The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on February 16.
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A Tamil asylum seeker has been taken to hospital after attempting suicide by hanging in the early of hours of this morning, at the Darwin Airport Lodge detention facility.
Around 12.30am, the man, who has been in detention for 27 months, was found by fellow asylum seekers hanging by a bed-sheet noose in a secluded part of the facility.
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When we again protest this Easter, it will mark 10 years since the refugee rights movement’s first Easter convergence — Woomera 2002 — when busloads of protesters from across the country met magnificent protests by detainees, many of who leapt through the fence and literally into the arms of the movement. -
The statement below was released by the Refugee Action Collective Victoria on February 14. *** As tensions once again rise at MITA (Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation) in Broadmeadows, an Iranian man, aged 28, stitched his lips up this morning (Monday) as a sign of desperation. He has been detained for 11 months. -
The Australian government is pushing to deport the first Afghan asylum seeker since it signed a deal with the Afghanistan government in January last year to allow Afghan asylum seekers to be returned against their will. But a February 7 report by Fairfax journalist Rory Callinan revealed that a flagship $8 million resettlement project for deported asylum seekers — funded by Australia in a province outside Kabul — had fallen into chaotic disrepair. -
The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network released the statement below on January 27. *** The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) yesterday referred the names of 27 Vietnamese unaccompanied minors who are being detained at the Darwin Airport Lodge (DAL) to the Northern Territory Child Protection Services. Northern Territory law obliges people to alert the child protection services if they believe that a child has or is likely to suffer harm or exploitation. Harm is defined in the relevant legislation to include psychological or emotional harm. -
More than 500 people attended a dinner of the Australian Tamil Congress (ATC) on February 4. The ATC, formed in 2009, campaigns for the rights of Tamil people in Sri Lanka, who have been subject to discrimination, oppression and massacres at the hands of successive racist Sri Lankan governments since the independence of Sri Lanka in 1948. -
Activists from Western Australia’s Refugee Rights Action Network traveled more than 800 kilometres from Perth to the remote Leonora detention centre over January 27-29. The journey sought to draw attention to the 160 unaccompanied minors locked up in the detention centre. Immigration minister Chris Bowen had previously promised that all children would be moved out of detention centres by June last year. -
Refugee rights activists scaled the fence of the Leonora detention centre on the night of January 28 to communicate with refugees inside and protest against the mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
The activists chanted for the freedom of refugees and threw tennis balls over the fence.
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The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on January 30. *** Serco’s application in current court proceedings for a Suppression Order preventing the publication of its Use of Force Manual is scandalous, says Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) spokesperson Fernanda Dahlstrom. The document sets out how much force Serco staff can use against those detained in the nations privatised immigration detention centres, the circumstances that Serco staff can use force and when the use of force is unlawful.
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In Hobart’s Pontville detention centre, 35 Afghan refugees had been on hunger strike for a week, putting three of them in hospital, when they were joined by more than 100 others. It meant almost half the centre’s detainees were refusing food by January 24. The actions were in protest against the government’s failure to deliver its promise to release more refugees from detention to live in the community on bridging visas while their claims are assessed. -
Socialist Alliance and Refugee Rights Action Network member Alex Bainbridge posted this report from Leonora in remote central Western Australia on January 28. Photos and video by Zebedee Parkes.
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Historically, racism has given rise to the belief that different human populations possess different capacities, some superior and some inferior, based on aspects such as cultural traits and genetic makeup. At its crudest, racist views often hold that genetic makeup can imply specific traits and characteristics, and has been used as a tool to separate people in our society. This kind of view became widespread across the world, justifying crimes such as the mass enslavement of Africans, the genocide committed by the Nazis, and the “white Australia” policy, initiated in 1901.