Caution Over Foreign Sex Offenders
Foreign convicted sex felons entering the country will be included in the sex offenders register once the Bill becomes law. Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) research officer Artika Singh yesterday posed the question to the parliamentary Standing Committee on Justice, Law and Human Rights as to how these foreigners would be monitored once they arrived in the country.
“We appreciate that the proposed Bill has a particular section whereby it says that foreigners who have been convicted of sexual offences who are entering our communities be entered in the register,” Ms Singh said. “Would they be monitored the same way in which the current residents are being monitored?” Ms Singh asked.
FWRM Director Nalini Singh said they had not seen any data regarding repeat offenders from overseas. “If that person is back as a moral citizen in their country and they are coming into ours for an offence committed 10 to 20 years ago, is that still applicable in ours?,” she said. “What is our process of checking with other countries to make sure that every declaration that a person signs in a legal document when they are coming through the immigration process is true. And, how do we check back to make sure that all our processes are linked and there is a system of checks.” She said without a proper system of checks there was no interest to serve the declaration of such information and this was a grey area which needed to be studied. FWRM expressed concern about juveniles who were found guilty of sexual offences.
“If the Bill is adopted as it is currently drafted, these juveniles would be branded as sex offenders for life and this would lead to difficulty in terms of leading a normal life and future prospects,” Ms Singh said.
The organisation was concerned with the contradiction the Bill would have with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, which sets out a rehabilitation period of 10 years after conviction.
“This would seem contrary to the aim of fully integrating offenders back into Fijian society. Current rehabilitation and treatment strategies however, need to be strengthened to focus primarily on victim accountability and the safety of others,” Ms Singh said.
• Attorney-General Aiyaz SayedKhaiyum had said when introducing the Bill in Parliament that to protect Fijian children from overseas-based paedophiles, the names of those paedophiles should be entered into the register. This, he said, would prevent a rise in sex tourism.