Australia ordered to negotiate with 122 Indonesians wrongly held in adult jails when they were children

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 03:57:56 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/03/australia-ordered-to-negotiate-with-122-indonesians-wrongly-held-in-adult-jails-when-they-were-children>

"The Australian government has been ordered to attempt to negotiate a
settlement with more than 100 Indonesians who say they were wrongly imprisoned
as adult people smugglers when they were children, on the basis of flawed
medical evidence.

The 122 Indonesians launched a landmark class action against the federal
government two years ago claiming wrongful detention between 2008 and 2011.

The children, some as young as 13, were held in immigration detention or adult
jails using a deeply flawed wrist X-ray technique to estimate their ages.

Government policy required that minors be sent home rather than charged, but
federal police relied on the X-ray technique to pursue the children as though
they were adults.

Police had already been told the technique was unreliable and prone to error.
The immigration department, by at least June 2010, also knew the method to be
flawed, but did nothing to intervene to stop the prosecutions.

Many of the children were from impoverished regions of Indonesia and had been
lured on to boats with vague promises of paid work, not realising they were to
transport asylum seekers to Australia."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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