The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on October 25.
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The Darwin Asylum Seekers Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on October 25.
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The Darwin Asylum Seekers Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on October 23..
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The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on October 23.
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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. -
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. -
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. -
“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.