Same but different: Bali Nine and children in detention

Words are powerful tools. They frame and shape our meanings and they also leave a paper trail.

In the case of children in mandatory immigration detention, or any people in detention for that matter, words can abuse and perpetuate punishment.

After the release of the Human Rights Commission Report, Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, affirmed a journalist's question that he felt no guilt about ten year old children in detention who have depression and are on suicide watch.

"None, whatsoever."

Yet, the language used in the "Forgotten Children" report describes the plight of the around 800 children in detention on Nauru, Christmas Island, Manus Island, and on the mainland by pointing out "serious negative impacts" of detention with "higher rates of mental disorders" (than the Australian community).

Yet, Mr Abbott said the Human Rights Commission should be ashamed of itself for releasing the report because it was an attack on his government.

The reports said the children experience "assaults, sexual assaults and self-harm" as well as "extreme levels of physical, emotional, psychological and developmental distress". The words are chilling.

These are the words that should shape our understandings of the plight of children in detention and asylum seekers and motivate change. But they do not. Not yet.

The media plays a powerful, pivotal and educative role in informing and shaping our understanding of all issues, including human rights.

Lately, we have had ramped up news media coverage of the two Bali Nine drug smugglers who are on death row in Indonesia, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. They face imminent execution for their role in trying to smuggle heroin with seven other Australians out of Bali to Australia in 2005.

Myseven-year PhD research of Australian newspaper reports on Chan and Sukumaran, examined the language used in describing the men at their arrest, their court trials in Denpasar Bali in 2006, and beyond.

While not condoning their crime, nor denying their guilt, their treatment by the media serves to highlight the power of words and the damage done to human rights, whether it's the Bali Nine on death row or the children in detention.

The notable feature of this coverage was that it depicted them as guilty, even before judgement. In the early stages we also had the Denpasar District Court described as a "kangaroo court".

Chan was: "the Godfather", to which Chan replied when asked by other news media: "Do I look the Godfather?". Media also described his as "mastermind" and "kingpin". Sukumaran was "the enforcer" and "martial arts expert" (he had taken a three months course once).

It was correct reporting for the media to quote Indonesian police at their arrests who described them as "Godfather" and "enforcer". But for the media to then perpetuate theses labels throughout the men's court trials and beyond as if they were accurate labels, was not. At best it was misleading, at worst unjust.

The media had set itself up as "the hanging judge" from the outset.

Chan and Sukumaran consistently described as "ringleaders" when clearly they were part of a much larger drug dealing operation that was run by the real "ringleaders". The media hyper-inflated their role from the start of reporting.

It was only this year that The Sydney Morning Herald said the use of these terms may have damaged Chan and Sukumaran's chances of a reprieve.

My research showed the media's choice of negative words and descriptors in framing these men has been potent, resonant and consistent.

It also shows how labels misrepresent and distort.

Interestingly, the growing groundswell of support for the men to be spared has coincided with the Australian media dropping these old labels. Voices are raised in protest at their punishment.

Media language has changed to "young men" and "organisers of a drug operation". We see photographs of them and their families and "the pair" is now "the Australians", or ameliorated to "Bali duo". They are being described (at last) as what they are.

Pejorative, hackneyed language, or words that are just plain wrong, have been perpetuated in media descriptions of those who seek asylum and at times it is even insinuated with terrorism.

Asylum-seekers (and by implication their children in detention) have ranged across a variety of damaging or incorrect terms including "queue jumpers", "illegals"/"illegal immigrants", "boat people", "by-passers of proper processes" and "detainees".

Tony Abbott said in response to the recent Human Rights Commission report that: "the only way to ensure we have no children in detention is to stop the boats."

I would argue that the only way we will be able to have no children in detention is to change the language.

Once we humanize people seeking asylum by describing them accurately and normalising their human rights, they become one of us.

I argue that it all starts, quite simply, with the media's choice of words.