Australia defends tough media detention centre restrictions

By Phil Mercer of Voice Of America

SYDNEY — Australian immigration officials have defended restrictions that limit press access to detention centres.  
While the media are barred from offshore processing camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, journalists are allowed into facilities on the mainland but are subject to strict rules and barred from formally interviewing detainees.
Eighteen months ago the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said that the country’s immigration centres were “less open and transparent than Guantanamo Bay.”
Since then, the Immigration Department has given reporters limited access to detention facilities under a Deed of Agreement on media access.
Journalists are permitted to speak with detainees but are not given permission to formally interview them or record their comments, nor are they allowed to publish images of inmates’ faces.
Immigration officials say the restrictions are in place to protect the privacy of asylum seekers, in much the same way that school children or hospital patients have their privacy protected from the press in Australia.
While reporters are allowed to visit mainland immigration facilities, they are barred from recently reopened camps in Papua New Guinea and on the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru, which houses asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.
Senior Australian immigration department spokesman, Sandi Logan, told a forum at the University of Technology Sydney that he hoped the press will eventually be allowed in.
“I have got to say that operationally there are much greater priorities for us in Nauru at the moment than a media access policy. 
"But having said that, I think it is absolutely essential that journalists have access to that facility and likewise to the facility in Papua New Guinea, and that will be something that in time, in time, will be negotiated.  
"And when those two parties i.e. the government of Australia and the government of Nauru have agreed on the settings, the parameters for that media access then it would be my expectation that will occur," said Logan.
Australian journalists say that the Deed of Agreement that governs visits to detention centers is too restrictive, and prevents them from telling the true story of conditions behind the razor wire fences.
The head of the Australian Press Council, Julian Disney, says the public does have a right to know.
“People in those detention centers are there because of government policies," he said. 
"They are the policies adopted by the governments we have elected and they are having a very substantial impact on people, even if those people are not our citizens. 
" Therefore as citizens of Australia people are entitled to know what the impact of their government policies are.  
"But we think there are substantial ways in which these restrictions go too far.”
Since the restrictions were brought in a year ago, about 50 journalists, including reporters from Switzerland and Germany, have toured mainland immigration centers in Australia.
It is unclear when press access will be granted to Australia’s two offshore detention centers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, which reopened Wednesday, and another on the tiny South Pacific republic of Nauru, which reopened in September.
Both facilities were used by the former conservative government in Australia.  
In the past critics derided the policy as cruel and ineffective, and they are taking aim once again. 
Amnesty International this week said conditions on Nauru were responsible for a ''terrible spiral'' of hunger strikes and suicide attempts.
Australia grants protection visas to about 13,000 efugees each year under a range of international agreements.