War Criminals Living in Australia

The Lowy Institute, an independent think tank based in Sydney, Australia, contributes this look at Australia's unintentional harboring of war criminals.

What is the problem?

It is likely Australia has unintentionally become home to a significant population of suspected war criminals. Border screening processes were strengthened in 2002-03, but more needs to be done.

Sheltering war criminals runs counter to community expectations and our international commitment to end impunity for war crimes. It also undermines the integrity of our immigration and legal systems. Globally, the system for preventing the movement of war criminals is lacking coordination.

What should be done?

The Australian government needs to make a clear policy statement setting out how it intends to address the problem of suspected war criminals living here Its focus should shift from notionally seeking prosecutions – which have never been successful in Australia – to a wider range of options. The AFP should develop a small, dedicated capability to investigate allegations of war criminals living in Australia. Consistent with government policy, gaps in Australia’s legislation dealing with war crimes should be closed. Australia should advocate measures to strengthen international information sharing on war crimes suspects.

Introduction

It was as recently as 1994 that 800,000 Rwandans were systematically slaughtered and the world was reminded that genocide is still possible. July the following year it happened again, when more than 7,000 men were murdered in the Srebrenica massacre. Today, the killing continues in places like Darfur where the death toll now stands in the hundreds of thousands and the Democratic Republic of Congo where the toll stands in the millions. The crimes committed in these and the many other conflicts of recent decades – the mass killing of civilian populations, the rape of countless women and widespread use of torture – have shaken the conscience of the world.

Australia can sometimes seem remote from these killing fields, but its long tradition of mass migration means that it is not, and it is very likely that it has inadvertently become a safe haven for suspected war criminals. This Policy Brief summarises Australia’s history of dealing with war criminals before looking at their presence in Australia and why we need to do something about the problem. It outlines Australia’s current approach and compares this with that of Canada, which has a domestic war crimes program. It finishes by suggesting ways to strengthen Australian policy towards war criminals.

Background

Australia’s track record of dealing with war criminals is patchy. Between 1945 and 1951, ittried 807 Japanese defendants in and outsideAustralia resulting in 579 convictions and 137 executions. Further action was not taken until 1986 – when an ABC series sparked the Menzies Review of WWII war criminals living in Australia and the subsequent establishment of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in 1987 to examine the allegations raised. The SIU investigations led to three individuals being charged with war crimes, but the Unit was disbanded in 1992.

In the financial year 2002-03, recognising the problem posed by modern war criminals, the Department of Immigration established a dedicated War Crimes Screening Unit (WCSU) to screen suspicious citizenship and visa applicants for potential involvement in war crimes. In December 2005, this was temporarily supplemented by the creation of a War Crimes Task Force when it emerged that high-profile alleged war criminals from the Middle East and the Balkans were living in Australia. This task force investigated 82 discrete cases and was disbanded in June 2006.

Australia has never successfully extradited anyone to face trial for alleged war crimes.

Nor have other remedies been much more successful. Despite amendments to the Citizenship Act to make revocation of citizenship easier, no war criminal has ever been stripped of Australian citizenship. The only mechanism Australia has used to any extent is the revocation of refugee protection under Article 1(F) of the Refugee Convention which allows states to deny protection where there are serious reasons for considering a person has committed war crimes.

Are there war criminals in Australia?

Until a domestic law enforcement agency is given the resources to investigate allegations of war criminals living in Australia it is impossible to determine with any accuracy how many are living within our borders. However, there are good reasons to believe that significant numbers are living here. We already know that suspected war criminals have slipped through Australian border checks. The 1986 Menzies Review of Nazi war criminals living in Australia identified ‘very substantial gaps’ in Australia’s initial post-WWII war crimes screening procedures. The SIU, established in response, conducted 841 investigations and identified 27 cases where it ‘was satisfied that the suspect had committed serious war crimes but was not able to gather sufficient evidence for prosecution under the War Crimes Act’. Some WWII suspects are still alive today. Officials privately suggest that screening has been a problem at other times since WWII.

In the public mind war criminals seem to be commonly associated with greying men from WWII. However, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center – an organisation dedicated to pursuing Nazi war criminals – points out, Australia is probably now facing its final opportunity to take successful legal action against suspected Nazi war criminals.

Modern war criminals are a far more significant problem for Australia. It was reported in 2005 that people who had been denied refugee protection on the basis of involvement in war crimes had come from Afghanistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Tibet, Nigeria, Chile, Iran, Iraq and India. 15 It is likely that Australia is also home to suspected war criminals from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as Cambodia, and possibly Rwanda and East Timor among others.

The fact that other countries continue to request the extradition of alleged war criminals from Australia – albeit in small numbers – offers another reason for suspecting they are living here.

Another reason for suspecting that a significant number of war criminals are living in Australia comes from examining the experience of a comparable country – Canada – that has dedicated resources to addressing the problem of resident war criminals.

As Tanya Plibersek stated in a debate in parliament on crimes against humanity:

‘Mr Deputy Speaker, you can imagine someone walking into a community centre who spies across the room someone whom they believe to be responsible for the deaths of their family members...I am not saying for a moment that an accusation is all that is required, but we at least owe it to the victims of these crimes to examine their claims, and we owe it to ourselves as a nation to be confident that we are not sheltering people here who have committed such crimes.'

To read more about this, please see the entire briefing, posted at the Lowy Institute (here).