The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on October 23.
-
-
About 200 people attended a rally and march in Brisbane Square on October 15 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the sinking of the refugee boat SIEV-X, with the loss of 353 lives — 146 of whom where children. The then-Howard government and Australian navy knew of this disaster but allowed these asylum seekers, fleeing war and persecution, to die. Speakers at the rally included former Democrats Senator and now Greens member Andrew Bartlett, an Iraqi refugee now settled in this country, and human rights lawyer Julian Burnside. -
Petty politicking over whether refugees should be illegally deported to Malaysia or to Nauru forced the Australian government to abandon its policy of “offshore processing” of refugees on October 13. Since the “Tampa election” in 2001, competition between the two main parties over who can most mistreat the small number of refugees arriving in Australia by boat has been at the centre of Australian electoral politics. -
The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network released the statement below on October 9. * * * The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) has called on NT members of the federal government, member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon and Senator Trish Crossin, to vote against legislation to be introduced this week that would allow the offshore processing of asylum seekers. Snowdon was reported as strongly supporting the proposed amendments in caucus. -
Entering the darkened space of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation that held Vietnamese artist Dinh Q Le’s latest installation, Erasure, which finished on September 10, I imagined myself to be stepping into the psychological space of a disturbed memory. The brooding political and cultural climate surrounding the issue of refugees in Australia has involved politicians exploiting the sensitive subject in a game of political football. -
Hazara asylum seekers inside Darwin detention centre released the statement below to explain the aims of their recent protest. * * * We the Hazara Afghan asylum seekers held a peaceful protest in Darwin detention centre with number of 100 asylum seekers on September 24. We strongly condemn the act of target killings of Hazaras in Pakistan and Afghanistan and we pass our condolences to those grieved families. -
Australia, at least for me, is a paradox. As Dorothy McKellar famously wrote, “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges and droughts and flooding rains”. The extremes in our landscape and our weather seem to have been etched into our national psyche as well, which is something I’ve never quite understood. -
More than 29 Hazaras traveling on a bus near Quetta, Pakistan, were separated from other passengers and executed by Islamic fundamentalists on September 20. This was the third time Hazaras have been attacked in a month. After hearing the news, more than 400 Hazara asylum seekers in Curtin detention centre protested the killings near the centre’s administration building on September 21. The protest was to alert the immigration department of the situation Hazaras face in Pakistan. -
“Most countries don’t detain asylum seekers” or, if they are detained, they “are only detained until the UNHCR recognises them and then they are released,” Robyn Sampson, researcher with the International Detention Coalition told a public meeting on alternatives to detention of asylum seekers. -
A vote on the Labor government’s harsh proposed changes to Australia’s migration laws was postponed until October 11, after parliament failed to vote on them on September 22. This followed a bizarre twist in the farcical refugee debate on September 19 when new laws were passed increasing refugee protection at the same time as the government pushed forward with its plans to expel refugees to Malaysia. -
A group of refugee activists from the Refugee Advocacy Network and the Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) took on a very ambitious project a few years ago, which has culminated in the Just Like Us exhibition. The exhibition opened on August 26 — the 10th anniversary of the Tampa incident, when then-PM John Howard refused to allow the Norwegian ship Tampa to dock in Australia after it had rescued asylum seekers from a sinking boat. -
The statement below was released by the Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) on September 20. * * * Refugee activists oppose removing human rights from Migration Act; All MPs who support human rights should vote against Gillard’s amendments. The Refugee Action Collective opposes the proposed changes to the Migration Act by the Labor government and any amendments proposed by the Liberal opposition. It believes all amendments seek to strip any safeguards for human rights and defies international law.