How are Australia's refugee policies "torture"?

Submission 95 to the parliamentary Select Committee on the Recent Allegations relating to Conditions and Circumstances at the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru contains a description of what is evidently torture carried out in Australian run detention centres.
The submission details waterboarding, a practice that is now almost universally condemned but which was regularly employed in places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and by groups such as ISIS.
There is also the description of a practice called "zipping," which involves using cable ties to secure an asylum seeker to a bed frames. The bed frame is then thrown into the air and allowed to crash onto the floor, thereby inflicting injury.
Dr Peter Young, the former mental health medical director of International Health and Medical Services, described the treatment of asylum seekers as torture, stating:
"If we take the definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that definition."
The United Nations special rapporteur on torture has, moreover, found Australia to be in breach of the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Despite more than a decade of anguished accounts of the conditions in which asylum seekers are detained, have we lost sight of the fact that they are human beings, that they are vulnerable persons that have escaped persecution and have been found overwhelmingly to be "genuine" refugees?
Their vulnerable humanity is easily forgotten and the dehumanising practices of torture and indefinite incarceration are allowed to proliferate when we fail to ensure that there is transparency in places of detention. This is hardly surprising. After all, should we imagine that Australians are somehow different to the rest of humanity in this regard?
Healthcare workers, teachers and humanitarian workers have thus been forced to become whistleblowers despite significant deterrents to them doing so. These include a perceived risk to one's professional standing, as well as loss of employment and hence the ability to support oneself and dependants. There is also the backlash that some have faced from powerful persons in public office - including the former Prime Minister. And then there are the difficulties negotiating confidentiality, especially for health care workers.
It is into this context that the Border Force Act (2015) was introduced, and with it came another deterrent: the threat of imprisonment for whistleblowers. It was because of this and the government's inability to provide assurances that those wishing to speak up about their concerns would not be prosecuted, that the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants postponed his visit.
There is good reason to be deeply concerned by the sheer disparity that exists between the multiple corroborated accounts from professionals and evidence heard by official inquiries (such as the National Inquiry into Children in Detention, the Moss report and the current senate inquiry), on the one hand, and the statements from government , on the other. Such a disparity cannot help but muddy the waters of popular opinion.
Thankfully, there is a degree of moral clarity coming from health care professionals, who are pushing back against the inhumane treatment of people caught in the immigration detention system. Many healthcare workers are aligned - if somewhat intuitively- with the Declaration of Tokyo, which states:
"The physician shall not countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures."
This is the motivation that fuels the advocacy from the health sector. The open letter on the Border Force Act, which over 40 "entrusted" persons signed, stated:
"We have advocated, and will continue to advocate, for the health of those for whom we have a duty of care, despite the threats of imprisonment, because standing by and watching sub-standard and harmful care, child abuse and gross violations of human rights is not ethically justifiable."
In addition, the recent actions of the doctors at the Royal Children's Hospital (Melbourne) and the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital (Brisbane), who are refusing to release their patients back to immigration detention due to the harm they will suffer in that environment, show commitment.
While these acts are highly laudable, we would go further and suggest the following solution to guarantee transparency and accountability. In 2009 Australia signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT). This United Nations treaty is designed to ensure transparency in places of detention. Australia has signed up to this through the joint standing committee on treaties, which, at least in theory, ensures bipartisan support.
Ratifying the OPCAT would guarantee adequate oversight of all places of detention within Australia through the establishment of a national preventive mechanism. This means domestic and international monitoring. The effect of being accountable should act to deter human right abuses and provide a means to rectify those that have taken place. This system has been implemented in 78 countries already, including the UK and New Zealand.
By contrast, the Australian Labor Party proposes that a "refugee advocate" be introduced to attend to oversight of asylum seeker detention. But there is no shortage of refugee advocacy. This sort of toothless advisory role has been tried in the past in forms such as the Independent Health Advisory Group. Such approaches fail due to the problem of transparency and thus accountability, and the problem of "dual loyalty" through which advisors are working at the behest of the very government that is violating the rights of those seeking asylum.
Australia needs to ratify the OPCAT. There is already considerable support for it. This was demonstrated by 64 organisations writing to the Attorney-General asking for ratification, including Amnesty International, Oxfam and multiple human rights law centres. Just this month, Australia's peak health bodies released a statement calling for Australia to ratify the OPCAT.
Significant work has been completed on the requirements for implementation. Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory have released draft bills. The Australian Human Rights Commission has also provided extensive analysis.
We should no longer hide our sordid behaviour in the shadows, or turn a blind eye. The evidence of our abuse will be there for future generations see and by which to judge us; it will have festered because of the time taken to address it. This is analogous to failings we have seen in the past, such as institutionalised child sex abuse and the treatment of the stolen generations.
We hide from the light at our peril. We are reminded of what the Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer said: "Do not be a victim; do not be a perpetrator; and above all, do not be a bystander."

Dr John-Paul Sanggaran is a former International Health and Medical Servicers medical officer who worked on Christmas Island in 2013. He has since become a whistleblower on the state of medical care and human rights in detention. This includes appearing at the National Inquiry into Children in Detention and organising an open letter on the Border Force Act, and the joint statement calling for Australia's ratification of the OPCAT.
Associate Professor Deborah Zion has spent 11 years researching the ethics of healthcare provision for asylum seekers. She is currently the Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee at Victoria University. She has taught medical ethics for many years, and currently teaches medical students at Deakin University.