August 6, 2004
This is most disconcerting. The High Court, by a 4-3 majority, ruled that unsuccessful asylum seekers who could not be removed to another country, despite their wish to leave Australia, could continue to be held in immigration detention indefinitely.
In effect, stateless people are prisoners. Or more specifically, detention must continue until an unlawful non-citizen is either removed from Australia, deported or granted a visa.
Consider this case:
"The first case involved Ahmed Ali Al-Kateb, 28, a stateless Palestinian who was born and lived most of his life in Kuwait. He arrived in Australia in December 2000 and applied for a protection visa. That was in turn dismissed by the Immigration Department, the Refugee Review Tribunal, the Federal Court and the Full Court of the Federal Court. He then told the department he wished to leave Australia and be sent to either Kuwait or Gaza. In February last year he initiated Federal Court action claiming he was being unlawfully detained. The Federal Court held that he was not unlawfully detained although there was no likelihood of his removal in the reasonably foreseeable future."
Something has gone wrong here.
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