Australia – The North West Star, October 18, 2024
Political prisoners have shared emotional testimonies about their harrowing experiences as they called for Australia to do more, with several high-profile cases still on the radar.
Academics Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Sean Turnell and journalists Peter Greste and Cheng Lei were all arbitrarily detained overseas and have called for a special envoy solely dedicated to the plight of Australians like them.
They’ve further asked the federal government to better support them and their families, and work to reduce ongoing trauma, saying processes need to change so more Australians don’t fall through the cracks.
Dr Turnell was held as a political prisoner by Myanmar’s junta while Dr Moore-Gilbert and Ms Cheng were jailed in Iran and China respectively on espionage charges. Professor Greste was detained in Egypt for 14 months on terrorism grounds.
An emotional Ms Cheng choked back tears as she recounted the pain her elderly mother went through looking after her two children, saying state and federal governments needed to better co-ordinate support for families.
“Nobody knew it and everyone suffered as a result,” she told a parliamentary hearing on Friday.
The former prisoners all argued for the Department of Foreign Affairs not to sideline families and prevent them speaking to media, saying publicity had helped them.
All spoke of how public or international pressure aided their cases, including by sending a warning to their captors that harming or torturing them would spark widespread outrage.
“It protected me when I was in prison from the most egregious human rights abuses,” Dr Moore-Gilbert said, adding that the publicity helped restore consular access.
Telling families to remain silent could lead to frustration and risk putting them at odds with diplomats, she said, arguing it was better to work constructively on media engagement and “make sure everyone’s on the same page”.
Public pressure over Prof Greste’s case meant he escaped the worst of what he saw in prison because “the Egyptians were very, very aware of the potential outrage that would flow if we were in any way directly tortured or abused”.
