The issue of Indonesian Children in Australian jails
Dozens of Indonesian children are locked up in Australian jails being
people smugglers. Many did not know that they were involved in anything
illegal – they were simply hired on to boats as deck-hands and kitchen
hands. They then find themselves on boats picked up by Australian navy ships
with guns and put in detention and then jail. Australian Federal Police use wrist
X-rays to determine their age and many have been held to be over 18. They are
then prosecuted and jailed as people smugglers, often landing up in high security
prisons.
But:
Yet the wrist X-rays used by the police to determine their age are widely
discredited, including by the Australian Medical Association and UNICEF, as
reliable indicators of age. Meanwhile their families back home, in remote
villages, believe their sons have drowned. Some cases eventually find their way
to appeal courts, and sometimes age can be determined by finding evidence in
their home villages – consequently a number have been found under-age and
released after one or two years in prison.
Aside from the moral issues involved Australia has left itself open to the charge
of blatant hypocrisy after the nation has adopted the case of a 14 year-old
Australian boy arrested in Bali for trying to buy drugs. Prime Minister Julia
Gillard has become personally involved in efforts to release the Australian boy
and Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, has said that the safe return of this
boy to Australia was his “number one priority” and that high-level negotiations
with Indonesian officials were underway. Rudd reflected the general community
sentiment within Australia, that this child should not be locked-up in a foreign
jail under any circumstances.
Yet under-age Indonesian boys are held in Australian jails!
Below is the story of three Indonesian boys locked up in Australian prisons.
They have since been sent home after it was established that they were Under
18.
Tricked boys languish in adult prison
Lindsay Murdoch June 14, 2011
Lost boys of Indonesia ... relatives of three boys held for months in an Australian jail hold
their photos.
THREE boys snatched by people smugglers from a poor Indonesian village have been held
for months in an Australian jail with hardened criminals.
Federal police have ignored Immigration Department assessments and extracts of birth
certificates showing the boys are under 18, contravening federal government policy to return
children apprehended on asylum seeker boats.
Instead, the boys - aged 15 and 16 who were cooks and deck hands on an asylum-seeker boat
- face five years' jail in a high security adult jail under harsh mandatory sentencing laws.
Albert Lani with a photo of his jailed son Ose, 15.
Shivering with cold, Ako Lani, a 16-year-old orphan, convulsed in tears and could not speak
when his lawyers asked him in Brisbane's high security Arthur Gorrie jail on May 30 whether
he was being mistreated by prisoners.
Sixty Indonesian crew members who claim to be under 18 are being treated as adults in jails
and immigration detention centres across Australia after wrist X-ray examinations that police
say prove they are not children. But defence lawyers citing a number of studies and judicial
rulings say the X-rays are unreliable and inadequate to determine the ages of children.
Fourteen months after Ose Lani, 15, and Ako Lani and John Ndollu, both 16, were detained
on an asylum-seeker boat near Ashmore Reef no Australian police or immigration officials
have contacted anybody in Manamolo, the boys' village on Roti Island, to establish their ages.
No official has informed family the boys are in an Australian jail.
"The three boys went fishing one day and never returned. We thought they had been lost at
sea," Albert Lani, father of Ose Lani, said. Mr Lani wept when Margaret Bocquet-Siek, a
volunteer interpreter phoned him from Brisbane last month to say his son was alive. "Ose's
father was crying with relief … the boy was only 14 when he left the village," Dr BocquetSiek said.
Mark Plunkett, a Brisbane barrister, and Tony Sheldon, an Indonesia expert, have gathered
affidavits in the village that prove all three boys are under 18. Lawyers have obtained extracts
of birth certificates confirming that Ose Lani is 15 and John Ndollu is 16. A birth certificate
showing Ako Lani is 16 is being sent from Indonesia.
But prosecutors say it will take weeks, if not months, for police to verify the evidence, leaving
the boys vulnerable to abuse in a jail that houses some of Queensland's worst offenders. A
Department of Immigration interviewer reported last October that on balance all three boys
were believed to be under 18, but their lawyers had not been told about the assessment for
more than six months.
The boys were arrested, manacled and flown to the Brisbane jail in January.
In Manamolo village, Jublina Ndollu, a 55-year-old widow, cried when Mr Sheldon showed
her a photo of her son John, who she has not seen since he failed to return home in April last
year. Mrs Ndollu walks 10 kilometres each day to work in rice paddies because her son
cannot support her. The only payment she receives is the small amount of rice she carries
home on her back. Onimus Ledoh, the village's spokesman and John Ndollu's brother-in-law,
appealed to Australia to release the boys, who, he said, were tricked by people smugglers
because they were uneducated and poor.
"The people smugglers come to this part of Indonesia because the boys are vulnerable," Mr
Ledoh said. "They trick the boys by offering them money to get on the boats and then they
cannot get off … they are trapped."
Ose Lani was offered $500 to work on the boat, a sum he could only dream about in his
village. The real people smugglers, who received more than $10,000 per asylum seeker, left
the boat before it entered Australian waters. Defence lawyers in the Northern Territory and
Queensland are planning a campaign to expose the way federal authorities are treating young
Indonesians who were duped by people smugglers to crew asylum-seeker boats to Australia.
Lawyers say the police's reliance on wrist X-rays is based on a technique developed in the US
in the 1930s which is highly questionable. The Immigration Department has also reportedly
questioned its accuracy.
Justice Dean Mildren in the Northern Territory Supreme Court early this month dismissed an
application to free the boys after the court heard it was lawful for authorities to detain children
for as long as was required for a decision to be made about whether to prosecute. "I must say I
am staggered, absolutely staggered it has taken so long," Justice Mildren said.
The writer is chairman of the Western Australia-based Indonesia Institute Inc., and a former
WA government regional director to Indonesia.
Contact Australian authorities to express
your concern.
The Hon. Brendan O’Connor MP
Minister for Home Affairs and Justice
PO Box 6022
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2601
Telephone: 02 6277 7290
Fax: 02 6273 7098
Dear Minister,
As a member of the Benenson society I write to express my concern about
the numbers of Indonesian boys in Australian prisons charged with people
smuggling.
As shown by recent successful appeals many of these young Indonesians
were recruited in remote villagers as kitchen hands and deck hands, and
had no knowledge of criminal activities. In some cases their families
believed they had died at sea. Further investigations have shown them to
have been under 18 when arrested.
We call on the Australian Federal Police to cease to rely on the widely
discredited Greulich and Pyle wrist X-ray test to determine the age of these
young Indonesians. UNICEF and the AMA have both condemned the teat
and it is banned in Britain.
We urge you to ensure that Indonesians claiming to be under 18 be given
the benefit of the doubt until their age can be proved otherwise.
Yours sincerely,