CANBERRA, Feb 23 (IPS) - Following requests from Aboriginal community representatives and human rights groups, the UN Commissioner on Human Rights, Mary Robinson, will prepare a report on whether mandatory sentencing laws in two Australian states breach the international convention on the rights of children.
On his visit this week to Australia, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan agreed to requests by Aboriginal and human rights groups that the mandatory sentencing laws be investigated but refused to make any public comments on the laws.
Controversy over the laws erupted after the suicide on Feb 9 of a 15-year-old Aboriginal boy, ''Johnno'', in a Northern Territory detention centre after he had been sentenced to 28 days detention for stealing property worth less than 100 dollars.
After being sentenced to detention, ''Johnno'' was transported 800 kilometres to a special youth detention facility, then committed suicide just days before he was due to be released.
The controversy escalated days later when a 20-year-old Aboriginal man was found guilty of stealing a box of biscuits and a drink worth 23 dollars on Christmas Day 1998 and sentenced to 12 months in gaol.
In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody released the results of a four-year study of 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody, the numbers and circumstances of which had elicited concern.
The Royal Commission made a series of recommendations aimed at reducing the number of Aboriginal people in detention. But these measures, especially those targetted toward youths, have been ignored.
Since the release of the report, another 147 indigenous people have died in prisons. According to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are still 14 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous Australians.
Gatjil Djerrkura, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) elected member for the Groote Eylandt area, where the boy was from, said there were other more productive ways of justice in the case of ''Johnno''.
''He was locked up for a very trivial offence. If it were not for mandatory sentencing, he may well still be alive today. Further, the community and family could have undertaken appropriate action under customary law,'' Djerrkura said.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), a government agency responsible for providing independent advice on human rights, has repeatedly called for the repeal of the mandatory sentencing laws which, they argue, increases the imprisonment of Aboriginal people.
Already, social justice commissioner Dr Bill Jonas says, indigenous people are vastly over-represented in the juvenile and criminal justice system.
In the Northern Territory, 73 percent of the prison population is indigenous although Aboriginal people account for only 23 percent of the population.
''The reasons are clear cut and widely accepted. Indigenous people continue to suffer economic disadvantage, social disruption and systemic discrimination,'' Dr Jonas said.
At the centre of the controversy are Northern Territory laws, which require adults convicted of a property offence to be sentenced to a mandatory sentence of two weeks.
Those under the age of 17, such as ''Johnno'', who are convicted of a second property offence, face a mandatory sentence of 28 days. In Western Australia, ''three strikes and you're in'' laws provide that anyone convicted of burglary for a third time faces a minimum of 12 months in custody.
Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown has denounced the mandatory sentencing laws as ''racist'' and points to the fact that Aboriginal youths account for three-quarters of those convicted.
''They are racist laws. They do not apply to white collar crime, which is almost never committed by indigenous Australians. The laws neither reduce crime nor reform young offenders,'' Brown said.
Northern Territory parliamentarian and Aboriginal leader, John Ah Kit, added: ''The mandatory sentencing laws are unjust and discriminatory laws. They do not serve any useful social purpose. They do not deter crime. They target minor offences and not major ones -- they contravene Australian National Human Rights' obligations. They should be repealed immediately.''
The controversy over the laws has opened up deep splits within the Australian government. A member of the government's backbench, Danna Vale, says that there are many in the government ranks that share her view that the laws are unjust. ''Why do we have judges if we don't want them to exercise any discretion?'' she said.
But the Northern Territory's chief minister and attorney- general, Denis Burke, adamantly defends the laws.
''The general community believes that they've had enough of their homes broken into and certainly if criminals are caught on property offences, there's a time when they have to go into gaol,'' he said.
Brown last year introduced a private members' bill to override the mandatory sentencing laws for juveniles in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The committee investigating Brown's bill is due to report on Mar 9.
For the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Jonas, deaths in custody are the inevitable result of the mandatory sentencing laws. ''As long as this country continues to lock up Aboriginal children for trivial offences, you can be sure we will have blood on our hands,'' he said.
Added Jonas: ''I am angry and sad for a 15-year-old boy and this nation.'' (END/IPS/ap-ip-hd/bb/js/00)