A Sorry State? - Article Anaylsis Essay

Sadly, that's the harsh reality for many asylum seekers, seeking refuge in Australia as they are arbitrarily detained. Good morning or afternoon. It has been a profound honour to be invited to address you about the eloquently breach of basic human rights asylum seeker face while being detained in our shores. Mandatory detention should be abolished as it causes indiscriminate health risk. Instead, the Australia government should allow asylum seekers to settle into the community. We should be viewing asylum seekers as a humanitarian issue instead of a political one.

Hamdi et al. v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al. could prove the undoing of the Bush administration’s legal defense of the abuses at Guantanamo Bay. In this case, four British citizens are suing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as well as a host of Army and Air Force Generals and policy apparatchiks for allegedly authorizing the use of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The four were captured in Afghanistan, either by Americans or America’s ally, the Northern Alliance, and transported to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where they were held for over two years. Their status there was not as enemy combatant, which guaranteed them certain protections under the Geneva Convention, but rather as

Over the years, people have been working to stop solitary confinement by calling it “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” and that it is a violation of the humans' eighth amendment rights. The idea of the eighth amendment is to protect any citizen from the use of cruel punishment no matter what the circumstances are. Cruel and unusual punishment is “punishment as would amount to torture or barbarity, any cruel and degrading punishment not known to the Common Law, or any fine, penalty, confinement, or treatment that is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community.” John McCain made a statement about his time he spent in a Vietnamese solitary confinement saying that “It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment (Bond, 2012).” The reason that it has become a big deal within the community is that the use of solitary confinement can affect the mental, physical and social factors of an

A survey was conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission asking parents and children to use three words to describe the experience of detention. Out of all the option they could have chosen not one person said a nice thing about the

The subject of how to ethically treat prisoners is a contentious one, and when the struggles of mental illness are added to the equation, it becomes even more complex. In attempt to manage difficult or dangerous prisoners, solitary confinement has increasingly became the punishment of choice by prison officials. Solitary confinement can intensify or aggravate detrimental occurrences in behavior in prisoners when they are exposed to this isolation for extended amounts of time. The article “Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics,” was written by Jeffery L. Metzner M.D., a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry along with Senior Counsel of Human Rights Watch, Jamie

Every person has the right to undergo a judicial hearing to avoid illegal detention. However, if that person poses threat to the society and the state, there are instances that the said right is overseen where these types of people are quickly detained after capturing. The writ of Habeas Corpus gives the rights to the captured people to undergo judicial trial. But there is also an article in the U.S. Constitution that states that the writ of Habeas Corpus can only be lifted if the people being questioned in involved in a rebellion or pose a threat to the safety of the public. That is why the administration of the previous U.S. President Bush detained all of the people whom they tagged as terrorist and were captured in the war on Afghanistan in 2001. The question now is to what extend must be the actions of an individual in order to undergo proper trial hearing or to just be put in imprisonment without any hearings or trials done? The purpose of this paper is to review issues within Habeas Corpus and GITMO, discuss how policies changing over time affect the dynamic state of United States, and how these changes can make a big impact to the future law making and practice of the country that is why this issue must be evaluated and examined.

The Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruling that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island is illegal and that the centre must close has once again raised in Australian society the very divisive issue of asylum seekers and their treatment. Commentaries following the Supreme Court decision have portrayed Australia’s approach to asylum seekers as inhumane and uncaring. With continual political, humanitarian and media attention, the histrionics surrounding the issue are rife and many of the crucial facts as to Australia’s response to asylum seekers and the purpose for our offshore processing centres long forgotten. It’s time to restore a factual basis and balance to the discussion. Can Australians be proud of our

American Civil Liberties Union an organization for protection of liberties of the common American said “Overcrowding, violence, sexual abuse, and other conditions pose grave risks to prisoner health and safety. Mistreatment of prisoners based on race, sex, gender identity, or disability remains far too common” (“Prisoners’ Rights”). Since the population of prisoners are hidden such injustice is not commonly reported on. THe denial of prisoner rights in no more clearer than in the case of solitary confinement. Keri Blakinger writer for Vice and author of “How Solitary Confinement Affected Me Five Years After My Release” said in her article “‘It's a little like PTSD,’ Kupers said. ‘A lot of people go to war and have traumatic experiences, but only some develop the symptoms of PTSD’. ‘I would say maybe a quarter of the people have full-blown isolation panic,’ he continued, referencing a term coined by his colleague, Hans Toch, to describe immediate, intense reactions to solitary” (Blakinger). With such intense responses and PTSD like symptoms cruel and unusual punishment like this should be banned. Prison’s ultimate goal is to reform prisoners and allow them to lead happy healthy lives outside of prison and harsh punishment like this does not help that

This paper will explore three separate cases, providing facts about the apprehension and detention of enemy combatants, assessing the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and will explain whether any rights were denied or granted in contrast with each other. Anyone engaging in aggressive or hostile behavior towards a country is held to several political and constitutional legalities as explored in the three following cases.

As part of the “war on terror,” the US began a revolutionary practice of holding "enemies" in military detention without charge and without according them basic rights. Guantanamo Bay is a notorious United States military prison, known for the frequent mistreatment of its inmates. Hundreds of people have gone in and out of GTMO, but none were afforded the rights granted to regular American prisoners. These inmates have spent years holed up in a secretive compound, where some aren't even cognizant of the charges against them. Furthermore, these detainees have reported incidents of abuse and torture, direct violations of the eighth amendment. Bush appointed officials, like Susan Crawford, have conceded that torture occurred at GTMO, validating claims made by those imprisoned. This controversial detention center is infamous internationally, as a 2005 Amnesty International report called the facility the "Gulag of our times.” The U.S. government opened this base as a holding center for the “world’s most dangerous criminals,” and perpetuates its existence to ensure national security. Guantanamo Bay may not seem relevant to most Americans, but its existence is a blatant violation of the Constitution, and foreshadows more encroachment upon the personal liberties enjoyed by

Solitary confinement is a form of cruel and unusual punishment and should be re-evaluated for overseeing the human rights of the inmates being held.

Recently, concerns have been raised by political figures and the people of Australia regarding the ‘abysmal treatment’ of asylum seekers (Claire Mallinson, 2015). The violations of their human rights in regards to the conditions they are forced to live in inside detention centers show that these centres do not operate within the humanitarian requirements Australia has agreed to abide by. The current process that handles the arrival and subsequent treatment of asylum seekers does not allow the migratory system to properly address the complications that the present circumstances impose. The Universal Declaration Human Rights (1948) (UDHR) and the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention were signed by Australia to recognize its support of these

Although Walker and Hersh have similar arguments, when relating to the ethics of military prisons, Walker’s style of writing differs from Hersh’s. In her article, Walker writes in the style of a biography because she portrays the experiences of Hassan. For example, she chronologically included all the events of his days at Guantanamo Bay. From the times he was “interrogated with relation to terrorism” leading up to “Hassan and his lawyers say the U.S government’s claims about his Al-Queda connections are false”, Walker had managed to incorporate all the key moments of Hassan’s sentence (41). Simple phrases such as that help persuade the audience. This is important because this way the audience builds a stronger relationship with Hassan which

Throughout the course we have considered various states of exception and the institutions that have accomplished dehumanizing the people imprisoned. I will be discussing three institutions that have either been concentration camps or have established torture to a great extent. The Nazi concentration camps, Soviet Union Gulags, and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp each have or have had their own way of establishing power over the people detained, all have used different methods of control to demonstrate authority, however, each dehumanized people because they had the capability to do so.

In the United States, one of the major methods in obtaining crucial information has been through the use of Guantanamo Bay. While many have condemned of the torture that is believed to occur there, not only does Guantanamo Bay comply with national and international standards, but it also complies with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (Meese 1) which states