OPINION 

When I heard about this story I couldn't believe my ears. Does this sort of thing happen in Australia?

I'm sure most of us have no real issues with the DIBP reserving the right to cancel somebody's visa, but to place them in the back of a security van without telling where they are going and then lock them in a detention centre for days, my god, is our island secretly run by North Korea?

There can be neither excuses, nor justifications to detain people for days simply because the DIBP believe they are not a genuine tourist.

Perhaps if an individual had an existing arrest warrant or perhaps they were on a terrorist watch list, maybe, but this example of how Sumin was treated is a disgrace to any sophisticated democratic society.

In this case Sumin was more than happy to pay and book her flight out the same morning her visa was cancelled. Visa cancelled at 3am, next flight out to Korea would have been about 9am. So why was it necessary to throw her in a van in middle of the night and lock her up for 3 days?

Remember this was a law abiding person who obviously just by looking at her would be no threat to anyone. She had abided for years with the laws of Australia and had a good history of meeting the conditions of her previous visas. She had also spent tens of thousands of dollars into Australian education institutions. 

No doubt the DIBP will justify this by saying she had a boyfriend here. Our response would be, so what? Is that some sort of new criminal code we should be made aware of?

Clearly the DIBP is out of control and have no accountability on how they treat foreign nationals. The amount of power they have appears to have gone to their heads where ordinary law abiding people can be treated like criminals at the drop of a hat.

Of course we also have to wonder how much Sumin's transportation and luxury stay at the Hotel Villawood for three nights would have cost the Australian taxpayer.  

Perhaps they need to keep up a high-level occupancy rate so they can keep their government cash payments rolling in.

We placed a request for the DIBP to provide us with a cost analysis of Sumin's detention but of course, as expected, they failed to answer. 

In any case there can be no justification for not allowing Sumin to catch the next available flight out of Australia.  

I'm sure given the alternative of visiting Villawood for three days she would have been more then happy to sit on a chair in the transit area of Sydney airport and chat to her boyfriend for company whilst she waited for the morning flight out.

All Australian citizens should feel ashamed in how we treat foreign visitors who arrive here with the best intentions. It maybe they have misunderstood what it means to be a tourist but that does not justify to lock someone up.

Forceful detention should always be used as a last resort only. It psychotically harms those who have to experience such treatment and it costs the Australian taxpayer huge amounts of money which could be better spent elsewhere.

Why not give Sumin just a 3-day transit visa so she could have time to say goodbye to her boyfriend and arrange her own flight out?

Did the DIBP really expect that she was some threat to the community?  

Did they think she would jeopardise her visa history by becoming an over stayer?

Clearly the DIBP needs to revisit their strategy on how they treat and manage people.

Karl Konrad 

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15.12.2013