Australia: "Gestapo Section" powers should be cut

Immigration Department's "Gestapo Section" powers should be curtailed

WA refugee lobby group Project SafeCom today expressed outrage over the sheer unlimited powers under which the Department of Immigration's 'Compliance Section' barges in and conducts raids on private property and acts as "baby-snatchers", destroying the lives of people all around the country.

"We've seen it first in the raid on the now deported Bakhtiari family, where they snatch and grab babies and toddlers from their beds before dawn in order to lock them up", spokesman Jack Smit said, "and next we saw it on growers' properties in Victoria and New South Wales, where public servants write out their own 'home-made warrants', not even bothering to ask the property owners for permission to enter, and now we see them enter schools and playgrounds of schools to conduct their despicable acts of civil disturbance."

"We've learnt about the danger of these unchecked powers from the debacle of the Cornelia Rau affair, and a chance should come soon to rectify the situation, when the Migration Act will be asked to undergo amendments for the purpose of the requested detention of illegal fishermen, when the government seeks to amend the Fisheries Management Act."

"In none of the cases of the raids, individuals are of any danger whatsoever to Australia's security, and never before in Australian history have we seen bureaucrats granted such unbelievable powers of arrest and detention."

"If you overstay your visa in a decent country, you get notified, but not thrown in a maximum security jail. It's high time that we end the unscrutinised terror reign of some mad and fanatic bureaucrats and order them to a court to seek approval before they apply detention as a solution - which by international law should remain "an act of last resort" only, and then in no circumstances applicable to children and women, or men who pose no danger to our State's security."

"And in terms of what these snatch hounds do to children, these raids should be seen for what they really are: legitimised acts of child abuse, and child abusers have no place in the Australian Public Service".

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