Human Rights Alliance media release - The Australian Government is lying - they told me they knew, and face to face

The piecemeal release of a score of Indonesian children from adult prisons is not enough

Another four children have been released from Australian adult prisons, following the three children released several weeks back, and therefore they were wrongly convicted. It is good they are going home to their families.

"It is wrong, immoral and deceitful for the Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, and of the Prime Minister Julia Gillard to pretend that they did not know there were Indonesian children in Australian adult prisons. They knew the whole of the time. They told me so themselves - Labor parliamentarians told me so."

"It is immoral and impropriety for them to hide behind a charade that they are releasing them on the premise 'of additional information' which cast doubt on the 'age-assessment results' from the discredited wrist-bone age scan."

"It is even more worrisome for them to pretend that the score of submissions on the desk of the Attorney-General are the only "age-disputes" in Australian adult prisons."

"Indeed, I know of children in our prisons who have not had a submission filed."

"An urgent review, long called for, of all Indonesians on remand and convicted in Australian adult prisons must be undertaken - and with demarcated authorities, including the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Inspectors of Custodial Services and Indonesian consular officials - hence to ensure to the fore all the age-disputes, and that all the children in our prisons have been released."

"Prisons Superintendents have confided in me that they 'are appalled by the obvious presence of children in prison'. 'I don't want children in my prison,' said one Superintendent to me and who has provided various information to assist the campaign to release the children."

"It is nothing less than a lie by a morally inept Commonwealth Government to assert that they did not know of these children in our prisons. On July 20, 2011, I personally informed the Prime Minister of the predicament and this was face to face. Similarly, I informed then Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd's Office and much was promised. In the very least, the government has known since January 2011, as I informed every agency of government in January to March (2011) and raised the predicament with no less than thirty parliamentarians."

"In July, 2012, I was told by a high ranking Labor parliamentarian, 'Gerry, we now know that there are children in there... and it is appalling but we cannot admit this, it'll create a scandal and Abbott and Morrison will pounce on us. We will figure a way behind the scenes how to get them out without fallout...' I was disgusted at the lack of moral leadership and that they are prepared to put vulnerable children at-risk."

It has taken various exhausting campaigns to engage the public, parliamentarians, political leaders, and various organisations to get this far.

"Firstly, there must be an urgent review of all Indonesians in our prisons, and secondly, there should be an Independent Investigative Commission into Australia's contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child - which indeed Australia has shattered."

When will the lying stop and when will they realise that politics is a calling? - The ability to discover the truth is outstripped by the capacity to manifest deceit.

Gerry Georgatos
Spokesperson, Human Rights Alliance
PhD researcher, Australian Deaths in Custody & Australian Custodial Systems
gerry_georgatos@yahoo.com.au
info@humanrightsalliance.org
0430 657 309

Comments

What do you have to say about the parents who let there children smuggle people to Australia ?Thats it Gerry blame to Government because the parents dont give a shit about their children and only care about the money they can make.If you cant prove your age and fail the wrist bone test lock them up until their age can be proved, if it was my children in a adult prison I would send papers to prove there age and if that is done Australia would release them straight away,we don't lock up children only the ones that can't prove it.We know the only proof you have of inmates been children is their word, lucky your not in control or our prisons would be empty because every one in prison says they are innocent, and you would take the criminals word for that right Gerry!

Friend, you are way off the mark with your assumptions. These are children from some of the world's most impoverished families - they have none of what we have, no basic utilities or television, no news media. They live poor and die poor. They have no money. They wander in the quest for work throughout their island homes or throughout Indonesia. Most of Indonesia is abject poor.

These children, just about all of them have never been before Courts or in trouble in their country - they are not criminals - some knew they were assisting Asylum Seekers as cooks and deckhands, others did not know what an Asylum Seeker or Displaced Person meant or is, others believed they were going fishing or escorting passengers. Some were to paid as little as the equivalent of AUD ten dollars.

Most of these children come from regions so poor that they have never had an official document, no birth certificates, no anything, some appear to have never existed, however many were registered on a birth register - a carte lingue - and for many we have provided documents for them, birth certificates, national police clearances and affidavits - many sent by their parents as you would to, however in the cultural imperialism of Australian ignorance some lawyers and magistrates said that their documents were not admissible in Australian Courts because the criteria to assemble them is not the equivalent of the criteria required in Australia to gain these same documents - what rubbish, we accept their passports as bona fide which are gained with the same criteria lawyers and courts knocked back these documents.

Friend, you will probably never know the truth of what the Australian Government and various agencies have known, done and who are as guilty as sin because in the end the country one lives in is "always right" and "everyone else is wrong". Australia has trashed its human rights record on this despicable cultural imperialism and outright racism just as it has on how it treats its Aboriginal peoples.

I have met these children, and I know their harrowing anguish, and you and I have not lived the acute, abject and chronic poverty they have and for which the majority has no capacity to rise out from.

They are innocent and this is certain, and the Australian government is as guilty as sin, and so are many others in being complicit.

Kindly, Gerry

Gerry your been conned I Lived in Indonesia For 9 years, these people are poor yes, stupid no, they know what they are doing is against our laws, and so do the parents wake up Gerry these people are playing the fool with you and our courts.But It's pointless telling you, you have made up your mind sucker!At least our Government don't fall for their Bullshit.Don't get me wrong they are good people, but they know how to scam and you have just been scammed sucker.

"In July, 2012, I was told by a high ranking Labor parliamentarian, 'Gerry, we now know that there are children in there... and it is appalling but we cannot admit this, it'll create a scandal and Abbott and Morrison will pounce on us. We will figure a way behind the scenes how to get them out without fallout...' I was disgusted at the lack of moral leadership and that they are prepared to put vulnerable children at-risk."

Gerry if that is true what you say, name the Politician that said it, if you don't you are as bad as them and no excuse is good enough for hiding his/her name, and your part of the problem , but you and I know you are bullshitting here.

"The ability to discover the truth is outstripped by the capacity to manifest deceit".Give us names Gerry or you are part of the DECEIT.

If you've lived nine years in Indonesia and in islands like Roti and elsewhere you'll have known a whole different picture to what you've just portrayed in your comments.

Less than 15% of Indonesians have refrigerators, and less than one third of the population have televisions, more than half the population live in quickly thatched and timber strewn homes, many of these on stilts not just to protect in whatever ways possible from effects of flooding however also from contamination and various disease from the lack of adequate sewerage. So you are not describing to me the context that I know.

I have never made up my mind about anything, I look at the moral compass and the rule of law and work my way in the pursuit of what is right, what is justice in this context and albeit what I believe should be justice. I am only one voice.

I know for a fact the conditions and plight of some these children.

In the end, Australia's laws state that children cannot be duly incarcerated in Australian adult prisons and jurisdictions. In the end, the Act under which people are demonised and charged for the myth of 'People-Smuggling' does not allow for charges against minors. In the end the Australian Government's own existing policy is to return the children back to Indonesia without charge, because there is no prescription for it, and there has never been for instance for them to be charged and presented before a Juvenile jurisdiction, however this very policy is being contravened, breached, and instead children have been finishing up in adult jurisdictions, children as young as 13.

My friend, 'Anonymous', in terms of naming of people who've said this or that well I've made a habit of putting people on the record and how many more do I need to name in various domains for you? You don't even name yourself...

Internet conversations are part of the dissemination, the unfolding of humanity, and when the time arrives and everyone who participates in this conversation, the coalescing of humanity, and puts their name to the conversation, on the record, and is obliged to, hence the conversations will only improve and achieve the effect that they deserve.

So let us get the children out of adult prisons - you don't want that on your conscience do you mate?

Gerry