The death of a refugee at Villawood Detention Centre is the latest indictment of the bipartsian cruelty towards refugees in Australia. Pip Hinman reports.
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC)
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is facing the terrible prospect of having to close its doors in six weeks due to funding shortages caused by cost-of-living pressures impacting on donors. Sue Bolton reports.
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) is holding a Telethon on World Refugee Day, June 20, to give people from around the nation is a chance to champion a more compassionate Australia, while supporting and empowering refugees and people seeking asylum.
Now in its third year, the ASRC Telethon is hoping to exceed last year’s total of $660,000, double the amount raised in the first year of the event. This enabled the ASRC to provide food, housing, medical care, employment support, legal aid and advocacy to almost 5000 people.
Iranian-Kurdish journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani has been detained on Manus Island for almost five years. The theme of home in the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s campaign to Change the Policy was inspired by Behrouz, whose vision of home is “humanity”.
More than 200 people participated in a rally and march for refugee rights on September 2. A similar rally was also held in Sydney.
The demonstration was organised at short notice by the Refugee Action Collective in response to the federal government's decision to end the $100 a week income support for people who were brought to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru for medical treatment and evict them from the houses they are living in. This will initially affect 100 people, but may eventually affect many more.
Federal immigration minister Peter Dutton has come up with a new act of cruelty against asylum seekers: he is trying to force people now in Australia back to danger in Nauru and Manus Island.
Dutton has invented a new class of visa — the final departure bridging E-visa — which cuts income support from asylum seekers already living in the community. They have been given six months to arrange to either go back to their home countries or be sent back to offshore detention.
“Australia's probably never had a PM this bad,” Wil Wagner, frontman of Melbourne's Smith Street Band, told Faster Louder on January 13.
Wagner was explaining his band's latest single, succinctly titled “Wipe That Shit-Eating Grin Off Your Punchable Face” and released with artwork featuring the prime minister looking extra punchable with an especially shit-eating grin.
