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Bishop William Morris ... “it happens all around the
world”
By Kathleen Carmody
Some elements of Australia’s detention regime for asylum seekers amount to torture, says the
Australian Catholic Social Justice Council.
The acting chairman of the council, Bishop William Morris, made the comments last week on the International Day in Support of Survivors of Torture.
“It would
be easy for us, in a country like Australia, to think that this (torture) isn’t relevant to our community,” he said. “(But) it happens all around the world, including our region.
“On this International Day in
Support of Survivors of torture and trauma we must ask ourselves: ‘How well have we as a nation welcomed and supported survivors of torture’?”
Bishop Morris said the country’s detention centres held people
who were desperate and had come to Australia seeking asylum.
They should not be labelled ‘illegal’ when they were exercising their right under international humanitarian law to seek asylum without necessarily
having a visa.
Bishop Morris compared some procedures in Australia’s detention centres to torture.
“At certain stages in their processing, asylum seekers in detention are not allowed to contact
their families,” he said.
“Unlike those convicted of a criminal offence, asylum seekers do not know for how long they will be detained.
“In some immigration detention centres, observations and musters
involve waking asylum seekers at night or shining torches on them while they are sleeping.
“Do elements of our immigration centre regime amount to torture?”
Bishop Morris said that human dignity was
at the centre of Catholic thinking about human rights and social justice; torture was a profound attack on human dignity.
In torture the victim is treated as something less than human and the perpetrator
becomes less human. “Respect for human dignity and human rights calls us to act to stop torture in whatever way we can,” he said.
The Australian Social Justice Council has called on people to take action in
support of survivors of torture by:
•including torture survivors in prayers of the faithful during Mass;
•praying for both survivors and inflictors of torture;
•visiting asylum seekers in detention;
•providing financial support to services for survivors;
•reading the writings of Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, president of the Pontifical Council
for Justice and Peace and former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience;
•visiting the Amnesty International website (www.amnesty.org.au) to
make use of resource material for action against torture.
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