condoned by govt in previous eras. McGivern, who investigated the Fremantle Riot (Inquiry report - into the Fremantle Prison Riot, 1988, pp. 35-36), suggested:
"The increasing para-military role of the MSU may encourage or foster a belief that preventative measures are no longer necessary."
  
McGivern also had this to say about the role of the military-style training in corrections at that time:
 
"Providing continuous training in preparation for 'trouble' may in fact foster conditions for such events to occur, There is an argument to de-emphasise the aggressive para-military role of the prison officer and instead encourage positive custody with an emphasis on man management and non aggressive solutions to problems."
 
The recruitment and staffing of that said 'paramilitary' unit, now named the Emergency Support Group (ESG), has only just been ordered to be partly reformed subsequent to the Spratt Taser Inquiry (CCC, 2011). One inquiry recommendation required a time limit on membership of the ESG. Several ESG staff had been there since MSU days and resigned during the course of the very protracted inquiry. ESG reforms have been limited to this, despite repeated recommendations stretching back decades, particularly in relation to notorious  cell ‘extraction’ methods. Sometime after the use of that 'cell extraction' method, and Mr Spratt’s subsequent transfer between the Perth Watch House and Casuarina, he suffered a punctured lung, fractured ribs, dislocated shoulder and other injuries.  However, these injuries were not sustained during those 'notorious' moments captured on Police Watch House CCTV that went viral around the world showing WA’s police and prison officers tasering the mentally-ill, homeless Aboriginal man.
 
It really wasn't until Shadow Attorney General John Quigley revealed Mr Spratt's intubation scars at a protest, that CCC Commissioner Len Roberts Smith stepped in and called an immediate stop to the stuffing around over the various 'internal investigations'.  

Shadow Attorney General shows Kevin Spratt's scars at the Rally for Humaneness in Nov 2011 - image copyright
In all Mr Spratt ended up being tasered as many as 41 times in a single week, by police and prison officers. Ultimately, no govt personnel were charged besides two police officers observed tasering Spratt on CCTV footage that were visually identifiable.  The CCTV of ESG treatment was eventually publicly released by the Crime and Corruption Commission during their related inquiry, but still those vital moments of how the detainee got those life-threatening injuries were never recorded - CCC's report stated that in those areas at the Watch House and in the prison vans recording was not an option. The CCC hearing evidence from one ESG officer who rode in the ESG prison transport van, whose identity was protected (as all ESG officers' identities, were), cannot be repeated here due to the salacious nature of what he intimated regarding how the Indigenous man's injuries were incurred in the back of the ESG transfer van. Needless to say, the allegations, which may have been intended to publicly shame the prisoner, defied the simple principles of physics of what a person can do with handcuffs on, and the issue was not explored at the inquiry beyond the officer's assertions.

How many  serious detainee injuries go untreated? How many other Mr Spratts are there? In an interview with him in 2011 he said he had other non-indigenous friends who had experienced prisoner abuse. Former prisoners came forward to testify to such, both during the 2003 Kennedy Royal Commission into Police Misconduct and, during the CCC Inquiry into the treatment of Kevin Spratt in police and prison custody. To no avail. Inaction. Definitely, never used the 't' word.
 
The WA Prison Torture Report (Cox, 2000) cited the former DPP’s concerns about fatal shortfalls in evidence DCS WA was required to provide to the DPP, for prosecutions relating to prisoner abuse to progress without impediment. They didn’t.  No prosecutions resulted,  although the unprecedented DICWC(WA) WA Prison Torture Report (Cox, 2000) was delivered to the UN Committee Against Torture, which then in turn brought about a half dozen recommendations regarding protection of rights violation complainants, independent investigators and the use and abuse of restraint mechanisms by the government. {I have posted those UN CAT recommendations on a separate page in the sidebar.}
There is seemingly a huge contrast in standards and treatment exhibited previously by serving military personnel, and ex-service personnel who have taken up  domestic roles. The Guantanamo Effect offers some examples of exemplary military standards for the treatment of detainees (ones that defined the world's respect for universal treatment of those captured in war and the treatment of military prisoners) that were discarded pursuant to the advent of Guantanamo Bay and Camp XRay:

Fletcher & Stover, 2009, The Guantanamo Effect, Foreword, p. xiii

ATSI people from regional and remote areas are arrested, interrogated, tried and incarcerated by non-indigenous justice mechanisms that have not ever supplied enough adequate, appropriate legal representation or interpreters to competently facilitate what is universally considered to comprise a fair trial. Many suspects and detainees are hearing impaired and suffer from ear disease, and use ‘hand talk’ (sign language) dialects. Almost all ATSI people detained in NT are hearing impaired &/or chronically ill - 95%.  These rates were detected by Corrective Services well after inmates had undergone court and police interrogation. The 2010 Senate Hearing Inquiry recommended such inmates - Australia-wide, should have their convictions independently reviewed. 
{The publication of these results was called for by the Senate Committee for Community Affairs during the 2010 Senate Hearing Inquiry. The inquiry also heard that around 20% of Australians are hearing impaired - figures commonly published estimate that rate at 10%.}

Fletcher & Stover, 2009, The Guantanamo Effect, Foreword, p. xiii
{Incredibly, one criminal lawyer, who was not Indigenous, not from the region and a real rookie (that's the technical term), pursuant to the discovery of this massively, massively, massively, incomprehensibly widespread, maladministration of justice, asserted in an official interview that: 'deaf people are simply more criminally inclined' . "Believe it or not...” very glad he isn’t representing me…}
 
Stover and Fletcher noted that in government agency assessments of Guantanamo detainees as early as 2002 and in reports thereafter,
  • The CIA considered probably only 30% of detainees had connections to terror-related activities
  • GTMO's own commander estimated half of his detention centre population were innocent
  • The FBI said only 50 of about 600 detainees were worth keeping at Guantanamo Bay
  • However, in contrast, a military review panel (CSRT's later judged by the Supreme Court to be making unlawful determinations) evaluated that only 38 detainees were not of interest to their enquiries. This too points to the politicization of military involvement in detention.
770 detainees were held at Gitmo between 2001-2009 and over 65% were released. The average length of confinement was three years (Stover & Fletcher, 2009, pp. 83-88), although some hunger striking Yemeni detainees - already cleared of any wrongdoing (and in some cases cleared many years ago) have now been held at Guantanamo for over a decade.
 
This may ring warning bells with some of the local community here, as we recall the plight of mentally-ill Aboriginal man, Marlon Noble, detained for ten years without trial in Greenough Prison; and, another mentally-ill man, Andrew Mallard, bricked up for murder and who spent 11 years wrongfully detained at Casuarina Prison.
 
 

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Gitmo, the 't' word & domestic detention - Part 2


The removal of ATSI people still appears to form the basis for the Australian legal system, well beyond the eras of (openly discussed) racist assimilation policies such as those that prompted declarations of 'terra nullius', the Stolen Generations, Forgotten Australians and the unpalatable likes of the 'White Australia Policy' - shocking white supremacist ideals evident, but not openly discussed in those clear and plain universal terms.

I wonder if it is really possible for our post-colonial society to discuss these racial issues honestly in the same un-spun terms that are used in open dialogue in the US and UK, and other countries? Really, how often does racial vilification get examined in the mainstream news - as often as it occurs in society? Probably not, and this spin-generated, linguistic forcefield can smother such unpalatable racist policy in deceptive terms, and conceal socially unacceptable consequences from the consciences of broader society's media consumers.
 
In view of Indigenous imprisonment rates that are unchecked and rising - consider:
  • the predominantly non-indigenous operations of all justice mechanisms, despite the prevalence of other cultures in prison musters  
  • the discrimination & racism evident in the resulting manner in which most (not all) of those mechanisms function
  • that the government promotes and condones, reactive and ever more punitive mandatory sentencing, regardless of statistical realities i.e. fear of crime sells news and buys votes
  • there are disproportionately heavier sentences for Indigenous youth,
  • that there are insufficient -independent- legal resources and translators available to ATSI people and that results in people 'pleading it out' when they haven't actually committed a crime.
Of course, these listed concerns are just a tiny number of those issues at play behind rocketing Indigenous imprisonment rates. I'm merely a journo, just a witness to what I see my news sources go through - but often they end up unable to explain these underlying problems to society via the media because such topics, like social justice, don't make mainstream news - they don't run. Australia’s pop media generally has no interest in publishing  news stories about human rights. This shortfall is simply another reason that deaths in custody and ‘mistreatment’ are recurrent and increasingly prevalent. 

Such Fourth Estate-based stories that focus on real issues, are the unwanted elephant in the Australian news room, which focuses predominantly on whether popstars, royals, actors, etc etc are wearing revealing clothing, having babies, and getting divorced, i.e. censorship by trivia. Keep the population dumb, dumb them down  some more, and then their opinions don’t pose any political dilemma – no disagreements, no dissent. 

This was the basis for Bernays’ public relations theories, that if the public had a single brain cell they’d be a danger not only to themselves, but to the whole public and to the function and power of the government (Propaganda, 1928, pp.9-12). Ironically, Bernays’ theory formed the basis for all PR to follow, and at least 3 wars, two massive campaigns of genocide (that's even if you exclude his marketing cigarettes to women) – so evidence would suggest that Bernays' theories were  seen as appealing to the corrupt, and to extremists. Woodrow Wilson took him on as an adviser & the tragic irony in that, is that Bernays was also employed by that "small group of dominant men" (see link) to ensure that 'the people' (the democratic, voting, public) didn't have power, or knowledge, or independent thought. In this insidious facet of government spin it is possible to perceive the inherent dangers of overly secretive government cultures. Disclosure and public right to know were democratic values, effectively, taught to disempowered publics through the incidence of increasingly monumental whistleblowing, of the grandest proportions - incomprehensible before Wikileaks & Snowden hit the news.

The Guantanamo Effect” (Stover & Fletcher, 2009) tweets I have made this year have been re-tweeted so many times over, it leads me to believe that I may not be alone in considering the text to be an exemplary and unmatched assessment of detainee human rights, with relevance to the management of most places of custody. I am also encouraged by the fact that Van Boven raised concerns of this nature in his 2004 report (hosted in full in the pages in the side bar).

I'll run some very brief passages of the Preface and Foreword of “The Guantanamo Effect” in the following posts, for the readers to view, and am hoping that they will be considered within permissible copyright limits for the purposes of education…(fingers crossed - email me if not). I plan to also look at issues raised as far back as The McGivern Report into the riot at Fremantle Prison(1988), and I'll touch on the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven's 4th Report (2004), and the DICWC(WA) WA Prison Torture Report submitted to the UN (Cox, 2000) which has been ferretted away by the National Library of Australia, where no man can bury it.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Gitmo, the 't' word and domestic detention conditions - part 1


So, I have considered this post for a while now - it is an irreconcilably large issue and it can't really be skimmed over or it will lose it's relevance, so I have decided to handle it in a few sections. I apologize in advance for my cynical sense of humour creeping in here and there (it will become apparent, all too soon). To be clear - I certainly don't seek to make light of the suffering of any of the victims of crime, or, people who have been unlawfully extradited and tortured. Commenting on disparity and maladministration of 'justice' is really my intent. Mostly the people who suffer injustices are those least capable of defending or expressing themselves to the public. This means that at times the commentary here will play the devil's advocate to provoke MSM news consumers to think beyond the limitations of mainstream news. Sometimes when public servants/spin doctors try to obscure very poor individual or dept actions to save face, or to suit a political agenda, they can look pretty silly. Incidentally, after the release of the most recent torture study mentioned here, Obama has today recommitted to closing Guantanamo Bay - but how many times have we heard that before and how many US detention centres mirror the values and conditions demonstrated there?

Guantanamo is very topical in the news at the moment. There are some prominent trials being prepared at present and lawyers are contending that the media (lol!- transparency via Fox News!) dialogue about the detention camp has tainted the potential for a fair trial.  The US media reports that one of those remandees claims he was water-boarded 183 times in a month, and, that any confession obtained was skewed by related psychological duress.

There have also been complaints that the classification of suspects' testimony circumvents a fair trial. There's been criticism about the military trial system and a big red ambulance-type light in court that flashes when a suspect mentions anything classified. A former staff member said she became suspicious about a smoke alarm used at the facility and, that after Googling the manufacturer, she found the company only made listening devices - not much good if there's a fire, I'd say.

The prolonged hunger strikes, the force feeding regimes, and the much publicized plight of the Yemeni men declared innocent by the US Govt but who still, years on (over a decade in some cases), await extradition back to their homeland, have all been widely discussed in the media. The impetus for public discourse is further fuelled by Gitmo's own former prosecutors' loss of faith, pursuant to compromising treatment, which they said constituted cruel and unusual treatment of detainees.

The US news media, primarily motivated by pervasive social media campaigns, has maintained political pressure for the US government to conform to reasonable human rights standards in the treatment of Guantanamo detainees. It’s a shame they don’t look at domestic detention issues more often because there is much about the treatment of those detained in a correctional setting that could parallel those conditions, according to UN & HRW. The same is true for Australia – probably more so, with the rate of Aboriginal incarceration rising so rapidly, and higher than the US, in the face of no news media interest in Aboriginal human rights. Media interest is largely attributed as necessary to prompt political pressure for social reform - this function played by the news media is called the Fourth Estate, as in, the fourth arm of democracy. This is why the right to a free press is enshrined into the US constitution. Australia, which gave birth to News Ltd, does not have this constitutional right.
This series of posts will draw on the text from the University of California Human Rights Center, by Laurel Fletcher and Eric Stover – “The Guantanamo Effect”. 

This recent study, further, explored complicity in torture and cruel and unusual punishment by US medical staff, including US army psychologist-trainers in torture resistant behaviours. Some of the earlier medical human rights breaches carried out are detailed in the Stover/Fletcher study and I will try to touch on those old established claims in subsequent posts.

In looking at Gitmo's now very notorious treatment of its detainees, parallels to Australia’s 'mistreatment' of its detainees and prisoners become clear. Australia's system of government and our legislation is so young compared to the US and UK and most of Europe's. Our constitution lacks really important provisions to ensure and safeguard democracy. Our federation of states is only just slightly over 100 years old, and in view of these states' positions on the First Nation People at that point in time - do the rising and ignored ATSI imprisonment rates really reflect that colonial aim for "Terra Nullius"?

Friday, November 01, 2013

Housekeeping

Some of you might prefer lo-res downloads of the posts and pages here. (This smaller download makes the posts much quicker to load if you are reading on your mobile phone, or logging on from a public computer.) I will try to post only lo-res images & documents to ease that download process from now on. You might also wish to subscribe to the posts/pages by email, and you will then receive the first edition of each run.

If there are any significant documents hosted in the pages on the sidebar, or, any links in the posts that any of you would like a lo-res (low resolution) copy of, just email me. I really value all my readers here and I'd like to try to make reading this blog as easy, inclusive and accessible as possible for everyone, regardless of where you live, or how you access the web.