GREEN LEFT WEEKLY EDITORIAL
The apparent shooting down of Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH17 is an unspeakable tragedy and a criminal act that has sent shock waves around the world. Green Left Weekly offers our condolences to the families of all its victims.
Nobody yet knows who was responsible for this crime, despite Western media and governments pointing the finger at either the rebel forces in Ukraine's east, which the West accuses Russia of arming, or the Russian military itself.
Australia
Letters to the editor
Jock Palfreeman has a heart as big as Phar Lap. After seven years in a Sofia prison in the dysfunctional Bulgarian state on a trumped-up charge of murder, you might reasonably expect that he would be somewhat depressed and introspective.
All avenues of appeal have been exhausted and in a recent interview he said that he was resigned to serving the full 20-year sentence that he so unjustly received. The most recent reports are that he was again assaulted by prison guards last week.
About 1000 people rallied in Melbourne on July 12 to protest against Israel's attack on Gaza. Samah Sabawi, a playwright, poet, political analyst and human rights advocate originally from Gaza, gave the speech below to the rally.
A front page article in the Australian on July 11 reported claims that “asylum-seekers are coached and encouraged to attempt self-harm by refugee advocates who then use the incidents as political capital”.
The allegations were made by former director of offshore processing Greg Lake, who said when he worked at what is now the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, “some refugee advocates were clearly urging asylum-seekers to self-harm as a form of protest so they could put out a press release about it”.
Students of Sustainability (SOS) is an annual conference dedicated to environmental activism.
About 400 students travelled to the Australian National University in Canberra for this year’s event over June 30 to July 5. The event was organised by the Australian Student Environmental Network (ASEN).
The conference had guest speakers from environment and labour movements, international guests, and academics and activists from around Australia.
Victorian planning minister Matthew Guy approved stage one of the East West Link toll road on June 30, ignoring key recommendations from the planning panel to reduce impacts from the project.
Guy said he had granted relevant approvals for the project on the condition that the Linking Melbourne Authority redesign parts of the project.
It is depressing but it is true. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is deliberately stoking racism and nationalism in a bid to reverse his collapse of public support, as shown by the polls.
Why else would he have made a speech that revived the legal fiction of terra nullius that was officially killed by the High Court in its historic 1996 Mabo decision?
Why else would he have chosen to declare, just before NAIDOC week that the British colonial invasion of this continent was a great act of “British foreign investment” that Australians today should be grateful for?
The Australian government says there is no need for people to flee Sri Lanka because it is a democratic country. It also claims that, following the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May 2009, Sri Lanka is a “society at peace”.
But the end of the war does not mean the country is at peace. It just means that the violence is now one-sided. The Sri Lankan army still commits acts of violence against the Tamil people, but the Tamils can no longer fight back.
Women’s crisis shelters in New South Wales are in a state of upheaval. There are concerns that critical services are about to be shut down.
In inner-Sydney there will be no women’s only, specialist refuges operating in the near future. The New South Wales government’s “Going Home Staying Home” reform plan will force at least in metropolitan Sydney 20 specialist women’s shelters to close so that more services in regional areas across the state can be opened.
The Refugee Action Coalition released this statement on July 8.
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Up to 10 mothers in the family camp have attempted suicide in the last two days on Christmas Island — some by hanging, some by drinking concoctions of liquids.
Scores of police and Serco officers have been stationed inside the family camp — almost one to a room — to try to maintain calm and prevent more suicide attempts.
One 25 year-old woman remains in the medical centre, with at least one deep cut requiring 16 stitches, after throwing herself from a container two days ago.
The “incommunicado detention without judicial scrutiny” of 153 Tamil asylum seekers has turned the world's eyes on Australia's refugee policy and brought many questions into the spotlight.
The first question was raised by 53 international law scholars from 17 Australian universities, who released a statement after the government revealed it had handed over 41 passengers of an asylum boat to the Sri Lankan navy.
If there is one thing Prime Minister Tony Abbott will not stand for, it is attempts by the powerful to bully the weak.
Reports recently emerged that 10 mothers jailed indefinitely in the Christmas Island detention centre had attempted to take their own lives. With sick children, the women apparently believed the children might have greater chance of better treatment if they were unaccompanied.
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