Episode 03: Elaine Pearson — Keeping Australia Honest in the Fight for Human Rights

Elaine Pearson is the Australia Director at Human Rights Watch, based in Sydney. She established Human Rights Watch’s Australia office in 2013 and works to influence Australian foreign and domestic policies in order to give them a human rights dimension. Pearson writes frequently for a range of publications and her articles have appeared in the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, Foreign Policy and the Washington Post. From 2007 to 2012 she was the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division based in New York. She has conducted numerous human rights investigations in Australia and around the world.

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Pearson worked for the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kathmandu and London. She is an adjunct lecturer in law at the University of New South Wales, on the advisory committee of UNSW’s Australian Human Rights Institute and on the board of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. Pearson holds degrees in law and arts from Murdoch University and obtained her Master's degree in public policy at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.

I met Elaine through her husbands (Cameron) involvement with the New York Magpies Aussie Rule club all the way back in 2006. I have been inspired to follow her journey to becoming one of Australia’s leading voices in Human Rights. You can follow Elaine on twitter @pearsonelaine.

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Full Transcript

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Elaine Pearson: This is a really incredible time. The world is in a real moment. I think what happened to George Floyd when I saw that video I was shocked and horrified, as I think anyone watching that video is. It also immediately made me think of the case of David Dungay here in Australia who also said I can't breathe more than 12 times before he died. He was an aboriginal man. He was in prison. He was being restrained by four prison guards. There's been no justice for that.

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Tim Buxton: You're listening to Justice Matters with Tim Buxton, a podcast inspiring the fight for a world where everyone belongs.

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Thank you so much for joining me for the very first episode of the Justice Matters Podcast. Guys, I couldn't be more excited. Right now we are facing a pretty big moment as a globe. Right now there's Black Lives Matter protests that have been sparked by the terrible, terrible death of George Floyd and so many other lives. Even Australia, as a nation, we have been forced to reckon with our own racist past.

I've got Elaine Pearson on the show today. I couldn't think of anyone else I would want on the show for the very first episode. She is the Australian Director of Human Rights Watch. She has been in that role for seven years. She has traveled the world working for NGOs. She's lived in Bangkok, Thailand. She's lived in the UK, the USA. She's lived in Nepal. She's traveled extensively for her work and she brings with her such clarity, understanding, such insight, and really first-hand knowledge. She shares stories even from her own past, her own upbringing here in Australia where she experienced racism here first-hand.

She really, really does, I think, set things off incredibly for what I hope this podcast to be — a place we really discover that justice really does matter. Look guys, let's go to the interview. Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you on the other side.

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Thank you so much, Elaine, for coming onto the Justice Matters Podcast. I am super excited to be able to spend this time with you. We almost got you in the studio a couple of weeks back, but unfortunately, the COVID-19 restrictions didn't allow you to get across the border.

Elaine: Yes, I'm really pleased to do it too. Sorry that the borders didn't cooperate.

Tim: That's okay. It would have been so good to catch up with you and Cam. I first met you guys probably a decade ago in New York where we both were living. I met Cam playing footy for the New York Magpies, which is like-- you can probably explain how serious we were. Right, Elaine?

Elaine: [laughs]

Tim: A bit more social.

Elaine: I think it was just a good excuse for Aussies in New York to get together, not that my husband Cam is even an Aussie. He's a Kiwi.

Tim: There you go.

Elaine: He picked up Aussie rules in Bangkok, of all places.

Tim: Yes, totally. I remember he was doing a lot of training drills with us. He's quite the drills expert when it comes to fitness. It was good always having him on the team. Anyway, it was really great to get to know you there. We always kind of stayed in touch over the years here and there as you've done a lot of traveling. You're quite the globetrotter in your life.

Now, I got a bit sneaky and had a chat with Cam, just to get a few bits of sneaky background information. You have been to, I don't know, I lost count of countries, but where did you go recently that was quite interesting?

Elaine: Oh gosh, Antarctica. That was not a work trip. [laughs]

Tim: Antarctica?

Elaine: That was not a work trip. I was not investigating human rights abuses there. That was a holiday actually with my mother. I felt very grateful to be able to go there, obviously, just before all the craziness and the COVID lockdown began. Then actually right before COVID, I was in Geneva and Paris having some work meetings particularly around the Human Rights Council, because Australia is a member of the Human Rights Council. That was my last international trip and it doesn't seem like I'm going to be doing anymore travelling in the short term, at least, unfortunately.

Tim: I know which you probably had for travel bugs like you and Cam. You are an expert of penguins, right? So at least you can--

Elaine: I am. Penguin expert, whale expert, it was amazing. I never knew before I went to Antarctica that there were so many different types of penguins, but now I know them all.

Tim: That's so cool. That is a bucket list for me to be able to go to Antarctica. Super jealous. We're not here just to talk about penguins and all that fun stuff. Right now, you're the Australian Director of Human Rights Watch. Is that correct?

Elaine: Yes, that's right.

Tim: I'd love to know more and I'm sure our listeners would love to know a bit more about what Human Rights Watch is, who they are. Can you tell me a little bit more about your role?

Elaine: Yes. Human Rights Watch is a global organization. Our headquarters are in New York but we operate in about 90 countries around the world. We have about just over 400 staff and about 100 of them are researchers. I guess the main thing that we do is we investigate human rights abuses wherever they occur around the world, so in some 90 countries around the world. We then expose those abuses through our reporting, through the media, and then we advocate for change.

My job is not so much at the research end, but more at the advocacy end. I'm the person lobbying the government, trying to press particularly the Australian government to take action on our recommendations with respect to reports that we do here in Australia on human rights abuses, but also reports that we do all around the world on issues because ultimately, Australia is part of the international community. It's a member of the Human Rights Council, and we often want the Australian government to speak up and address issues, particularly ones that are happening in this region and particularly where we see that Australia has a role to play. That's really my job, I guess, in a nutshell.

I worked for Human Rights Watch in New York when we met and my job there was a bit different. I was supervising a team of researchers working across Southeast Asia. Now that I'm back in Australia, my job is more looking at the Australian government and opportunities just to lobby there. I still continue to supervise our work in Indonesia which also includes the work we do on West Papua. We have a small team here.

Tim: That's super close to me because I was born in Indonesia and I actually spent the first years of my life in West Papua, in Jayapura, which you'd be very familiar with. We were having a chat the other day and there's so much that's going on in our region in Southeast Asia and Australia, in the Pacific, that we really, I think, don't really know about. I'm really glad to have you on the show today. Some people may have seen you on Q&A or other programs that are out there. I really appreciate the way that you've kind of gone about and brought light to a lot of these issues.

For you, it started quite young. Can you think of any defining moment back in your childhood or growing up that spurred you to get involved in human rights and fighting against injustices?

Elaine: Yes. I guess there are few moments for me. I mean, certainly, at school, I started reading I think in high school the books by John Pilger. I think that really shocked me actually, to understand more about our history and our treatment of aboriginal Australians, but also what was happening in the region, in East Timor, and so on. Then growing up in Perth, I'm mixed race myself. My mother's Chinese from Singapore, my father's English, so I'm a child of migrants.

I remember when I was at university in Perth when Pauline Hanson came over and this was in the 1990s. This is her first time around in parliament. Back then, now her target has been very much Muslims, but back then it was actually Asians. For me, it was quite personal to hear her spouting on about how there's too much Asian immigration to Australia. It would manifest itself in ugly ways, in terms of racism. I think the very first protest that I joined was when he made a trip to Perth and it wasn't my university that hosted her for a talk, but it was another university. That was the first time, I guess, that I became socially active in causes. Then through studying law at law school, I think I became more interested in social justice. That's where it started.

Tim: Yes. Look, what you just shared there, I feel like you've exposed my ignorance where you talked about is it John, who is the author that you mentioned?

Elaine: John Pilger.

Tim: John Pilger?

Elaine: Yes.

Tim: Yes. Can you just like, for my own sake, and I don't know who in our listeners would even know who he is? I mean share a bit about what inspired you about what he shared and who he was.

Elaine: Yes. He's an investigative journalist, he's Australian, but he's based in the UK. Now maybe he's name might've faded a bit from headlines and so people might not be aware of who he is, but he's continuing to write, he's still active, but certainly back then in the '90s he'd written a book called A Secret Country and it was all about Australia and basically the stories that you don't read in the mainstream media. Then he wrote about a lot of different things, but particularly about Timor and East Timor and the way in which the Indonesian government invaded East Timor, all the horrific human rights violations that were taking place there.

Really the complicity of governments, like the Australian government, like the US government that failed to act. I think that's really what got me interested in many ways in human rights issues. I was reading about this and thinking, "Okay, how can I get involved in addressing some of these injustices that are happening around the world?"

Tim: Yes. I think it always begins of just becoming aware of these things because these aren't things that we want to necessarily seek out and find about a dark past, you could say. It is so important. It is a journey. I think in light of recent events, I'm having to reassess my own past and our own history as a country. I think we'll get an into talk a bit about that in just a little bit would be really good to touch on a couple of key issues that have been happening, but you got your start. You mentioned you at you inspired, you got you start, I believe in Thailand, working for an NGO. I heard you became a pretty good cook. Well, at least Cam tells me. In fact, you met, your husband came there. Is that, right?

Elaine: I did the second time around though. I had two--

Tim: Second time around, okay.

Elaine: Two stints in Thailand. The first time I was working for an NGO.

Tim: Tell me a little bit more about that.

Elaine: Then the second time I was working for the UN.

Tim: The UN Yes. Tell me more about the first time that you were there with that NGO in Pakistan.

Elaine: I went, I mean, pretty much straight out of graduating from law school in Perth, I was 23 years old, which now to me seems so young, but I remember at the time saying to my parents, "Of course, I'm fine. I'm going to go off and live in Bangkok and certainly fine." I went actually on an Australian Government Program, which I don't think it exists anymore, but it was called Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development. It was a really great program, actually, because it sent young people into the field working for different NGOs, organizations, sometimes governments, in different roles for a period of time. For me, it was a 12-month program.

I really learnt a lot. I was working with this small scrappy NGO on the issue of trafficking of women, which is basically the forced enslavement of women in the sex industry, but also in factories, in domestic work and it was an issue that was just coming to the UN attention. I remember, I think when very early on I was able to go to Geneva with them and it really opened up my eyes to these issues. It was really the right time, I think, to be working on trafficking because at that stage, the UN was negotiating a new treaty. a trafficking protocol.

The focus was very much on crime and organized crime and controlling the crime of trafficking, trying to get governments to criminalize it and make it an offense, because it wasn't always an offense in different countries. What we were trying to do is to say, "This is not just a crime problem. This is a human rights problem and you need to treat these people who are victims as victims with human rights and not just treat them as tools of the prosecution, but really make sure that they're protected and supported.

I think that was one of the things that really opened my eyes when I was living in Thailand is that it's not just the horrible treatment that someone gets when they're locked in a brothel and they don't have the freedom to leave and the horrible stuff that happens to them. It's also what happens after they're rescued by the authorities or in some cases arrested by the authorities. Back then women were being thrown in jail because they were seen as illegal migrants or in some countries prostitution was a crime.

They were really being double victimized, first by the traffickers and then by the governments. Our focus was really about trying to change that. We were successful. We got the UN to include human rights protections in that protocol and so that laid the blueprint. Yes, really for governments to then enact their own laws and provide better protection for victims.

Tim: Wow. Not only did you pioneer and help some groundbreaking, I guess, policy work in that whole realm of anti-trafficking, but you also ended up getting more involved if I understand in-- because you hopped over to the UK, is that right? Help me piece together. What progress and in particularly you alluded to working for the UN because for most people, at least for me, working for the UN seems to be like, well, that's where you've made it. You start in these grassroots organizations and you work your way up and you had some pretty incredible accomplishments. I know you probably wouldn't freely share with them.

I know from your track record yes, you've really made some headway and got involved in the UN. Tell us a bit more, fill in the gaps there with your journey and some of the things that you were able to work on.

Elaine: Yes. I guess at the end of the first year, I was meant to go back to Australia because I was on this volunteer program, but I didn't want to go back. I felt like I was just starting my work with that organization and so I stayed, they offered me a job and I stayed for a second year and I finished the projects that I was working on and what I started. Then after two years, I moved to London and I got a job with anti-slavery international, which is also a small NGO, but I guess a bit bigger and maybe a bit more powerful than the one in Thailand.

It's actually the oldest human rights organization in the world because it was set up to combat the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It has a long long history, but they'd actually never had someone focus on trafficking before. I was the first person for them to set up a trafficking program because trafficking was still somewhat of a new phenomenon. It hadn't really, as I said, it hadn't been defined really in international law and it is a contemporary form of slavery. I worked for them for about three years. I did some good work again expanding on victim protection measures in different countries and trying to particularly work with the European Union to get them to adopt protections for victims.

I did that work and then I traveled around a bit. I spent a bit of time in Africa, in India, in Nepal. Then I wound up eventually in Hong Kong doing some contract work initially for the UN for the International Labor Organization. Again, it was assisting them on projects to do with trafficking of women, trafficking of children but also looking at migrant workers.

Then when I moved back to Bangkok the second time, it was to take up a job within the UN working for the ILO on these issues.

Yes, I mean, like you, I thought, "I'm working for the UN now, I've made it. Now I'm going to have the money and the budgets and the clout to really achieve systemic change on these issues." I was working with some good people at the UN, but ultimately it's a massive bureaucratic organization. It's very tough. Decisions are made for political reasons. I found it very hard to make the systemic change that I felt like was necessary. Certainly in the roles that I had been, in sort of I guess junior to mid-level policy roles. I gave it a go. I also worked for UN Women for a year, and that was on a project dealing with migrant workers. Particularly, women from Southeast Asian countries who were going to the Middle East for work, particularly as domestic workers was a big part of our focus. Again, if you're working in the home in some ways even more isolated than if you're working in a brothel. It's extremely difficult to get help if your employer is abusive.

Again, we uncovered some pretty horrible stuff. What we were really trying to do is to get governments to provide more support and more protection so that if people ran away from those conditions, they would be supported and not just deported back to their home countries.

Tim: I can relate, because these are at the end of the day they're people, they're humans that have family that are suffering in so many ways. In my own experience living in Iraq and trying to respond to quite urgent crisis and having to see the way the bureaucratic system kind of rolls and works, can really get challenging when you're day-to-day faced with some just, like you said, people that might not have the access, the ability, even if they wanted to get the support and help to get out of the situations that they're in. I can completely relate to that, but I want to shift gears a little bit and bring things back to this moment that we're at at the moment, because I know you have been and your team here in Australia have been working very, very hard for a long time.

Even before what we're seeing now with the protests, with black lives matter and our own Aboriginal lives matter, kind of slant on that and the way Australia's having to reconcile with its racist past and present, and also reconcile with just some simple things. I wouldn't say simple things. The issue that is I think at the forefront. Aboriginal deaths in custody, and the inaction that has gone on for years and years, but you've guys have been working in that space long before what we're seeing that has been sparked by the death of George Floyd in the USA.

Can you share a bit more a bit about what Human Rights Watch is doing? What you've been involved with? I think just share with our listeners, help us understand some of the maybe more nuanced things that we don't really fully get when we just watched the media today?

Elaine: I think this is a really incredible time. The world is in a real moment, and I think what happened to George Floyd. When I sold that video, I was shocked and horrified as I think anyone watching that video is, but it also immediately made me think of the case of David Dungay here in Australia, who also said, "I can't breathe," more than 12 times before he died. He was an Aboriginal man who was in prison. He was being restrained by four prison guards, and there's been no justice for that killing. It was also captured on video, but the coronial report did not recommend any disciplinary action.

Human Rights Watch work, I guess in these issues, we've been doing quite a lot of work around prisons and particularly how prisoners with disabilities are being treated. It might surprise people to know that more than half the prison population in Australia has a disability. Now, that's-

Tim: That's mind-boggling.

Elaine: -not just physical, it's huge.

Tim: More than half.

Elaine: Just over half. That's physical, that sensory, that's cognitive impairments. It also includes mental health conditions and that's the main issue here, but our prisons are really not set up to deal with disabilities at all. Prisons are set up for punishment. The situation we have now, is we have these overcrowded prisons. We have too many people in there. We have a lot of people who actually really urgently need mental health support, and they're not really getting it in prison. Many of these people are Aboriginal. We know that our Aboriginal population is what? Only 3% or something of the Australian population, and yet 27% of those who wind up in prisons.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make prisons not only better for people with disabilities, but also more culturally appropriate for Aboriginal people. I think that's why there's so much attention now, on deaths in custody. Just last year I was in WA up in Broome and in Perth, investigating a few different cases of deaths in custody. One was a horrible case of an Aboriginal man, with schizophrenia who was beaten to death by other inmates in the prison. One of the other cases was an Aboriginal man who had a long history of being in and out of prison, but he also had a long history of mental health needs. He had to go to court one day. He left his home, not thinking that he was going to wind up in prison.

He actually said to his mom, "Leave the chicken out, I'll cook dinner tonight, mum." Then he went off to court and unfortunately, the relative who was meant to post bail for whatever reason, wasn't in court that day, and so they took him to the Broome Prison, and he was known to those prison guards. He'd been in and out of prison. They knew that he had a mental health condition, yet he wasn't given support and all the warning signs were there. He started asking for his medication, he started banging his head against the wall. Anyway within a few hours he'd hung himself in the shower, and his name was Mr. Jacamara.

There are so many of these cases, which I think cut very close to home, when we are marching for black lives matter. We are also marching about the systemic changes that are needed to our system here in Australia, to ensure that pervasive racism doesn't result in so many Aboriginal people winding up in custody.

Tim: I think it's important we tell these stories. It's easy to be indifferent when someone is just a statistic, but when you hear their stories as you faithfully share on behalf of these families, what is going on, it's important for us to listen and take note. Because 30 years ago, correct me if I'm wrong, there was a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and yet there doesn't seem to be that much, if any meaningful action truly that's taken place. Can you share a bit about that, and maybe some of the action that Human Rights Watch is working towards to ensure that something's done about this?

Elaine: Yes, that's right. There was that royal commission 30 years ago. I think the greatest change that has happened since then, physical changes to the prison infrastructure. Basically, making it more difficult to be completely blunt, making it more difficult for people to hang themselves in prison. People don't have the tools or the ability to do that, but that's clearly nowhere near enough.

That's not addressing the reason why people feel that way. Why people would get to that point? The problem is prisoners often find it very difficult to get access to counseling. The way in which these issues are treated is often just putting someone in a safe cell, a padded cell which is supposedly a place where they're under closer observation and monitoring 24 hours, but it's not necessarily a place where they're going to get better.

What we're really recommending is that prisoners with disabilities, particularly mental health conditions, aren't held in solitary confinement. That they do have better access to mental health support, more psychologists, better treatment. That also there's more spaces in psychiatric facilities to provide support, because that was one of the big problems that we found. In WA, there's less than 50 forensic beds for psych patients in a secure facility. It's constantly full. Like you think about that, and then you think about the prison population and WA which I think is more than 4,000. Clearly that is not enough. Those beds are also serving people in the community. You wind up with people in prison who just don't have the right kind of support. It's about providing the right types of support so that people don't have suicidal thoughts that they're not thinking about killing themselves. That they're protected in prison, so that they have people to talk to. Having more independent oversight and monitoring it's really important.

Tim: It seems to me almost a worldview picture in one sense, your concept, and idea of what punishment is, therefore? Is it therefore just to punish something? When I think about my upbringing that I had, I had incredible parents, and even that my faith that I would say helped informed the value of human life and human dignity. I do remember Tom, I think I was 14, and my aunt and uncle is in the UK. They challenged me on what I believed about capital punishment, and I was 14. You could probably forgive me for not really thinking it through, but for me, I just didn't see it as a problem if the crime fit, capital punishment seemed to be a viable option. But what it cuts to the heart out for me and as I've grown and as I've raised, as I'm trying to the best of my ability raise four children, is when I discipline my children, it's to restore them, I guess is to bring them into a better place in the future. It's not just to purely be punitive in the way we do this. I think it touches on a bit of our worldview, our psych, the way we approach this issue in general. Would you agree?

Elaine: Yes, absolutely. I think that's a big problem with our prison system, is it really is set up and it's about punishment. I think some of the hardest cases that we worked on, were people who were being held in what they call the maximum-security units. They're very high-security units. These are people who maybe they haven't been following the rules of the prison. Maybe they've been violent, maybe they've attacked other prisoners or prison staff, but they're basically fed through a grate, they have no real human contact. If they talk to anyone it's always through glass or through a wall. I think that's really just basically giving up on people. One of the cases that we were following, he'd been in one of those units for 12 years. How can you expect someone like that-

Tim: That's mind-boggling.

Elaine: -even to be able to go back to the regular prison, let alone be released into the community after living like that. Even guys that we interviewed in Queensland, and who just come out of those MSU units. Sometimes they sit there for six months, three months. We were interviewing them just as they'd come out. They would say to us, "It's actually really hard to talk to you and to hold a conversation I'm really struggling. Could you come back tomorrow?" I think it just gives you this sense that people are sent there for punishment, then they come out, they can't cope with suddenly all the noise and the riffraff of the normal prison. Then again they commit a violation, then they get sent back.

Tim: It's an endless cycle really isn't it at the end of the day?

Elaine: It really is. Particularly, I think for the Aboriginal population in Australia. It is this endless cycle. Many of the people we interviewed, it was their fifth, sixth, seventh time in prison. It's about how we can have a justice system that is about supporting people, rehabilitating people.

Tim: Not just sending them to prison for petty crimes or for misdemeanors. I think of the story about Ben and Jerry, the founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, he's on the forefront now in the US. He's for a long time advocated for black lives, and for those that are vulnerable, and systemically oppressed in the US. He talks about this moment I remember, I don't know if it was a short little video clip or a tweet or something where he says, "Look, I shudder to think what happened when I was caught with marijuana back in the '70s, if I was black? There probably would not have been Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I'd probably still be in prison to this day." Just that kind of statement, he was right.

I think what you're alluding to here is Aboriginal Indigenous Australians have got the raw end of the deal. We haven't done our job to serve them, to understand them, and that their needs. I've got both hands up and in saying, "Look, I need to understand, I need to learn. I need to put myself in their place." It's incredible work that we're doing.

Elaine: I think we're all still learning. On the positive side, we have had some recent good news. The WA government has just passed a law saying that, people will not have to go to jail for unpaid fines. Now, this law has been a long time coming. It is really in response to the death of Ms. Dhu in police custody back in 2014. She was taken into custody actually after a domestic violence dispute. They realized she had some unpaid fines. They took her into custody, as well as her abuser.

She wound up dead in custody, but look, it's been six years. It's taken a long time, but I think it's a really important step that the WA government has made this important change. No one should be going to jail just for something simple like unpaid fines.

Tim: That's fantastic. There's a couple other I think points of action that you alluded to earlier in around how we address how to become more prepared in whether it be better-trained staff and a few other ways that we can make sure we're addressing? Because these issues are kind of-- the new ones, they're not simple. Human Rights Watch did a study. You cross I think was it-- what were the countries where you kind of did a study? France was one of them.

Elaine: Yes, they were different reports, but basically we've done a series of reports looking at how prisoners with disabilities are being treated in different countries? It's kind of interesting to see in each country, the problems are slightly different.

Tim: There's no silver bullet answer to this?

Elaine: No, there really aren't. The issue in the US was really around excessive use of force, unfortunately, and restraints of physical restraints used against people with disabilities, especially mental health conditions. In France, the issue was over-medicating and forcibly medicating people with mental health conditions. Here the issue was really overuse of solitary confinement on these issues.

As you said, I think, there has been a bit of progress. We put that report out on Australia two years ago. I was back in WA, meeting with some prison and staff. I think one of the staff actually said to me, "I read your report, and it really made me think twice about how I do my welfare checks with prisoners." I'm so glad to hear that they are actually reading our report, because you never know if they do or not. I hope that they're actually adopting some of those recommendations of like better training in mental health support for prison staff from prison guards because it's a really tough job. It's not an easy job to work in the prison system at all, but it's about learning ways to deescalate certain behaviors, learning ways to identify different types of mental health conditions, and what's an appropriate way to respond.

Tim: We got to invest. Personal development is key. Some teachers have a hard time going into school these days to teach and let alone going into a prison system, a maximum-security prison system, and having to-- Sometimes be in harm's way. There's a lot that these men and women do that goes unseen. There's so much we could talk about that. I know your time is precious and I think we could easily have you back on to talk about some similar issues, but I'd like to if you have some time before you go, just to touch on something a bit closer to my heart, but I know something that has been an ever-present issue for Australia. It's with the offshore detention policy that Australia has had and really in general asylum seekers at large for decades now, it's been a highly political politicized issue. It's been an issue that, sadly, has been a blight, I think on Australia's human rights record, internationally. It's close to my heart because I recently spent three years in Northern Iraq almost three and a half years.

In my time there working with-- Basically right after ISIS invaded or the day ISIS invaded, our family moved in. We responded with a small NGO to work with refugees that were fleeing displaced people that were flooding into the region overnight. After that time, there we move back to Australia. My wife had baby number four, but it spurred our passion to start an NGO that we started a charity called You Belong, helping these refugees that have been granted refugee status most of them from Syria and Iraq, and many of these families that we know their relatives we worked and visited them in their camps.

It's been very close to home for me personally, but I'd love for you to share a bit about what's been going on with narrow, understand you got the chance to visit there, spend time with a Kurdish-- I was in the Kurdish region, a Kurdish refugee asylum seeker. I got to stop talking. Why don't you share a bit about your experience there and help inform us on what's been going on in that space?

Elaine: I really want to commend you on the incredible work that you've done Tim, also in the refugee space. Iraq I think it's-- You've seen firsthand how people have had to flee their homes and so you know how difficult it is for people. I think sometimes for Australians when people were seeing the images of people coming on the boats, it is quite difficult to know what are the backgrounds of these people? Who are they? Where do they come from? What are they fleeing?

This is an issue that's very important to me, too. I feel like in July it will be seven years since we've had the offshore processing in Papua New Guinea and now we're restarted. It was obviously something that was proposed by Raj. It happened previously under the Howard era but then was restarted again. Around the time that, that started was actually around the time that I moved from New York to Australia to set up Human Rights Watch.

I feel like this has been an issue that we've been working on from day one. I visited Manus Island in Papua New Guinea twice. I met with many of the refugees and asylum seekers. I went in, I think it was 2015 and then 2017. I actually saw the steady deterioration in people as well, in their mental health over that time. I met with Behrouz Boochani, who is the Kurdish refugee.

Tim: I think I've got a book behind me. He wrote a book called No Friend But the Mountains, which actually is a Kurdish proverb, just so you know. If you ever read his book, Behrouz Boochani. It's a nation that has been traumatized. The whole people group and whole ethnicity that has been traumatized. There are two main proverbs of where the orphans of the universe and we have no friends but the mountains. Get that for your national or ethnic identity when that's your go-to proverb. Anyway, sorry to distract you there.

Elaine: It's an incredible book and so incredible that he wrote it under those conditions of basically being imprisoned on Manus Island. I think that's something that people think, "Oh, it must be so horrible to go there and to witness these conditions," but you meet young men who are so inspiring, who are smart, who are so switched on, they've managed to make it all the way there.

They would be such good citizens for Australia, if only the Australian Government would let them in. Instead, I'm very happy for New Zealand. Behrouz he managed to make his way to New Zealand to speak at a writer's festival about his book. I think he'll really go a long way. I was at a conference speaking about migration in Germany a year ago and they were academics from all over the world debating his book, which was just incredible to see.

I think that's one of the really great things is he is not letting that experience really define who he is as a person. I think that's something that's really important to a lot of the refugees who have been through that experience. I was in Chicago last year, and I met up with some of the refugees that I'd previously met on Manus. Some of the ones who are on Manus Island, they just said to me, "Elaine, I'm so glad that I don't have that word, refugee across my face anymore."

That's all I felt. I just felt like, "Refugee, refugee." The guards would call you by your boat number. They were like, "Here in Chicago, they call me by my name. If I don't know my name, they call me sir." It's just such a different experience for people. Those camps they're so militarized. They're told when to eat, when to sleep, what to do. They would get wounded going from one part of the camp to the other. Those camps have now been dismantled.

They've just been shunted from one island, basically to another from Venice to Port Moresby. Now they're living in pretty horrible conditions. There's only a few hundred or so left now in Papua New Guinea. They really worried that as attention focuses on all the other things that are happening around the world, that people will forget about the people who were there. I think it's important for all of us that we don't forget about them and that we do what we can to remind the Australian government that just because you didn't let them in here, it doesn't mean you don't have any responsibility to these people.

Tim: Look, I know I could do more. I know hopefully many of our listeners feel encouraged, inspired to do more. Not all of us have the opportunity to go travel to these places to hear the stories. Again, once again, once you hear the stories, the sky hasn't fallen. There's many that have moved here to Australia came from Manus Island. It's not like the sky is falling and everything is-- There's issues left, right and center.

I think if we can get beyond the fear, if we can get beyond the rhetoric, get beyond nameless statistics and really hear the stories, I think there is something good in all of us something appealing to our core humanity, really our common humanity that we are better than this, that we can be leaders in this space and not followers. Thank you, Elaine. Is there anything else you feel the need to share on this? I know our time is running out. I want to give you that opportunity to share.

Elaine: I think just on that refugee issue, we're also continuing to battle for the rights of those who've been transferred to Australia. Some of them are living in the community. Some of them have jobs. Obviously, they've been affected pretty badly by COVID because many of those jobs aren't secure, probably have been interrupted. Some of them are still being detained. They've been held in hotels in Brisbane, in Melbourne. They put in hotels rather than detention centers because they're a low-security threat. It's going on like-- it's been more than nine months now. Can you imagine being in a hotel room for nine months?

Tim: It's a prison. It's time detention really.

Elaine: It is.

Tim: It doesn't make sense.

Elaine: Yes. I think we need to do more to address some of these issues that our government is really just penalizing these people because they had the audacity to try and reach this country by barge, and they were looking for safety. Certainly, seven years later, they still haven't found it. I think we need to do what we can to support them. I guess I would just let people know, if you're interested in our work please go to our website hrw.org.

Tim: Hrw.org. Is there an Australian sub-branch of that or is it just HRW? I had a good squeeze that HRW recently and it's so informative, so many stories. It is really good.

Elaine: The global site is sort of the main one but also-- I mean we have Human Rights Watch Australia Facebook page and Instagram.

Tim: Follow on Twitter, all those things.

Elaine: I'm on Twitter twitting quite a lot.

Tim: Look at Elaine on Twitter. Is there anything new coming up for you, Elaine? Anything on the horizon other than not so much travel?

Elaine: Well, right now we're doing quite a lot of work around I guess the Human Rights Council. It's Australia's last year on Human Rights Council, so we're addressing some of those issues. We're going to have a new report, a short report coming out looking at deaths in custody related to disability in Western Australia, so look out for that. That'll be in the next couple of months.

Unfortunately, with COVID, COVID itself has resulted in a whole range of new human rights issues, particularly for vulnerable communities, so we're doing quite a lot of work also in drawing attention to that. Particularly, the way in which some authoritarian governments are using the excuse of COVID really to ram through national security legislation or take certain measures to further crackdown on their citizens.

We're seeing that in the Philippines. We're seeing that in Cambodia, and I think that's something that Australians should be very concerned about as governments in our region become more authoritarian.

Tim: Incredible. Elaine, I once heard it said that fighting injustice is making somebody else's problem your problem. I think that is what Human Rights Watch is doing. It's what you are doing. Thank you so much for standing up for those that are oppressed. Those that are suffering persecution. Those that are vulnerable in so many ways in our society, and standing up for them. Thank you for all that you're doing.

I hope to be able to get you back on the show again and explore some more things and hear what you've been up to and what. I think great progress, I believe, is and will be made. Thanks so much for coming on, Elaine. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I know you've had a busy day, and appreciate you carving the time out for that.

Elaine: No, no problem at all. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Tim.

Tim: You got it.

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Well, that's a wrap with my very first guest on the Justice Matters podcast, Elaine Pearson. If you enjoyed our conversation or if you want to hear more, I've got some bonus content that I recorded with her. You can get access to that by jumping over to justicematters.tv. There you'll get a link to our front page where for as little as $5 a month you can get access to all kinds of bonus content that I have with my guests, show notes, and all other information that I'll upload there from time to time.

I'd like to also thank right now the show producer, the audiovisual engineer, Jose Biotto Thanks, mate, for all your hard work behind the scenes. Special thanks goes to music duo David Gungor and John Ardt also known as the brilliance for providing the music for this podcast.

Now, if you'd like to review and rate this podcast, I'd really appreciate it. You can do that on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, wherever you listen to your podcast. If you're watching along on YouTube, hit subscribe. Also, you can ring the bell and you can get notified of any new videos when they're uploaded. Please, join me again soon for another episode of Justice Matters. I'm your host, Tim Buxton. Thank you for listening.

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