Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on quite a different matter, but I would also like to add my best wishes to Senator Hill upon his departure from this place and in whatever role he might take up in the future. This evening I will speak on the shocking and disturbing incidence of police beatings, rape and torture of children in Papua New Guinea. I am the convenor of the cross-party group Parliamentarians Against Child Abuse, and I have spoken in this place on a number of occasions about child neglect and abuse in that country.

This issue I am speaking about tonight was brought to my attention during my recent visit to the headquarters of Human Rights Watch, which is located in New York City. Human Rights Watch is the largest human rights organisation based in the United States. It investigates human rights abuses in all regions of the world. When I was there I met with Jo Becker, who is the advocacy director of the Children’s Rights Division, and she gave me a briefing on a recent Human Rights Watch report, namely Making their own rules: police beatings, rape and torture of children in Papua New Guinea.

According to this report, brutal beatings, rape and torture are routine practices of the Papua New Guinea police force. Children are especially targeted. Boys and girls report being shot, knifed and kicked; beaten by gun butts, iron bars, wooden batons, fists, rubber hoses and chairs; and being forced to chew and swallow condoms. Children are routinely detained with adults in sordid police lockups. Human rights abuses, such as police rape, targeting sex workers and men and boys engaged in homosexual conduct, and the harassment of people carrying condoms, are not only problems in themselves; they may also fuel Papua New Guinea’s burgeoning AIDS epidemic, which is becoming a very significant problem in that country and in the region more generally.

Although the PNG government has recently established juvenile courts and policies designed to decrease the detention of children, police are not being held accountable for violence against children. This is the point that I want to make here today, particularly the role that Australia has in this regard. The police are unwilling or unable to discipline their own members, and outside accountability mechanisms have not been effective.

In conducting their investigations, Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of children. Almost all of the children who were interviewed had been beaten. At every stage of the process, from first contact with police to the police station, severe beatings and other forms of violence are common. NGOs and medical professionals confirmed that they had attended cases of children badly injured by police. This is what one doctor, with long-term experience treating detainees, told Human Rights Watch:

I’ve seen evidence of people allegedly assaulted with gun butts, wooden batons, chairs ... Head injuries were often from gun butts, usually the butt of the rifle or shotgun.

If they’re using an assault rifle, it has a metal butt and makes a contused laceration. It takes a long time to heal ... it’s not just the skin that’s broken—you go through layers right through to the skull ... if it’s a sharp cut, clean, that you can suture—it takes a week to get a good union. But a bash, when the cut is pulverised, it takes weeks because you can’t suture ... It leaves a significant scar, and in the tropics things are likely to get infected.

The Human Rights Watch report also contains children’s testimonies. There are dozens of examples where children, some as young as 12, describe their experiences. It does not make for pleasant reading.

One of the reasons I am raising this issue today is that I believe the Australian government is in a position to do something about this terrible situation. Australia is Papua New Guinea’s largest foreign donor, and much of our aid is directed to the police force. Australia gave a total of $492.3 million to Papua New Guinea in development aid in the 2005-06 financial year. A large proportion of the money we send to Papua New Guinea in aid goes to its police force, which has received funding and technical assistance, including training, through AusAID for more than 15 years. In 2004, Australia drastically increased its aid for the PNG police by $805 million over five years under the Enhanced Cooperation Program, which originated in part as a response to the growing instability in PNG and also out of concern that the country was a weak link in Australia’s antiterrorism strategy. My concern is that we do not place any conditions on the receipt of police aid.

Papua New Guinea’s international legal obligations, like ours, prohibit torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and rape and sexual assault. International law also requires that children be detained only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate time. Some authorities in PNG are aware of the problems in how the state treats children and have started to introduce policy changes to reduce the rate of child detention. However, they have not addressed the issue of police violence that I have highlighted here tonight. Police violence is so endemic, so institutionally ingrained, that efforts to reduce it will not succeed unless they are made part of widespread reforms and demanded from the highest levels of government.

According to Human Rights Watch, any serious effort to stop police violence, including the beatings, rape and torture of children that I have referred to, should include three key components: firstly, public repudiation of police violence by officials; secondly, criminal prosecution of the perpetrators; and, thirdly, ongoing, independent monitoring of police violence.

Human Rights Watch also has recommendations for the Australian government. It recommends that the Australian government should: firstly, raise with the government of Papua New Guinea, in all official meetings and at the highest level, concerns over police violence, including violence against children; secondly, prioritise accountability for police violence against children in continued and expanded support for mechanisms internal and external to the police force; and, thirdly, provide assistance for the development of local human rights groups in PNG with the capacity for independent monitoring of police violence and the development of agencies that can provide services for victims of these appalling crimes.

This year, 2006, will mark the 16th year of the entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This landmark treaty guarantees children the right to be free from discrimination, to be protected in armed conflicts, to be protected from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, to be free from arbitrary deprivation of liberty, to receive age appropriate treatment in the justice system and to be free from economic exploitation and other abuses, amongst other rights.

There is no doubt that Papua New Guinea can be a dangerous place. Its police force faces a serious violent crime problem, including gang crime, armed highway robbery, tribal fighting in the Highlands, conflicts related to resource development, such as mining, and election related conflict. In Papua New Guinea, an unusually high proportion of people live in fear of and are victims of crime. However, it is completely unacceptable that people, particularly children, who are arrested or taken in for questioning should be subject to abuse and violence by police officers. This must stop, and the Australian government must act urgently in the way that I have described to take the action recommended in the Human Rights Watch report and raise at the highest levels of the Papua New Guinea government these appalling crimes that are taking place in that country.