Refugees & migrants

The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network released the statement below on March 7. * * * The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) has been informed by asylum seekers inside the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) that two Iranian asylum seekers attempted suicide this morning.

More than 50 people rallied outside the Perth headquarters of British multinational corporation Serco on March 9 to protest against the company's ongoing push to privatise and take over public services. Serco runs Australia’s immigration detention centres and is responsible for implementing the oppressive government policy of mandatory detention.

The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on March 8. * * * DASSAN has been informed by asylum seekers inside the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) that a hunger strike commenced today in the centre. A number of asylum seekers commenced the hunger strike this afternoon in the North 1 compound. They are protesting at the amount of time spent in detention and the levels of self harm they are witnessing inside NIDC.

The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on March 8. * * * Tamil refugees from the boat stranded in 2009 in Merak, Indonesia, after being stopped at the request of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have been told that 24 of their number have been accepted to be resettled in Australia. The announcement came only a couple of hours after a demonstration of about 80 of the 134 recognised refugees at the Medan United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices in protest at the long delays in their resettlement.

Infectious Diseases Physician Trent Yarwood released the open letter below to Coalition immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison on February 28. * * * Dear Mr Morrison, I am writing to you regarding your press release dated February 27, 2012, entitled “Typhoid cases on latest boats highlight the risk of Labor’s border failures”.

Immigration minister Chris Bowen has decided to close the Pontville refugee detention centre in Tasmania by March 1. The move is in keeping with the government’s original plan to operate the centre for only six months. Last month, about 150 asylum seekers held in Pontville started a hunger strike to demand they be released into the community. At least three were hospitalised. On February 16, Unions Tasmania secretary Kevin Harkins released a statement calling on Tasmanian’s to rally on February 25 to keep the detention centre open.

The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on February 23. * * * The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network has been informed that an Iranian man attempted suicide today at the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC). The man has been detained in the infamous North 2 punishment compound for two weeks. After self-harming during the day, the man climbed onto the roof of North 2, made a noose out of a sheet, and was stopped just before jumping from the roof.

On an oppressively hot Sunday afternoon on February 19, I visited the Villawood detention centre in Sydney’s west, a suburban prison for up to 400 refugees and asylum seekers. At the centre, in the same compound as the maximum-security “Blaxland centre” that holds male refugees, is the Sydney Immigration Residential Housing facility. Six children live with their refugee families in a small row of simple single-storey homes, replete with CCTV, ever-present guards and a spiked fence.

There is a big story the media is missing and it must only be matter of time before a Murdoch tabloid splashes it on its front page. ABC News reported on February 19 that three queue-jumping boat people had escaped from a camp in Darwin. But the left-wing Bolshevik Gillard- and/or- Rudd-loving national broadcaster is hiding the true story!

The federal immigration department has drawn sharp criticism from refugee advocacy groups and Amnesty International for denying that refugee children continue to be held in detention. After Perth refugee activists visited the remote Leonora detention centre and reports emerged that children had been locked up for more than 12 months, the immigration department’s media manager, Sandi Logan, said on Twitter: “Misinformation about kids in detention centres is unhelpful, disingenuous. “As you know, kids are NOT detained in centres.”

Just three chance encounters have led to a Sierra Leonean family’s reunion in Australia. With a bit more luck the whole family will be reunited this year. On January 6, 1999, Mary Fonah was a nurse working at a government hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Her husband, a doctor, phoned to say the rebels had reached Freetown. He would shortly collect Mary from the hospital after picking up their children.

About 150 people attended a February 13 forum “Smuggled to Freedom” to hear SBS sports commentator Les Murray tell his family’s story of trying to escape political persecution in Hungary in 1956. He recently returned to find “Julius”, the so-called people smuggler who helped them cross the border to Austria. He said Julius was an unrecognised hero who helped countless families, despite the risk of the death penalty. “We demonise people who don’t deserve it,” Murray said. “My smuggler was no demon.”