Something I missed on Friday: how Australia is treating kiwis detained on Christmas Island: sticking them in cages and starving them:
Detainees who had nothing to do with the riot on Christmas Island were kept in cages, denied food and water and forced to urinate on the ground for more than 24 hours after police regained control of the facility, according to migration agent Marion Le.
[...]
"Those who were not involved in the riots and indeed were cowering unprotected in fear are being punished for simply being there," Ms Le wrote in a separate email to Immigration and Border Protection Department head Michael Pezzullo.
Her account is at odds with the department's official version, which asserts: "All detainees have been provided with food, water and shelter throughout the unrest at the centre."
Ms Le says her client was permitted to leave the "cage" he shared with some 40 others only after he agreed to be strip-searched, the day after order was restored to the centre.
"There has not been enough food and water, for some time some of them were in cages and with nowhere to pass urine or defecate except on the ground within the cages shared by up to 40 people," she writes in the email.
And they can do this in part because we don't have anyone there watching and standing up for the rights of our citizens (and everybody else) - because our Prime Minister is too craven to send anyone.
Again, we should not call a country which does such things a friend, and we certainly shouldn't be supporting them for a position on the UN Human Rights Council.
