Australia鈥檚 hard-line stance on asylum seekers is well-known and in Europe, where a refugee crisis has seen many drown fleeing Syria, Iraq and Libya by boat.
Features of Australian government policy designed to 鈥渟top the boats鈥� include mandatory and indefinite detention of asylum seekers, snail-like processing of claims, offshore detention (including of children) in appalling conditions in Pacific-island nations, and a .
Ministers claim that this stand and the harsh treatment of innocent asylum seekers is morally acceptable if it prevents people from drowning by deterring them from attempting the journey. Some in Europe .
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Only the most disingenuous of observers, however, could fail to see this assertion for what it actually is: an appeal to the racist fear among some working-class swing voters in Australia鈥檚 finely balanced electoral system of being overwhelmed by brown-skinned, mainly Muslim foreigners.
Detention camps
One of the most worrying and anti-democratic features of this policy is the information blackout that the government seeks to impose over it. Offshore detention camps on the island nation of Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea lack independent oversight and are off limits to journalists.
Arbitrary detention in the camps has been found to by the UN and Amnesty International. Australia鈥檚 Border Force Act, which was passed last year, also contains provisions to jail 鈥渆ntrusted persons鈥� if they reveal information about what happens in the camps 鈥� including details as basic as living conditions for detainees.
鈥淓ntrusted persons鈥� include not only individuals directly contracted or employed by the government, but, crucially, doctors in Australian public hospitals who may treat immigration detainees.
Healthcare professionals conducted widespread protests against the gagging provisions in 2015. In the first acts of civil disobedience, doctors that could land them in prison, but so far has not.
This month, doctors at in Brisbane took this further by of asylum seekers back into the care of the authorities. The doctors feared she would be going back to the Nauru camp, which was 鈥渘ot a safe home environment鈥�.
Higher code
That such rare acts of civil disobedience by medics are taking place in a contemporary Western democracy is a chilling sign of the times and underlines the degree to which the independence of doctors has been imperilled in Australia.
The profession, however, is subject not only to the law of the land, but also to its ethical code. Adherence to this code is not just morally mandatory, but is enforced by a quasi-judicial system of medical regulation that can enact major sanctions for transgressions, including removal of the right to practice.
In two landmark cases, in the UK in 2012 and South Africa in 1985, doctors were struck off for failure to act in the deaths of detainees (Iraqi Baha Mousa in the former and Steve Biko in the latter), even though they broke no law and received no judicial sanction.
It is clear that sticking to the law, or even 鈥渇ollowing orders鈥�, is not a defence for unethical conduct among doctors 鈥� and nor should it ever be.
As opinions harden against asylum seekers and refugees in Europe, doctors there must be wary of being coerced into becoming servants of the state at the expense of their primary duty to the people they treat. They should boycott any service that seeks to compromise them in this way.
The author鈥檚 fee for this article is being donated to the Migrant Offshore Aid Station
