Denmark’s former immigration minister Inger Støjberg was sentenced to two months in prison after illegally separating migrant families, so when are we going to expend a similar attitude towards our own former immigration minister, Peter Dutton?
Støjberg, who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to 60 days in jail on Monday over accusations that she ordered the separation of couples where the woman was under 18 in violation of the European convention on human rights. Some of the couples affected by her orders also had children.
In 2016, 23 couples (of which most had small age gaps) were separated without the individual case assessments they’re entitled to, and placed in different centres following instructions from Støjberg.
“Inger Stojberg is found guilty of a deliberate violation of the Ministerial Responsibility Act,” Denmark’s Court of Impeachment of the Realm said in a statement, per The Guardian.
Now, Parliament has to decide whether to disqualify Støjberg from being a member.
Does this story of migrant mistreatment remind you of anyone?
Our own former immigration minister perhaps?
This is obscene. @PeterDutton_MP you need to release Aboriginal people being held in immigration detention centres now. The High Court has ruled this is illegal and you are breaking the law. https://t.co/9IvfEGfP9Z
— Kon Karapanagiotidis (@Kon__K) March 3, 2020
Peter Dutton, best known for his racist double standards regarding asylum seekers and his mate’s Italian au pair, is notorious for his callous disregard of the plight of refugees.
In 2019, Dutton referred to to the two children of the Biloela Tamil family as “anchor babies”, who were briefly torn away from their parents when immigration raided their home and detained them. And then he blamed them for costing taxpayers “millions of dollars” by trying to stay in the country.
When really, a more accurate statement would be that the government spent $6.7 million detaining a family that would have happily stayed in their rural Queensland town, where they are desperately missed and were contributing like everyone else.
That amount of money is also dwarfed by the $185 million the federal government spent reopening the Christmas Island detention centre anyway.
In March earlier this year, a federal court judge described Peter Dutton’s handling medevac refugee cases as “disturbing” and potentially “above the law” per the ABC.
In June, Federal Court judge Geoffrey Flick ordered the Australian government to pay $350,000 in damages to an Iraqi asylum seeker who was unlawfully held in immigration detention for over two years.
He’s not the first refugee to be detained unlawfully by our government, and certainly not the last.
Eight potential illegal immigrants have been returned to Indonesia after a people smuggling vessel targeting Australia was intercepted by Australian authorities.
All eight people on board were safely turned back to Indonesia. pic.twitter.com/XJxlRzDnJu
— Peter Dutton (@PeterDutton_MP) March 2, 2020
All this is to remind you that the Australian government, and specifically our immigration ministers, are violating international law any time they a) indefinitely detain refugees and b) deport refugees to their country of persecution.
And I, for one, would love to see some real consequences for that. Like a jail sentence, perhaps.
