Australia's human rights credibility undermined by domestic record, new report finds
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Australia's treatment of Indigenous Australians, refugees and climate protesters is harming the government's credibility when promoting human rights abroad, according to Human Rights Watch.
WARNING: This story contains names of Indigenous people who have died.
The US-based organisation's annual World Report — which looks back at global human rights issues in 2022 — identified instances where Australia had fallen short on protecting the rights of children, freedom of expression and taking action on climate change.
Human Rights Watch's report details numerous setbacks in Asia and across the world last year, inlcuding in China, Myanmar, Iran, Papua New Guinea and Ukraine.
In Australia, the report highlighted how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continued to be over-represented in prisons, making up 29 per cent of detainees, despite accounting for only 3 per cent of the national population.
It pointed to the increase in Indigenous deaths in custody, including Veronica Nelson's death in Victoria, where an inquest found she was crying out in pain to a prison officer the day she died.
The number of Indigenous deaths in custody jumped to at least 17 in 2022, compared to 11 in 2021.
Human Rights Watch researcher Sophie McNeill told the ABC that Australia's deficiencies at home were harming the country's ability to promote human rights and democracy abroad.
"What this year's World Report really exposes is that Australia's failure to uphold the rights at home … It really does harm our credibility to promote human rights in the region and our ability to really be a human rights leader in Asia," Ms McNeill said.
The Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia says the lack of air conditioning at Roebourne prison could breach international human rights conventions and it is considering a formal complaint.
She said conditions at Western Australia's Roebourne Regional Prison — which houses mostly Indigenous prisoners — were "inhumane" because temperatures can climb to more than 50 degrees Celsius in summer.
The West Australian government has since agreed to install air conditioning at the prison at a cost of $10 million.
Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe told the ABC that the conditions in some prisons amounted to "torture in the 21st century" and said Australia needed to be held up to international scrutiny.
"We had a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody 30 years ago … and all of those recommendations still have not been implemented today," Senator Thorpe said.
"To have First Nations justice, we need real reform across the country and that means a treaty. We cannot tinker around the edges."
Curtin University Law School's Hannah McGlade told the ABC that both federal and state governments needed to take the report's concerns and criticisms seriously.
Dr McGlade said the incarceration of Aboriginal Australians had been a topic of discussion at the United Nations, and will likely come up again.
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"The treatment of Aboriginal people in prisons, in custody, the issue of deaths in custody, is a serious issue in our country and it's a long-standing issue," Dr McGlade said.
Citing figures from the Australian Law Reform Commission, Dr McGlade said that Indigenous incarceration was costing taxpayers nearly $18 billion a year and called for the Commonwealth to step up to ensure Australia met its international obligations.
"The Commonwealth has a leadership role here. The Commonwealth government is responsible for violations of UN treaties and it needs to work closely with Aboriginal people," she said.
The federal government told the ABC it had committed $81.5 million towards national justice reinvestment across the country as part of its Closing the Gap initiatives.
Human Rights Watch's report also pinpointed the federal government's intention to continue the asylum seeker boat turn-back policy, which was brought into force over a decade a ago.
The report also said Australia trailed behind much of the world in increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility, from 10 to 14.
While the Northern Territory passed laws to raise the age of responsibility to 12, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania have already committed to increase the age to 14.
In Australia, 10-year-old children can be incarcerated. Youth advocates have been urging the states and territories to change that, but a decision has been delayed until at least next year.
The federal government said it was working closely with states and territories on increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility, and that action in the Northern Territory was evidence of progress being made.
Human Rights Watch said that, while the federal government took steps to end the "climate wars" and support renewable energy projects, it was still actively supporting the expansion of fossil fuel industries.
The organisation said new laws targeting climate protesters in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania had resulted in harsh penalties.
Ms McNeill said the laws were an "overreach".
"Human Rights Watch spends a lot of time in Asia, speaking to authoritarian governments who are jailing peaceful activists … and then, suddenly, I've got a situation in Australia where our government is sending peaceful activists to jail too," she said.
"It's deeply embarrassing for Australia."
The World Report described declines in human rights in parts of Asia and the Pacific, during a year plagued by war, political upheavals and COVID-19.
Human Rights Watch cited declining press freedom, increasing censorship and surveillance in Hong Kong — which had seen police raid journalists' offices, books and films banned and further arrests for "sedition" — under the National Security Law.
It said China continued to repress the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, restricted freedom in Tibet and had imposed strict COVID-zero policies that forced millions into lockdown.
Beijing has repeatedly said its actions in Hong Kong were "internal affairs" and defended what it called "vocational training centres" in Xinjiang as necessary to counter "extremism and terrorism".
In Myanmar, security forces have carried out mass killings, arbitrarily arrested pro-democracy supporters, and committed torture, sexual violence and other abuses that Human Rights Watch said amounted to crimes against humanity.
Thousands have been forced to flee frequent and indiscriminate artillery and air strikes by the country's military junta, which has damaged villages and schools.
At least 13 people, including seven children, were killed when military helicopters fired rockets at a school in Let Yet Kone in the Sagaing region.
The junta has defended its attacks as justified and accused armed resistance groups of "terror acts".
Authorities in Iran have restricted freedom of assembly and have brutally cracked down on protesters after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, using lethal and excessive force, according to the organisation.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused what Human Rights Watch has described as a "litany of violations of international humanitarian law", which it said includes the indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilians.
In Papua New Guinea, the national election held last year was overshadowed by election violence, delays and irregularities and was worsened by a lack of police resources to control the unrest.
The shocking police shooting of a young mother fleeing an outbreak of violence in Port Moresby is just the latest in a string of incidents that have marred Papua New Guinea's election.
Despite toughening laws to combat sorcery-related violence, Human Rights Watch said PNG was one of the most dangerous places to be a woman or girl, with about 1.5 million people experiencing gender-based violence each year.
Advancing PNG Women Leaders Network board chair Ruth Kissam told the ABC the election violence impacted people's ability to express their democratic right to vote.
Ms Kissam said the under-resourced police force wasn't able to bring the violence under control, meaning some people weren't able to cast a vote.
"Policemen are outnumbered, outmanned, outgunned. You have mobs of people [who] would swarm in on areas, whether [it was] to hijack the ballot boxes or to fight with other candidate's supporters," Ms Kissam said.
She said ongoing election-related violence had disproportionately impacted women and children in PNG, displacing many.
"It's the women and children that get to pay the price. When you close down schools, it's the children. When you burn down a hospital, it's the women, mostly the women, [who] get to pay the price for that," she said.
"When you burn down villages, it's the women that are displaced."
Human Rights Watch Asia director Elaine Pearson said there had been a "concerning sense of déjà vu" in the region.
"We see another member of the Marcos family win an election in the Philippines. We see the military junta in Myanmar once again, and the Taliban once again crushing the rights of women in Afghanistan," she said.
"It's really unacceptable that girls cannot go to school in Afghanistan anymore past grade six, and the women are now even banned from working for NGOs, which will make it even harder to provide urgent humanitarian assistance.
"It's been nearly two years since the coup, and we see the Myanmar military continue to commit crimes against humanity and war crimes, with impunity."
However, she said, there have also been some positive steps.
"Across the region, we've seen courageous people take extraordinary risks to take to the streets, even in countries [such as] Afghanistan and China," she said.
She added in Sri Lanka, "people power ousted the Rajapaksas after years of misrule, impunity and corruption".
"And, in a step towards accountability, we did see China face scrutiny for the first time ever at the UN Human Rights Council."
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
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