Australia bars human rights visits

Life for most Aborigines is grim

The Australian Government has announced restrictions on visits by United Nations human rights inspectors.

The decision follows recent UN criticism of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, and of its own aboriginal people.

There are some 400,000 Aborigines in Australia

The Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said UN committees would not be allowed to visit Australia, nor would they be given information unless there was a compelling reason to do so.

He said Australia's future involvement with United Nations committees was dependent on them being reformed.

Earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Committee criticised the Australian government over aboriginal land rights legislation, and mandatory sentencing laws it said were sending disproportionate numbers of aborigines to jail.

"If we are comparing [Australia's record] with arbitrary arrests and executions and having your arms chopped off, the problems in Australia pale into insignificance

Attorney-General Daryl Williams

Australia's Attorney-General Daryl Williams has responded by accusing the UN of concentrating on relatively minor issues in democratic countries like Australia, while ignoring more serious abuses in others.

Attorney-General Daryl Williams "If we are comparing [Australia's record] with arbitrary arrests and executions and having your arms chopped off, the problems in Australia pale into insignificance," he said.

But Australia's opposition Labor party criticised the government's response.

So too did the human rights organisation Amnesty International, which accused Australia of wanting to be accountable only to itself.

"This is an irresponsible overreaction to recent poor report cards," said Kate Gilmore, Amnesty's Australian director.

Disadvantaged

Australia's 400,000 Aborigines are the country's most disadvantaged group, with much higher infant mortality and much lower life expectancy than the rest of the country's 19 million people.

Australia's detention camps are overflowing

About one in four indigenous people live in indigenous communities.

In May, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination published a report criticising Australia for failing to override mandatory sentencing laws in effect in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

These laws require that repeat offenders be jailed even for trivial crimes, and human rights campaigners say these target the kind of offences committed by Aborigines.

Immigrant woes

The report came at the same time as a15-year-old aboriginal boy jailed for stealing pens and paint hanged himself in a detention centre near Darwin.

The government described the report as unbalanced and inaccurate, and accused the UN committee of intruding unreasonably in domestic Australian affairs.

UN committees have also criticised Australia's policy of holding illegal immigrants in detention camps while their refugee applications are determined.

The Australian government also recently rejected calls to set up a compensation tribunal for Aborigines taken as children from their parents by the authorities, known as the stolen generation.