Report…
Australia’s war against organised crime has hotted up. The arrest of accused drug lord Tse Chi Lop and allegations of large-scale money laundering in Australian casinos have exposed to the public the deep economic connections transnational and organised crime syndicates have established here, and the scale of the threat we face.
The extent of these connections adds urgency to the recent call by the human rights subcommittee of the parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade for Australia to adopt Magnitsky-style legislation.
The US Magnitsky Act began as an effort to hold officials of foreign countries accountable for human rights abuses. The legislation, which applies globally, gives the US government the legal means to the freeze assets of and ban US entry to those it lists for involvement in human rights abuses. Canada and the UK have introduced similar legislation.
The US, Canada and Britain have sanctioned very few people and organisations. Instead, they have reserved Magnitsky powers to assert fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law, such as objections to ethnic genocide, murdering journalists, mass murder and forced labour in prison camps.
Last year, the human rights subcommittee recommended that law enforcement agencies be given similar powers, to boost Australian and international efforts to counter corruption and human rights abuses globally. Though sanctionable actions should indeed be defined broadly, as the report recommends, Magnitsky legislation should be used as a targeted law-enforcement tool to curb the financing, production and importation of narcotics as part of Australia’s regional policing efforts.
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Source: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-needs-a-magnitsky-act/
