The Refugee Action Coalition released this statement on January 13.
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It is feared that a 33-year-old Iranian asylum seeker on hunger strike may have only days to live.
Refugee activists have launched an appeal to Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton and Assistant Minister Michaelia Cash to urgently act to prevent his death.
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The planned forced deportation of Villawood detainee Wei Lin on December 19 was successfully stopped at Sydney apirport that day. A professional athlete in China, Wei Lin has already faced persecution and harassment in China after exposing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Chinese sport in the late 1990s. Wei Lin, accompanied by four Serco guards, was handcuffed and masked, and driven to the back of the airport and onto the Air China plane on the afternoon of December 19. -
Nicole Judge worked at refugee centres on Nauru and Manus Island and despite warnings from various bodies, stood before a packed crowd at a Refugee Action Coalition forum in Sydney on November 17 to give an account of her time there. When Judge first set foot on Manus Island she knew she was not getting what she had been promised. When she first signed up to work on Manus Island, she thought it would be a “working holiday”. She was looking for a break; what she found was despair, desperation and the deterioration of minds and bodies. -
As parliament wound up for the year, the Coalition government was desperate to salvage a symbolic “win” in the Senate to save some face. It was reeling from the defeat of the one-term Liberal government in Victoria, which was seen as a vote against Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the second most populous state in Australia. -
Sweeping changes to refugee law were passed through the Senate on December 5. These include the reintroduction of temporary protection visas (TPVs) that will grant refugees in Australia a visa for three years but does not allow them to apply for permanent protection. When it was elected in 2007, Labor dumped this unpopular policy of the former John Howard government. Immigration minister Scott Morrison has been working to reintroduce TPVs since the Coalition was elected last year, but it has been repeatedly blocked in the Senate. -
A Senate committee recommended on November 24 that immigration minister Scott Morrison’s sweeping migration amendments be passed by parliament. The Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014 would give Morrison unprecedented powers without the scrutiny of either parliament or the courts. -
The Tamil Refugee Council released this statement on November 29. *** The Australian government has almost certainly condemned another group of Sri Lankan asylum seekers to persecution, including torture, by returning them to their homeland, the Tamil Refugee Council said. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced on November 29 that a boat containing 38 people from Sri Lanka had been intercepted by an Australian customs vessel near the Cocos Islands on November 15 and held at sea for 11 days. -
Activists tried to stop the transfer of asylum seekers from Villawood in Sydney to Yongah Hill in Western Australia on November 12 and 13. Activists heard that 65 asylum seekers would be transferred following on from the forcible transfer of at least 83 refugees from Villawood in April. Refugees oppose being transferred to remote detention centres because they have less access to support networks, such as friends and lawyers. The friendships they have made in detention can also be destroyed if people are sent to separate facilities. -
Here are some numbers. There were 51.2 million refugees and displaced people worldwide at the end of last year. About 11,000 Australian protection visas are available, worldwide, each year, for people overseas who have applied for asylum. Australia’s total share of the 11.7 million refugees officially registered with the UN refugee agency is 0.3%. -
In February, an immigration database containing the identities of almost 10,000 asylum seekers was mistakenly published on the department’s website. An investigation by another government office found the immigration department “breached the Privacy Act by failing to put in place reasonable security safeguards to protect the personal information it held against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure and against other misuse”. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre released the statement below on November 12 in response to the commissioner’s findings. ***
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A campaign organised by Cambodians has led the country’s first vice-president of the National Assembly to urge Australia to back down from its bid to resettle refugees there. Kem Sokha said in a letter to the Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, Alison Burrows, that the deal to transfer up to 1000 refugees from Nauru could have “negative impacts which would possibly be caused by economic, social situations”. Joyce Fu, who works for NGO Corner Link and was part of organising protests and petitions calling for the refugee deal to be abandoned, said Cambodia was ill-equipped for the plan.
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About 1000 people rallied in Melbourne for refugee rights on October 11. The date marked the one year anniversary of Operation Sovereign Borders. About 300 protesters from the Kurdish community, marching to defend Kobani, joined the rally. Former detainee Reza Yarahmadi spoke against Temporary Protection Visas. He said: "You know what TPV stands for? I call it Toilet Paper Visa. It is not worth more than that." Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney condemned Operation Sovereign Borders. She said: "It is steeped in such lies, a crisis that does not exist."