Pip Hinman

The last time I was prevented from attending a political meeting was in Indonesia last June. The paramilitary police, together with their right-wing militia friends, shut down the Jakarta Asia Pacific People's Solidarity Conference

Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific, Thang Ngo, Socialist Alliance (Parramatta), Newcastle Action for Refugee Rights, Refugee Action Collective (Melbourne central), Australia West Papua Association, Progressive Young Hazaras, PIP HINMAN">

The brave hunger strikers in Woomera and other immigration detention centres have sparked broad and growing opposition to the federal government's anti-refugee policies. Three months after a federal election campaign, in which the

SYDNEY — On the eve of immigration minister Philip Ruddock's departure for Geneva to attend a landmark ministerial meeting, beginning on December 12, of signatory states to the 1951 refugee convention, refugee rights activists have

SYDNEY — The Australian Press Council on November 30 denounced the federal government's restrictions on media access to asylum seekers. Council chairperson Professor Ken McKinnon accused the government of "severely restricting the

SYDNEY — The November 10 assassination in Jayapura of West Papuan leader Theys Eluay drew condemnation from a wide range of public figures at a press conference in the NSW Parliament House here on November 15. Otto Ondawame, a

The September 11 terrorist attacks have given the capitalist rulers of the US and other imperialist powers an opening to win initial support from big sections of the working class for a war to crush all those in the Third World who

As the bombing of Afghanistan continues and ground troops move in, many more are increasingly horrified at Bush and Howard's so-called "war on terrorism". Why is Australia going to war against one of the poorest countries in the

It doesn't come as much surprise that PM John Howard has been so quick to visit Jakarta. Barely a day after the new Indonesian cabinet was announced, Howard was on his way to make a deal with the Sukarnoputri-military government. In

With Megawati Sukarnoputri freshly installed as president, and the country's armed forces, the TNI, in the ascendancy, the US government is moving swiftly to strengthen military ties with Indonesia. US defence secretary Donald

At 4am on July 22, a tent occupied by hunger strikers in the Sumatran town of Lampung was doused with petrol and set alight by thugs, suspected to be military personnel in plain clothes. Two of the hunger strikers — GPK (Popular

The federal government is secretly trying to return to the widely discredited "special relationship" with the Indonesian government, developed by both Labor and Liberal parties during the 32-year reign of Suharto. And it is doing it