RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: Tough OZschwitz laws on people smuggling are a con Mon Feb 13, 2012 3:50 am | |
| Occasionally I spend a day wandering from trial to trial in the Downing Centre, Sydney's giant justice factory. It's one way of keeping in touch with certain aspects of the city. A while ago I began to notice small dark men in the dock, always with an interpreter.
These are the crew from the Indonesian boats that carry asylum seekers to our shores, charged with people smuggling and farmed out by the Commonwealth to the states for justice. There are lots of them: as of last September, almost 200 had been convicted and another 251 were due before the courts.
The trials generally follow the same pattern: a naval and a federal police officer are flown down from north Australia to give evidence, followed by half a dozen passengers from the boat, who are brought from some distant detention centre to confirm that the accused was in fact responsible for sailing the vessel. The evidence can be interesting when the passengers describe their journey from home in some detail.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/tough-laws-on-people-smuggling-are-a-con-20120212-1szkp.html#ixzz1mFYzG4ev
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