The body of 23-year-old asylum seeker Reza Berati will be flown home to Iran for burial, as an independent investigation into his death during riots on Manus Island begins.

The Greens and asylum seeker advocates say Mr Berati was "murdered" on the island, but the Government says it will wait for the findings from its official review before commenting on individual reports about what took place.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has warned the report, to be conducted by former Attorney-General's Department secretary Robert Cornall, will take "some time" to gather the facts about the "very serious incident" in which 67 asylum seekers were injured.

The review is likely to take months, but the Mr Morrison says it could take longer.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-21/body-of-asylum-seeker-to-be-returned-to-iran/5275766

Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“the CAT”) prohibits all other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which fall below torture.

It is very likely that the indefinite prison regime introduced by the CODOLA Act amounts to, at least, a breach of article 16.

The harsh prison regime amounts to bad governance for another reason.

It constitutes one more simplistic aspect of the legislative and policy strategy employed in the wave of legislation currently under consideration — impose harsh punishment, without much regard to their full effects, in order to achieve an instant fix.

While no instant fix is likely to emerge any time soon, the mental health effects of long term solitary confinement are likely to create a new series of law and order problems in the future as well as adding health costs to future budgets.

The bright spot in the premier’s political strategy is that there is so much bad governance in his assault on good governance, no one can remember it all.

However, passing laws which allow you to lock people up for 25 years and to impose a good behaviour bond for the offence of sharing a bong while going fishing with your mates is worth remembering.

Actually, locking five people up for sharing an ice-cream will be remembered.

Read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/stephen-keim-sc-campbell-newmans-anti-bikies-laws-make-queensland-look-ridiculous,6205

Human rights and asylum seeker advocates are condemning a decision to employ a former Sri Lankan military officer as the acting manager of the Manus Island detention camp.

The ABC has confirmed that Dinesh Perera has been running the facility for the G4S security company.

The director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights Law centre, Emily Howie, says Mr Perera should be removed.

"It's completely inappropriate for anyone with links to the Sri Lankan military to be in charge of the welfare and well-being of vulnerable asylum seekers, including Tamils," Ms Howie said.

"There's a high likelihood that the Tamils being held there are fleeing persecution at the hands of the Sri Lankan military.

"This isn't about the activities of this one man. It's about way that Australia takes care of the asylum seekers who are in its custody.

"The placing of an ex-military commander from a source country for refugees like Sri Lanka highlights Australia's complete insensitivity to the very real risks and suffering that those asylum seekers are fleeing."

Activists say there are now about 30 ethnic Tamil Sri Lankan asylum seekers being detained at the camp, out of a total of about 1,300.

In a brief telephone conversation, Mr Perera confirmed to the ABC that he was currently the acting manager of the Manus facility.

He also confirmed that he had served as an officer in the Sri Lankan military.

Mr Perera refused to comment any further.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-24/former-sri-lanka-military-officer-acting-manager-of-manus/5280412

Before our eyes, day by day, Scott Morrison becomes the hollow man. His face tightens and twists, his eyes are dead, and his words strangled with jargon.

We've seen this before. Remember Philip Ruddock gradually turning into a stick of chalk, as immigration minister and later attorney-general, while he plodded his way through the ''Pacific solution'' and the vilification of David Hicks?

This is what happens to human beings who believe the ends justify the means. Ends that are wretched will invariably produce bad means.

When you peel back the layers, the oft repeated Coalition justification for stopping the boats is that ''the Australian people want it''.

It hardly needs me to point out that history is littered with tragedies when justification is hitched to popularity.

Stopping the boats is an end, and any amount of nastiness to achieve that is justified - popularity confers legitimacy.

Maybe, in decades to come, we will look back at this time and regard it as one of the worst stains on our nation. More awful than the White Australia Policy and up there with the stolen generations. A time when our nation had a dark heart.

Manus Island and Nauru are wretched wastelands, gulags without activity, but they justify the ends.

Professor Ben Saul, on ABC television on Tuesday night, drew an interesting parallel with our policy of indefinite detention, where refugees have been given an adverse security assessment. The other place under the jurisdiction of a western democracy where this also happens is Guantanamo Bay.

It appears Manus Island is also a place of indefinite detention. Liz Thompson, who, as a migration agent, had been assisting asylum seekers on Manus with their refugee claims, told Fairfax Media the official line was that the detainees would be resettled in Papua New Guinea.

Unfortunately, a PNG immigration official went ''off script'' and confirmed to the camp that there were no plans in place for any resettlement program, the incarcerated should simply return home, otherwise their detention would be indefinite.

Is that why Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was pressing the flesh in Cambodia in search of resettlement possibilities? When people put their minds to it, there's no limit to the ''refinements of wickedness'' - a phrase used by Martin Amis in a television interview earlier this week.