Refugees & migrants

Year in the Rear: 2011 Wednesday, November 30, 8pm York Theatre, Seymour Centre $48.60. Funds go to Asylum Seekers Centre of NSW Bookings: (02) 9351 7940 www.seymourcentre.com This has been an extraordinary year. Our best ever bowler, Warnie, morphed into an Austin Powers leading lady, the British royal family dominated the media in a non-scandalous event, the Aussie dollar wowed Wall Street and our prime minster received a poodle for her 50th birthday.

Security guards at the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) locked a man suffering from an electric shock in a room until he collapsed on November 15. The incident happened less than a week after the contract with the private firm that runs the centre was made public and revealed guards could be hired with no formal qualifications.

The Australian government is moving to deport a 27 year-old Afghan asylum seeker, Ismail Mirza Jan, from Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in western Sydney to Kabul, Afghanistan. Mirza Jan is an ethnic Hazara who fled Afghanistan after his father was killed by the Taliban for his imputed association with the political group Hezbe-e-Wahdat. At his mother’s urging, he was assisted by people smugglers to escape Afghanistan and has spent the last 11 years trying to seek safety from any country that will provide him protection and a chance at life.

The Monash Refugee Action Collective released the statement below on November 14. * * * Three student activists at Monash University are facing a disciplinary hearing for speaking out against mandatory detention.

Open Letter from three prolonged Burmese detainees in Australian detention call for humanitarian intervention Call for humanitarian intervention We are recognised refugees of Burma. Our ethnic minority is unknown to the world, yet is one of the most oppressed minority group in Burma, the sole ethnic who has been declined any rights for an identity. We are de-facto stateless. Remember our race: we are Rohingyas.

The government has undermined the right to a fair trial of up to 350 mostly Indonesian people now facing charges of “people smuggling” in Australian courts. It has done so by introducing hastily drafted, retrospective amendments to the Migration Act. The People Smuggling Deterrence Bill 2011 was passed in the lower house November 1, supported by Labor and the Coalition. If carried by the Senate, it will amend the migration act to make it an offence to bring a person to Australia with “no valid visa”. Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MP Rob Oakeshott spoke against the bill.

An eight-day protest on the rooftop at the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) in Darwin ended shortly before five refugees “locked themselves in a room … where one man took an overdose of sleeping pills while the other four began cutting themselves,” the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) said on November 2. Serco guards broke down the door and one man was taken to hospital. Two other refugees later tried to hang themselves.

Another horrific tragedy has struck a group of refugees taking the final-resort option of boarding an unseaworthy boat to try to reach Australia in search of asylum.

The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on October 31. * * *

A powerful art exhibition took place in Brisbane over October 15-23, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the SIEV-X tragedy on October 19, 2001, in which 353 asylum seekers, including 146 children, drowned when their fishing boat sank between Indonesia and Australia. The exhibition featured the works of Melbourne-based artist Kate Durham, under the title, "SIEV-X — and some were saved". It included a supporting exhibition of paintings by artists from refugee communities who came to Australia by boat, titled “Floating”.

In the wake of acts of self-harm and protests by detained refugees, people in Darwin gathered to show their support for a more humane refugee solution. Twenty people rallied outside the offices of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) on October 26 to call for and end to mandatory detention and oppose the proposed new detention centre at Wickham Point.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on October 26 to discuss allegations of human rights abuses. The meeting took place just hours after a young Tamil refugee killed himself inside Sydney’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre.