Malcolm Fraser, The Age, 13 June, 2011
Instead of offering protection, we force people into destitution.
AT 12 Batman Street, West Melbourne, about 10 minutes from my office in the heart of the central business district, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre rents rooms from St James Old Cathedral and assists more than 1000 destitute asylum seekers. It [...]
Families in Detention
This week ChilOut met a family in Villawood RHP that has been in detention for eighteen months, well beyond the 90 days declared aim of the Department’s Values in Detention. The children are 7, 3 and 7 months. They can play with other children when other families are in the compound but cannot [...]
Julian Burnside The Australian 6 June, 2011
SO now it has come to this: the two main parties are bickering about whether it is better to send asylum-seekers to Malaysia or to Nauru. In this miserable state of things, the questions that really matter have been studiously ignored.
First, there is the matter of unaccompanied minors: [...]
THE brows of Hanif Afzally and Latif Jawadi furrow briefly while they ponder an answer to the question - why does there seem to be so much public and political angst about and antagonism toward those who come by boat to Australia to claim asylum?
The pair, both Hazara men from Afghanistan who came to [...]
Asylum Seekers Christmas Island (ASCI) write a newsletter( www.asci.org.au ) that asked for folk to write to unaccompanied children in the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA). You should include an s.a.e and also an email address in case the person gets moved .try letters@asci.org.au to get in touch.
The boys would love a visitor too -if [...]
Victoria Martin-Iverson New Matilda 28 April, 2011
The Curtin Detention Centre is remote but it is not beyond scrutiny. Victoria Martin-Iverson visited Curtin over Easter with other activists. This is what she saw.
I have just returned from the Easter convergence at Curtin Detention Centre in far north Western Australia where human rights activists protested the ongoing [...]
Sally Neighbour
The Australian
March 30, 2011
AUSTRALIA’S leading authority on Afghanistan has called for a moratorium on the deportation of failed Afghan asylum-seekers. The call came with the warning that they faced the risk of persecution or death if forced to return to their homeland.
The warning from William Maley, director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy [...]
ABC Unleashed
Caroline Fleay and Nina Boydell
8 February, 2011
Thousands of kilometres from where most Australians live is an expanding collection of small demountable huts surrounded by two huge wire fences.
It is not easy to visit this place of detention – for most people it involves an expensive flight to Broome in WA’s northwest region, and a [...]
Compassion of season for littlest detainees
Jessica Perini - December 30, 2010
About two weeks before Christmas I decided to send an email to five friends asking them each to send one package to children in immigration detention across Australia. I thought maybe five, 10 or 15 children might benefit.
The response I received was so extraordinary that [...]
Niko Leka
Green Left Weekly
27 February, 2010
An asylum seeker accused of rioting in the Christmas Island detention centre on November 21 recently contacted a refugee advocate about living conditions inside. The refugee advocate asked Green Left Weekly to withhold both their names.
At the trial of the accused rioters on January 20, the magistrate did not issue [...]