When it comes to the business of politicising the right to asylum, no country jettisons the key principles of international law better than Australia, argues Binoy Kampmark.
mandatory detention
Boat turn-backs don’t save lives at sea. The real meaning of this barbaric practice has always been “Fuck off and die somewhere else”, argues Sam Wainwright.
The Tamil Refugee Council held a speak-out to mark Tamil Genocide Day before a refugee rights rally on the UN declared day for the elimination of racial discrimination. Pip Hinman reports.
Devron Brock is one of many people who never planned on becoming an activist, but the ongoing bipartisan cruelty to refugees has turned her into one.
For the world's most persecuted people, the prospect of a return to 'normal' after the pandemic does not look very bright, writes Joanna Psaros.
Labor needs to break the bipartisan consensus and end its support for mandatory detention and boat turn-backs, argues Alex Bainbridge.
The Aviation Tourism package comes with no obligations to protect jobs. Jim McIlroy argues it is another handout to big business.
Frederika Steen, Ian Rintoul and Alex Bainbridge speak about the latest developments following the release of twenty-five refugees from Kangaroo Point and Brisbane Immigration Transit Acommodation..
Chloe DS reports that refugees were forcibly transferred under excessive police presence from the Mantra hotel in Melbourne's north to a former COVID-19 hotspot in the CBD.
How did Australia go from a place where its migrant hostels fostered some of the world’s most famous bands to one where the detentions centres it presides over are described as “hell on Earth”? Zebedee Parkes takes a look at the history of mandatory detention and the struggle against it.
A desperate rooftop protest by an Iranian refugee being held on Christmas Island was restarted on June 11 after being subjected to further inhumanity.
Ghazi (not his real name), and another refugee took to the roof of the detention centre in late May to protest the conditions and the lack of access to medical care. According to the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) both men had been in detention for over 3 years and were apparently taken to court and charged over an alleged incident prior to the May protest.
While the architect of Australia’s detention system Liberal Senator Jim Molan was rehearsing his lines to promote this cruel system on ABC’s Q&A, a woman was arrested for the crime of standing outside and peacefully holding a banner reading “Close the Camps, Bring Them Here”.
The Manus Island tragedy is the latest in a series of systemic human rights abuses by successive Australian governments in recent decades.
But there is another story: one of courageous resistance in some of the most hostile situations imaginable — a resistance led by several hundred people on Manus Island who are still protesting, still demanding “freedom, nothing less than freedom”.
Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time
Written & directed by Arash Kamali Sarvestani & Behrouz Boochani
Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time is a ground-breaking film that gives audiences a new window to look into Manus Island detention centre.
Australia’s refugee policy over the past 25 years has resulted in a detention process best described as “Hell on Earth”.
Mandatory detention was first introduced in May 1992 by the Labor government with the support of the opposition and has been marked with increasing human rights abuses including deliberate medical negligence, sexual assault by guards, self-immolation and murder.
It suffocates people’s hope, as many people have been in detention for more than four years with no certainty of ever being released.
This year marks 25 years of resistance to the escalating human rights abuses of Australia’s mandatory detention laws. A whole generation has now lived under this policy and are constantly exploring new and inspiring ways of rejecting it.
One area that has not been explored, at least in recent years, and that offers a lot of potential is campaigning for university campuses to become organising spaces, welcome zones and sanctuaries.
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