When Kuwaiti-born Palestinian refugee Aladdin Sisalem arrived in Melbourne on May 31, 2004, greeted by the glare of television cameras and the welcome of supporters, his emotions were tinged with a sense of triumph and relief.
Sarah Stephen
Since the end of July, 24-year-old Palestinian asylum seeker Aladdin Sisalem has been the only prisoner in the Australian government's Lombrum detention centre on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea. He has very little human contact,
The Australian-funded detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island first opened on October 21, 2001. The first group of Iraqi asylum seekers to arrive there were dismayed to find they had been tricked into thinking they were being taken to Australia.
A surprise tax cut in this year's federal budget, released on May 13, saw the corporate media happily seize on one of the least significant elements of the Howard government's eighth budget. The question the media should have been
Fatima is a widow and grandmother who has been in Australia for 10 years, living with her family who are financially supporting her. She has no remaining close family in East Timor and has grown very close to her grandchildren here.
In early February there was a flurry of media coverage about 25-year-old Palestinian Aladdin Sisalem — the lone asylum seeker detained in the Australian-financed Manus Island detention centre. It was revealed by the February 11