ChilOut Media Releases.
Minister for Immigration's 2006 Media Releases.
Australian Democrats press releases for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
Andrew Bartlett, Australian Democrats Senator - Blog.
Bob Brown, Leader of The Greens, Media Releases.
Kerry Nettle, Greens Senator.
ALP News Statements.
Please visit our news archive for older news items. See also the immigration section in The Age, an up-to-date source of news items on asylum seekers and detainees. There is also a section in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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Burmese asylum seekers sent to Nauru
The Immigration Department has revived using Nauru Island for its Pacific Solution policy by transferring seven Burmese refugees there. [...] He said the department was still waiting to hear back from ASIO on its re-assessment of its previous security assessment that led to two long-term detainees remaining on the island - one is now living in the community and the other currently in hospital in Australia. The department's spokesman said the cost of keeping the Nauru centre open was $33.7 million (2004-05 figure). From July to December last year when it was empty, the cost was $14.9 million.
Detainees put on secret flight to Nauru
Seven Burmese asylum seekers are today surrounded by a bleak landscape of coral pinnacles at Australia's detention centre on the remote Pacific Island nation of Nauru. Their flight yesterday from Christmas Island, kept secret for "security reasons", made them the vanguard of the "Pacific solution mark II" and the only inmates. [...] They were accompanied by 19 Australian personnel, including private security guards from the detention facility contractor Global Solutions Ltd.
Parliamentarians stand up for compassion
“We congratulate those MPs and Senators who stood up for compassion and human rights and opposed this bill. “Together with tens of thousands of people around the country who spoke out against this legislation we were able to prevent a serious injustice from being institutionalised. “A Just Australia sees the withdrawal of this legislation as consistent with the Parliament’s decision last year to move our immigration system in a more humane direction. Parliament has signalled today that it will not renege on this commitment it made to the Australian people.
PM pulls migration Bill
Prime Minister John Howard says the Government will not be proceeding with its controversial migration Bill. [...] "What has happened is that the Labor Party and a small number of coalition members and senators have together - not acting together, let me make that clear - but their views have virtually coincided, that combination means we would not secure passage of the legislation," he said.
Revolt forces Australia PM to ditch new asylum laws
Revolt forces Australia PM to ditch new asylum laws
Australian PM drops asylum bill
Australian prime minister drops tough refugee bill amid criticism
Howard under fire with immigration law
Australian Parliament blocks refugee bill
PM dumps asylum laws
Better frustrated than humiliated
But the damage might have been even greater if he had let this drama run all the way to its natural end. For the first time, Howard's own MPs - or a strategically-placed handful of them in both houses - would have stopped the Prime Minister from having his way in full view of the public.
Govt 'bullying' senators on migration Bill
"It's really against the law to threaten someone to influence their vote," [Senator Allison] said. With the numbers so tight, Senator Allison has accused the Government of bullying its own, in an attempt to get the Bill through. "I think there is a lot of untoward pressure on those who've said they don't support this bill and I actually think that is undemocratic," she said.
Troeth silent on migration vote decision
I have made up my mind but I'll be making it clear in the chamber tomorrow," she told reporters. "I think every senator has the right to reserve their decision, indeed every member of parliament, for a variety of reasons. "I've not said how I'm going to vote. That decision stands and I'll be making it clear tomorrow."
Migration Bill would put Papuan in exile, lawyer says
The lawyer for a Papuan asylum seeker now living in Melbourne says his client would be still in exile if the Federal Government's proposed migration laws were in place. David Wainggai was the only one of 43 Papuans who arrived in Cape York in January to be refused a visa, and spent five months alone on Christmas Island.
Senators lobbied ahead of migration Bill vote
Baptist social justice commentator Tim Costello urges senators to oppose the Bill. "The quicksand of politics is where you really lose your feet, the only solid ground is human rights and the refugee convention is a fundamental human rights convention," he said.
Fielding to oppose migration Bill in Senate
Family First Senator Steve Fielding has announced he will vote against the Federal Government's proposal to extend offshore processing for asylum seekers. [...] "Family First is opposing the changes because it will see Australia no longer playing by the rules and I think most people understand that," he said. "Most Australians will realise, well, there are rules and it would be absolute chaos if every other country did what Australia is proposing. It's ludicrous.
Migration Bill passes Lower House
Three Federal Government MPs have crossed the floor and another has abstained from voting as the controversial move to extend offshore processing for asylum seekers passed the House of Representatives. Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent and Judi Moylan sided with the Opposition and Bruce Baird abstained, but the Bill still passed.
The picture in the Senate is unclear, with key coalition Senators Judith Troeth and Barnaby Joyce yet to announce which way they will vote.
Dissident MPs line-up against migration Bill
The myth of Nauru asylum seekers 'voluntary return'
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC)has been told today by refugees held on Nauru, of the methods used by DIMA to get them to sign to return to the countries from which they had fled. Minister Vanstone states that the Afghan asylum seekers on Nauru returned voluntarily. “Former Nauru detainees have described how this voluntary process was applied,” says Pamela Curr, ASRC campaign coordinator. “One result of the four years in Nauru's camps is that even now, settled in Australia on Temporary visas there is a great fear of retribution from DIMA. One young refugee said -they say there is democracy in this country but I can not believe, I believe that they (DIMA) can catch me any time they want and take me.”
Decision about Afghan boy being reviewed
On July 30, a spokeswoman for the department said the boy had received the treatment he needed. "In line with long-standing government policy the minister has decided that the family will be moved to Christmas Island for offshore processing." But the department said it had not decided on the future of the boy and his parents. "A decision is yet to be made regarding their relocation," a department spokesman told AAP.
Backbenchers to cross floor on migration
All were willing to suffer the political consequences of challenging the majority view of their party, just one day after Prime Minister John Howard called for unity. "If I am to die politically because of my stance on this bill, it is better to die on my feet than to live on my knees," Mr Broadbent told parliament during an impassioned speech. Ms Moylan, whose preselection for her West Australian seat of Pearce is reportedly under threat as a direct result of her outspoken views, was equally firm in her resolve.
Liberals revolt on migration law
TWO Coalition backbenchers have announced they will cross the floor and vote with the Opposition against the Howard Government's changes to migrations law. Defying a plea from John Howard to abstain rather than voting with Labor, Victorians Petro Georgiou and Russell Broadbent told the House of Representatives the bill was unfair.
Both men had been involved in negotiating changes to the migration laws last year which took families out of detention centres and bolstered legal representation. But they said the latest changes, that would see the asylum claims by unauthorised arrivals processed offshore by the United Nations would make the 2005 deal redundant.
Two Liberals to cross floor on immigration
MARK COLVIN: The Prime Minister may have to wait till tomorrow before he finds out how successful he's been in containing a backbench revolt in the lower house over his controversial new immigration law. And even then, he'll still be in suspense about whether he can get it through the Senate. So far today, two Liberal MPs say they're still intending to cross the floor and vote against the Government.
More 'hush and rush' on asylum seekers
HOW can you realistically protect a child from the evil and damage of immigration detention as we have known it? How can the deprivation of individual liberty and the innocence and freedom of childhood ever be justified?
If John Howard wants to look tough and in control, let him lead our troops in Afghanistan or Iraq, not manipulate his MPs into passing legislation that will enable further breaches of human rights and mistreatment of innocent people while in the care of the Australian Government, no matter which contractors are paid to do the dirty work.
Frederika Steen, Chapel Hill, Qld
Australia debates asylum changes
Ruling party member Petro Georgiou told reporters that the bill was "the most profoundly disturbing piece of legislation I have encountered since becoming a member of parliament". He told the Associated Press that parliament was now being asked to take a "severely regressive measure". But the opposition of a few ruling party members is unlikely to prevent the bill from passing in the lower chamber, because Mr Howard has a comfortable majority.
Australian government introduces tough refugee bill to Parliament
While it is not clear whether the dissent within the center-right government's ranks would be enough to defeat the legislation, it creates a destabilizing rift as Prime Minister John Howard seeks re-election to a fifth three-year term next year.
Howard faces anger over tough refugee Bill
PM tries to stop migration law showdown
Prime Minister John Howard has urged dissenting backbenchers to abstain from voting on tough new immigration laws rather than cross the floor of parliament. During a heated joint parties meeting, Mr Howard ruled out making any more changes to the laws, which would send all boat people to island detention centres for processing. At least four backbenchers told the meeting they could not support the draft laws, party room sources said. The legislation is due to be debated in the House of Representatives this week.
Deported asylum seekers killed
'[Abdul's] house was bombed and his children were killed after he was returned to Afghanistan’, Mr Glendenning said. ‘He told officials this would happen and it did. Both his children are now dead.Any public policy that has as its end result the death of innocent people, and especially children, is a policy that no civilised nation can possibly consider. The so-called Pacific solution is no solution at all. The Edmund Rice Centre urges all MP’s and Senators to reject proposals to reinstitute off-shore processing of asylum seekers. In our experience in 18 countries there is too much evidence that we are getting it wrong. And on this issue if you get it wrong – people get killed.’ Mr Glendenning concluded.
RCOA calls for an independent inquiry into deaths of returned asylum seekers
Rejected refugees sent home to die: families tell harrowing stories
In one harrowing account, a Hazara Afghan deported after 16 months on Christmas Island and Nauru - despite his pleas that he and his family would be killed - lost his two children, aged six and nine. A grenade was dropped on their house four months after they returned to Afghanistan. "My children died so that John Howard could win an election," Abdul is quoted as telling the Edmund Rice Centre, which has spent the past three years interviewing more than 80 rejected asylum seekers in 18 countries. It has released its findings to coincide with the Government's migration bill, which has divided the Coalition.
Deported Afghans 'tortured and killed'
All of the asylum-seekers were held on the Pacific Island of Nauru under the government policy of sending boatpeople who do not make it to the mainland to overseas processing centres. The Howard Government now wants to toughen the policy to send all boatpeople, even those who make it to the mainland, to overseas centres. But the head of the ERF's inquiry, Phil Glendenning, said yesterday the probe raised serious questions about offshore detainees' access to legal assistance, advocacy and avenues of appeal. MPs will vote today on the tough new policy.
Vanstone 'incorrectly informed' on Afghan deaths
The Edmund Rice Centre (ERC) has rejected an assertion made by the Immigration Minister that her department has been unable to follow-up claims that up to nine asylum seekers were killed after being deported to Afghanistan. The Catholic human rights group says it investigated the fate of almost 200 failed Afghan asylum seekers who were detained on the Pacific Island of Nauru while their applications were processed in 2002. Senator Amanda Vanstone says the centre has made similar claims before, but never in enough detail for her department to investigate. ERC's Phil Glendenning says all relevant information has been passed onto the Minister's department.
Child refugees denied basic rights - study
RIZ WAKIL fled Afghanistan at the age of 18, after his family had become a political target and his brother was kidnapped. [...] Mr Wakil spent nine months in Western Australia's Curtin detention centre before receiving a temporary protection visa in 2000. Now aged 24 and an Australian resident, Mr Wakil has helped tell the stories of many young people like him, who arrived in Australia to seek asylum unaccompanied by an adult. Their plight is captured in a study, Seeking Asylum Alone, by Mary Crock, an associate professor of law at the University of Sydney. The report shows Australia has denied child refugees basic rights, including a right to be heard. She has called on the Federal Government to ensure children who arrive in Australia unaccompanied are told of their right to claim asylum and given help to express their case.
System 'victimises' child asylum seekers
"In spite of Australia's claimed embrace of the principles of child protection, its immigration practices mark unaccompanied and separated children as marginalised to the point of victimisation. "The normal exclusion of children as a voiceless group of citizens is exaggerated in the case of the population studied in this report by two aggravating circumstances – their non-citizen status, and their lack of access to parental or other protective adult involvement."
Prof Crock said in most respects Australian laws governing refugee protection were characterised most starkly by a failure to make any distinctions at all between child and adult. The report found 290 of the 4,089 children who entered Australia between 1999 and 2003 without valid visas arrived alone, including some as young as eight-years-old.
Until July 2005, they were all routinely placed in immigration detention.
Asylum seeker health 'neglected'
AN asylum seeker's attempted suicide at Baxter detention centre is further evidence their mental health is being neglected, the Australian Greens said today. And it was a message to MPs deciding their position on the Government's controversial border protection legislation. A 30-year-old asylum seeker from central Africa, who had been in detention for almost two years, tried to hang himself at Baxter, near Port Augusta, in South Australia, yesterday, the Greens said. He was one of six detainees taken to Glenside psychiatric hospital for treatment but was returned to Baxter about four months ago, against the advice of doctors, said Greens refugee spokesman Peter Job.
"They were returned against their will, and against the will of their treating doctors, who said returning them to detention would be a very dangerous thing to do," Mr Job said.
Young, alone and legally abandoned
THEY were smuggled out in the dead of night in the backs of trucks under hay or bags of flour. They were children from Afghanistan whose relatives were desperate to save them from the fate of older brothers or fathers, killed or kidnapped by the Taliban. Most of the children had no say in the decision, did not know where they were going, and had never heard of Australia. And when these children - unaccompanied minors - arrived after traumatic boat journeys, Australia treated them as if they were adults, or in the care of adults, throwing them into detention centres, giving them no special help, or support. Among asylum seekers, the children travelling alone were the most vulnerable group. But despite our professed love of children, Australia did not even notice them - not in official policy, at least. They were not assigned guardians or lawyers or told of their rights. Last year the law was changed so that children could no longer be put in detention except as a matter of last resort. It was a tiny step forward. Now the Government is set on reversing even this measure.
Refugee advocate says detention a waste of money
David Wainggai was recognised as a refugee by the Refugee Review Tribunal on Monday, after he was initially refused a protection visa by the Immigration Department. The Tribunal concluded that David Wainggai does in fact satisfy the criteria for a protection visa. [....]
KAY BERNARD: I don't think there's anybody in Australia that realises that the cost of the offshore detention policy has been over half-a-million dollars for one man, when he could have been accommodated on the mainland, here in Australia while his matter was being processed, for $190 dollars a day.
Nauru officials visit Baxter detention centre
The small island country is now looking to make its processing camps for asylum seekers more comfortable for families, and it is using Baxter as an example. Nauru's Foreign Minister David Adeang will tour the Baxter Residential Housing Project in Port Augusta today and hold various meetings with Australian Government officials. Asylum Seeker Resource Centre spokeswoman Pamela Curr says Australia should be careful with the advice it gives. "There are many areas where Australia could offer leadership but the detention of human beings is not one of them," she said.
The human face of the Pacific Solution
As the debate continued over legislation to toughen the policy by processing all future boat arrivals on Nauru, Ms Sedaqatyar's father, Kasim Moheebee, wept as he pleaded his daughter's case. More than seven years of separation was too much, he said.
PM forced to wait on asylum seeker laws
When he announced the immigration concessions, Mr Howard said he would wait six weeks before introducing the redrafted bill to parliament. [...] Under the concessions, women, children and families will be housed in offshore residential-style accommodation in a community setting after initial processing, upholding an agreement made in parliament last year that women and children not be held in detention centres.
Debate on asylum laws delayed until next parliamentary session
The two major sticking points from the backbench group are that the bill still doesn't give people found to be legitimate refugees access to Australia, nor does it guarantee asylum-seekers sent to Nauru would have recourse to Australia's legal system. But the Prime Minister says most of his MPs think he's gone as far as he should to meet the backbench concerns.
JOHN HOWARD: We have made very big changes, but they don't affect the main thrust of the legislation. In these matters the minority viewpoint has a right to be heard, but in the end a majority view clearly expressed is the way our party has always operated.
Tampa won us votes: Libs
During the acrimonious Coalition party meeting - coincidentally on World Refugee Day - Coalition MPs in marginal seats accused "small-l" Liberal MPs of undermining the Coalition's prospects at the next election. Described by those attending as "really nasty", the meeting heard the NSW MPs Bob Baldwin, Alby Schultz and Ian Causley demand the rebel Liberals accept the majority view in the Government on asylum seekers.
Migration bill stand-off tipped to drag on
One of the MPs seeking changes to the proposal, Bruce Baird, says he is not sure the issue will be settled by Friday, when Parliament rises for a six-week winter break. [...] The Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes has called for the migration bill to be delayed, saying it would make a positive statement for Australia on World Refugee Day. [...] Mr Innes says, even with concessions, there are major problems with offshore detention. "This bill puts children back in detention, there's no time limits on detention, so there's a real risk for the mental health and wellbeing of children and adults in detention," he said. "There's no review of decisions made about refugee status and in the last financial year the Department of Immigration got one out of three wrong."
Immigration laws may create 'Guantanamo'
"Offshore detention facilities would remove basic legal protections provided under Australia's legal system, including access to legal advice, independent reviews and appeals to courts and tribunals," Mr North said. "These are the hallmarks of Guantanamo Bay.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission calls on government to ensure protection of asylum seekers on World Refugee Day
“It is a testament to the quality of Australia’s refugee protection groups that the Senate Committee was so powerfully persuaded by the human rights arguments relating to the legislation. I commend the large number of refugee organisations in Australia who have worked to focus the Federal Government’s attention on the rights of asylum seekers. I am sure they, as well as the Commission, would be dismayed to see this legislation pass on a day that is supposed to recognise the plight of refugees worldwide.” “Passing the Bill in its current form would mark a backward step in Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers,” said Mr Innes. “The Bill will result in a breach of Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and undermine Australia’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
Rebel MPS still against Bill
THE Federal Government had so far done nothing to allay backbench concerns over its controversial asylum-seeker legislation, Liberal senator Judith Troeth said today. Senator Troeth is one of a number of Coalition MPS unhappy with proposed changes to immigration law, under which all asylum-seekers arriving by boat would be processed offshore. "Positions are being put and positions are being digested by both sides, and that is where we are up to," she said. A Government-dominated parliamentary committee has recommended that the Bill be shelved and some 10 Coalition MPs and senators have said they will reject it.
Vanstone flags concessions over migration bill impasse
The Federal Immigration Minister will again meet a group of rebel Coalition backbenchers today, in a bid to break the impasse over the Government's migration bill. Minister Amanda Vanstone has flagged possible concessions.
Process asylum seekers in Australia: PNG
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare says Australia should process asylum seekers on Australian soil and hinted that he may not allow PNG's Manus island to be used again as a detention centre. [...] "When they go to Australian soil, it's Australia's responsibility to deal with them, we don't set up places where we process refugees who come to our country," Somare told reporters.
Talks to avert asylum split
THE Government has again postponed voting on a controversial asylum-seeker bill and will continue negotiations with dissenting backbenchers over the weekend to avoid a split on the floor of parliament. [...] Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce and Family First senator Steve Fielding - who both have reservations about the bill - confirmed that they had not been approached by the Government for their support, indicating the Coalition remains confident of winning the dissidents' backing. But a source told The Australian last night that although the meetings were "constructive", John Howard's desire for the Migration Amendments Bill to be finalised before the seven-week winter break was unlikely to be realised. "The Prime Minister was hopeful for that - he expressed a strong preference to have this matter resolved in this sitting - but it seems to my mind that that may be a little more difficult," the source said.
Author Earls urges empathy with refugees
"We need to move beyond the statistics and headlines, and actually connect with the people and see what they have gone through," Mr Earls said. "If you try to put yourself in their shoes you realise that the humanity at the heart of these things is the most important thing." [...] Queensland's Multicultural Affairs Minister Chris Cummins supported Mr Earls' comments, saying the federal government's immigration policies were damaging Australia's image overseas. "Locking children up is not good policy," Mr Cummins said. "We need to protect our borders but not at the expense of innocent children."
Govt seeks to quell backbench revolt over migration bill
ELEANOR HALL: The Government has delayed debate on its controversial Migration Bill, as it tries to deal with a backbench revolt that could scuttle the bill. In the most serious division the Howard Government has faced since it won office a decade ago, 10 Coalition members and Senators are now opposing the Bill, which would force all asylum seekers who arrive by boat to be processed offshore. The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone is now making conciliatory noises and says she is looking very closely at the highly critical Senate committee report into the legislation.
Senators review migration Bill
Senator Fielding's vote could be crucial if the Government cannot win over rebel coalition senators who have raised concerns about the Bill. [...] Senator Fielding today said he was concerned about the offshore processing of asylum seekers but was yet to decide whether to back the changes. "I am concerned also about the time it takes ... having people in detention for two, three, four, five, six, seven years is just a joke," he said.
Asylum rebels 'should work with colleagues'
Mr Thompson said he was not surprised by the rebel group but they should keep in mind that they do not hold the view of the majority of the party. "I'm not surprised by it but it's absolutely essential that the Coalition members remember the majority view of the party room that has been expressed many times now," he said.
Immigration laws 'may be changed'
Senator Vanstone spent several hours with the backbenchers today and hinted that a compromise could be found. But the Government still plans to force a debate on the draft laws in Parliament tomorrow, despite a government dominated Senate committee recommending they be scrapped. The legislation would send all unauthorised boat arrivals offshore to countries like Nauru for processing, rather than allow them to enter Australia. That would lead to women and children being held in detention centres – reversing one of the changes won by backbenchers including moderate Liberals Judi Moylan, Petro Georgiou and Bruce Baird last year.
Offshore asylum laws in doubt as back bench rebels
A government-dominated Senate committee yesterday took the rare step of recommending the legislation be scrapped and backbenchers are threatening to vote against it in Parliament unless it is modified. The Government faces the prospect of an embarrassing defeat for its legislation in the Senate unless it negotiates changes with Government backbenchers.
Politicians cross party lines to oppose detention
AN ALL-PARTY Senate committee has urged the Howard Government to ditch its tough new laws on asylum seekers after being told they are unworkable, in breach of Australia's international obligations and an "inappropriate response" to pressure from Indonesia. The scathing report will strengthen the resolve of several Government MPs who are prepared to cross the floor to defeat the laws, which Prime Minister John Howard wants passed before Parliament breaks for the winter recess next week.
Push to scuttle asylum laws strengthens
Four Coalition senators are believed to have major concerns about the Government's proposed changes to the migration law. This is three more than would be needed to scuttle the bill if, as expected, senators from Labor and the minor parties vote against it. "It looks like there is a majority in the Senate to make the case for change," Mr Joyce said. But Prime Minister John Howard yesterday was unmoved by the dissent, saying the bill would go ahead "and I believe it will pass".
Immigration lawyer welcomes drug, assault claims probe
A prominent immigration lawyer says she is relieved an investigation is under way into complaints of drug use and sexual assault at Sydney's Villawood detention centre. [...] She says she has also complained to Immigration officials about women being sexually assaulted by male detainees, because they could not lock the doors to their rooms. "Nothing had been done about that and I still believe it's the same situation today," she said. "Fortunately the children aren't in there any more, but yes my client was abused over a period of six months in front of her child."
Nauru child detainees 'sent home'
More than half of the unaccompanied children sent to Nauru under the Pacific Solution returned to Afghanistan, raising fresh concerns about the fairness of offshore processing. [...] Of the 55 children registered as unaccompanied when they were sent to Nauru under the controversial Pacific Solution, 32 later returned to Afghanistan, in 2002-03. [...] But none of the 290 children travelling without an adult whose claims were processed in Australia in the same period were sent back to the war-torn south Asian nation. [...] "Children need assistance if they are going to make out the case that they are refugees," Dr Crock said after appearing before the Senate committee.
Thousands petition against asylum changes
A petition against the Federal Government's plan to process offshore all asylum seekers arriving by boat has been presented to a Senate inquiry. The petition, which has 30,000 signatures, has been presented by refugee rights group A Just Australia at the committee hearing in Sydney today. [...] A Just Australia national coordinator Kate Gauthier says the law is inhuman, especially the renewed detention of children places such as Nauru. "It's a completely ridiculous argument that because kids are let out during the day, they're not actually in detention," she said.
Papuan's visa decision faces reversal
Mr Manne said the expiration of Mr Wainggai's visa [in September] would have a significant effect on future decisions about the case. "It would evaporate the Government's already baseless argument that he would be allowed into Japan," Mr Manne said. "The Government's denial of protection would have gone from baseless to bizarre."
Nauru detention fear for Afghan asylum seekers
Refugee advocates say the two adults and child may be sent to the offshore immigration detention centre at Nauru and are being denied legal and community contact. The boy recently spent several days in the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane, where he was treated for a serious illness.
9 year old Afghan boy and parents held incommunicado in Brisbane
ChilOut is absolutely outraged that an extremely sick nine year old boy from Afghanistan and his parents have been held incommunicado in Brisbane since 24 May. The boy was in a Brisbane children's hospital until last Monday when he was discharged pending surgery in two weeks' time. ChilOut believes that he and his parents are now being held under guard in a Brisbane motel. [...] ChilOut spokesperson Dianne Hiles said today, "this extremely vulnerable family have not had access to legal advice, which means they are in incommunicado, or in 'separation' detention. They have been denied access to visitors from either the local Afghan community, Amnesty International or the Red Cross. The only contact the family has with the outside world is guards who work for GSL (the private prison company contracted to run detention centres). Those guards do not speak any of the languages of Afghanistan and are explicitly instructed not to help the family access a migration agent or lawyer.
Australia must not slam the door shut on children
The Government is trying to change refugee policy to force all asylum seekers arriving by boat out of Australian territory and into detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. ChilOut is opposed to this outrageous proposal as it would mean children back in detention again, with no Ministerial discretion to house families in community detention in Australian cities, as is the case today. [...] "When a child asks for our protection, should we slam the door and send her away? If Parliament lets the Prime Minister get away with this, Australia will be breaking international law, which requires that we allow anyone to seek asylum here who asks. Australia can't pick and choose those we allow to ask for our help," Ms Hiles said.
Refugee group queries family handling
A nine-year-old boy who arrived on a Torres Strait island with his mother and father has fallen ill and been transferred to the Australian mainland for treatment. [....] They told immigration officials they were from Afghanistan, but have yet to be formally interviewed. The officials have said they may return the family to PNG where it is understood they departed. But Kate Gauthier, from A Just Australia, said the government would be in breach of international law and human rights principles if it attempted to remove the family before any effort was made to ascertain whether they were refugees. She said anything less than a thorough and fair assessment of their asylum claim on the Australian mainland could mean putting the child's life at risk.
Immigration defends offshore processing
"Offshore processing centres are not detention centres and conditions of movement are determined by the respective governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea," [Immigration Department's deputy secretary Bob Correll] said. "The arrangements will ensure that all designated unauthorised arrivals will have access to an effective refugee determination process." [...] The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner Graeme Innes told the committee he is concerned about children. "Under the proposed changes, children will be detained as a measure of first resort, not last resort," he said.
The Vanstone wiggle
"I am satisfied that the applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of an imputed political opinion ... should the applicant be returned to Papua." This was the finding of an official from Vanstone's department in the case of David Wainggai, the last of the 43 Papuans who arrived in Australia by canoe in January to have his application for asylum determined. Wainggai is related to some of the 42 and is the son of a former leader of the West Papuan independence movement, Thomas Wainggai, who was jailed in 1988 and died in prison in 1996. He had just as strong a case for asylum as the others but after leaving him waiting on Christmas Island for four months, Vanstone announced that his application had been rejected. Indonesia will be pleased. The reason for the rejection? His mother is Japanese (although she does not live there and has renounced her Japanese citizenship) and he may be able to live in Japan. How many refugees has Japan taken over the past year? None, according to the written departmental decision on Wainggai, which also quoted from a report on Japan saying that "concerns have been raised that potential refugees are being deported without proper consideration of their cases".
Call for Vanstone to allow Leongs to stay in Australia
Exactly a year ago, a mother and her three year old daughter walked free from Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre. For the child, Naomi Leong, it was her first real taste of freedom. Naomi was born inside the Immigration Department facility. Her psychiatrist had been expressing grave concerns about what detention seemed to be doing to the little girl's mental health. She had become withdrawn and mute and was banging her head against the wall. Virginia Leong and her daughter were released on bridging protection visas by the Immigration Department, but they've been in limbo ever since, awaiting their fate. Now there are calls for the Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone to intervene and allow them to remain in Australia on compassionate grounds.
Offshore processing standards worry UNHCR
[UNHCR] says if this new system does not meet the same high standards as processing within Australia, then it could effectively discriminate against those arriving by boat. "We would like to see the same standards for offshore processing that exist in Australia," Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman of the UNHCR, said. "If you are being processed in Australia, you have access to legal representation. "We don't know the full details of what is going to be [the situation] on Nauru."
Migration bill 'undermines human rights'
The [Human Rights and Equal Opportunity] commission's president, John von Doussa QC, and Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes on Friday released a statement criticising the government's plan to expand its "Pacific solution" by allowing offshore processing for all asylum seekers who arrive by boat. "The practical effect of the present bill is that children, once again, will be detained in conditions which endanger their well-being and mental health," the statement says. "Being held in an offshore processing centre is, without doubt, a form of detention."
Migration Act changes threaten the human rights of asylum seekers
The Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that detention of children must be a last resort and for the shortest possible period of time. Under the proposed changes detention of children will be a measure of first resort, not last resort. These concerns are not new. The Commission’s two-year National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention, A last resort? (published in April 2004), warned that the 2001 “Pacific Solution” breached several of Australia’s human rights obligations and recommended a review of the impact on children of the legislation that created the “Pacific Solution”. This recommendation was not implemented. The proposed changes do not address the possibility of excessive or indefinite detention. There is no set time for offshore processing of claims for asylum and no set time in which a person who is determined to be a refugee must be resettled in a third country.
Rights groups slam govt over Papuans
A group of 47 rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and the International Immigrants' Foundation, wrote to Prime Minister John Howard protesting that the new laws contravene an important refugee convention to which Australia is a signatory. "We, the undersigned organisations, protest in the strongest terms possible your government's announced plan to seek national legislation extending the 'Pacific Solution' to anyone intercepted attempting to enter Australia by boat without a visa," the letter said. "As described by officials of your government, many of the plan's components we believe are in violation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which Australia is a party."
Proposed migration laws 'unforgivable'
"Never before in Australia's history has a government wanted to pretend that we have no border," Mr Burke [Labor;s immigration spokesman] said."This is bad legislation where the principle of it is wrong and the motivation for it is unforgivable."
Iraqi family of six held under guard pending deportation
The Iraqi children — three girls aged two, 10 and 13 and a boy of 11 — and their parents have been held at the Immigration Department's Port Augusta housing centre for the last two months. A department spokesman said yesterday: "It is still a place of detention." They are under 24-hour guard, he said. Alanna Sherry, spokeswoman for ChilOut, a group campaigning to keep children out of detention, said it was a breach of Mr Howard's undertaking last year to backbenchers that children would not be locked up.
Coalition MPs question offshore asylum seeker processing
The Government's moves to change the Migration Act have been given added urgency with the interception of three more asylum seekers from the Indonesian province of Papua. [...] The Government wants to ensure that all such arrivals will be processed in offshore detention centres and will introduce amendments this week. The issue was hotly debated in a joint party meeting this morning, with at least five MPs indicating their unwillingness to support the bill. The Prime Minister says he is prepared to discuss the MPs' concerns but he will not withdraw the bill or make any large changes.
Deporting Papuans 'likely to be a struggle'
The three men initially landed in Papua New Guinea. Senator Vanstone says the Government will try to send them back there.
But Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett says that is unlikely. "I think Papua New Guinea quite rightly believes it's about time Australia pulled its weight in this area given the thousands of refugees that they've taken from West Papua," Senator Bartlett said.
Process Papuans in Australia: Greens
Senator Nettle said the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Amnesty International and the Greens had all condemned further changes proposed to immigration laws. These include the excision of parts of Australia's coastline and are still being debated in the coalition party room. "Asylum seekers from West Papua will continue (to come to Australia) as long as human rights abuses and economic and environmental injustices are allowed to continue in West Papua," she said.
More West Papuans found on way to Australia
The Federal Government has revealed today that three men from Indonesia's Papua province were found in the Torres Strait on Saturday by Immigration officials. [...] Senator Vanstone says because they arrived on an excised island, they will not be processed in Australia if they seek asylum, and are not entitled to apply for refugee status under Australia's Migration Act.
National TV ads protest proposed detention laws
Last year the Government struck a deal to release children held in immigration centres into the community. However, the Government has now proposed changes to immigration laws that will see asylum seekers who make it to mainland Australia transported offshore to be processed for assessment. [...] Petro Georgiou says he and other backbenchers are waiting to see a draft of the new laws before commenting. Family First Senator Steve Fielding and Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce also say they are waiting to see what impact the proposed laws will have on family and children.
TV ads to protest immigration policy
Refugee groups will release a television commercial protesting against the government's changes to its immigration policy.
A Just Australia, Chillout and GetUp.org.au, produced the advertisement which protests against the government's new hardline immigration laws, which they say could result in children again being locked up in detention centres.
[...] "The minister is still peddling the despicable and divisive myth that only people handpicked by the government are genuine refugees and uses the dishonest, inflammatory term 'illegal boat arrivals' to attack other refugees, when she knows full well seeking asylum is not illegal." [Senator Andrew
Mike Steketee: Howard is wrong on refugees
The Government will accept its obligations under the Refugee Convention to process these cases in only the most grudging way. For fear of offending Indonesia, it will scour the world to try to find other countries to accept refugees. The rest of the world rightly will say that, with Papua on our doorstep, they are our responsibility. If other countries adopted Australia's attitude, the Refugee Convention would collapse. [...] The decision betrays Petro Georgiou and his fellow band of Liberal dissidents who extracted last year's concessions from Howard. It leaves Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone high and dry. Only four weeks ago, she was stressing the decisions on the 42 Papuans were based on their individual circumstances, not the feelings of the Indonesian Government or anyone else.
Abandoning West Papua
The laws make a mockery of the recent improvements in the treatment of detainees supposedly undertaken by Vanstone, and they turn the clock back to a time which most Australians believed we had finally left behind. It is evident from the Minister’s announcement that we will even see a return to children in detention. Whether they are let out during the day is not really the point.
Detention plans stir rebel Liberals
THE prospect of children returning to detention under the Howard Government's tough new rules for dealing with boatpeople threatens to rekindle a rebellion among Coalition MPs. The Government's decision to force all illegal arrivals, including children, who reach mainland Australia by boat into offshore immigration detention centres could sideline reforms introduced in June in response to a backbench revolt led by Liberal MP Petro Georgiou.
Lib MPs rebel over hard line on asylum
LIBERAL backbenchers will confront the Prime Minister over asylum seekers, angered that he has betrayed them and overturned a fairer deal for boat people in an attempt to appease Indonesia. Ten months after John Howard agreed to a "softer edge" to the handling of asylum claims, moderate MPs fear children will again be exposed to the horrors of detention - this time on Pacific islands rather than in Australia.
New Pacific solution targets Papuans
The Howard government has toughened its asylum regime in a clear message to Papuans that they will be shipped anywhere but Australia if they try to find protection.
West Papuans receive TPVs...
West Papuan refugees prepare to settle in Melbourne
Now that they've been granted Temporary Protection Visas here, the 42 asylum seekers are preparing to settle in Melbourne. The group, mainly made of up activists who want an independent nation of West Papua, arrived at Cape York in January. They were taken to Christmas Island, where most were held at the detention centre, and some were allowed to live in the community. Some of the group have been in Perth for health checks, and David Weber went to see them.
Indonesia MP slams West Papua visas
Jakarta had been calling for the boatload of asylum seekers to be sent back to Indonesia but Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today announced 42 of the 43 Papuans who landed at Cape York in January have received temporary protection visas (TPV). They would be relocated from Christmas Island to Melbourne, Senator Vanstone said.
Ombudsman damns immigration detention of mentally ill man
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has released a damning report into the unlawful detention of a severely mentally ill man who was mistaken for an illegal immigrant. The 45-year-old man originally from Vietnam, known only as "Mr T", was detained in the Villawood detention centre in Sydney three times over four years. On one occasion he was held for eight months. [...] The Immigration Department says there could be another 27 cases of people being unlawfully detained.
US targets Australia in rights review
The federal government's industrial relations overhaul, the Cronulla race riots and the detention of asylum seekers have been singled out by the US State Department in its latest human rights review. [...] The department also highlights the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) 2004 report on children in immigration detention. That report found Australia's laws allowing child asylum seekers to be held in mandatory immigration detention breached the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Australia is a party. The HREOC report's findings were largely rejected by the Howard government.
Read ChilOut Media release on Shayan's out-of-court settlement...
Immigration hit by day of backdowns
A day of turmoil in the nation's immigration system ended with the Federal Government backing down on several fronts yesterday. It agreed to pay damages to a boy traumatised in detention and allowed a deported Melbourne man to return to Australia on humanitarian grounds. In Sydney, an 11-year-old Iranian, Shayan Badraie, was offered damages for trauma he suffered in Woomera and Villawood detention centres. The move comes after a 63-day Supreme Court hearing. While in detention between March 2000 and August 2001, the boy became severely traumatised after witnessing riots, a stabbing and a string of other disturbing incidents. He subsequently spent 94 days in hospital, and still requires treatment.
Boy, 11, wins payout over detention trauma
The settlement followed a crucial piece of testimony. The Immigration Department's former head of border control and detention, Philippa Godwin, directly contradicted her department's previously stated position that detention did not cause mental illness. "We agreed that people in detention could have psychological difficulties and that detention may contribute to these or even be the source of them ... it may be a cause of difficulties for some children," she said. [...] His family, who now live in western Sydney, also received news yesterday that they had been granted a permanent protection visa to stay in Australia.
Immigration Dept settles Badraie case
His lawyer, Rebecca Gilsenan, says the settlement and the granting of permanent residency to her client's family this week should help his recovery. "The grant of the visa and the resolution of this case will allow this family to settle permanently and to have some certainty and to be able to try and look after their child and address the illness that he developed because of the way he was treated in immigration detention," she said.
Detention centre 'deceptive' on inmate services
Reading from an October 2000 list of activities supplied to the Government by ACM, Shayan's lawyer, Andrew Morrison SC, asked Mr Clifton if they had actually taken place. "A children's party -- 17 detainees for an hour ... do you recall a party being held for any children?" Dr Morrison asked. "No," Mr Clifton replied. "Do you recall -- a little further down -- a school picnic being held?" "No." Other activities, including sport and a total of 3240 hours of child education claimed by AMC, did not take place, Mr Clifton said.
Boy may never get over fears: doctor
Suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, the Iranian-born child's intellectual and psychological development is so severely impaired, after witnessing several violent events at Woomera and Villawood, that he may never fully recover, Dr David Dossetor told the court. "Fourteen months at the age of six in a detention centre is a large proportion of his life. Five years out of 10 years with severe symptomatology from PTSD has a huge impact for his prognosis. Even if he got over his anxiety he would have an increased risk of subsequent psychiatric disorder for depression and anxiety-related disorders.
Papuans tell of torture
A senior immigration source said the 43 asylum seekers, who arrived by boat in Australia 12 days ago, had a "very strong case" to be granted refugee status, possibly within weeks. "Some of what has come out of the interviews has been absolutely heart-wrenching," the source said. The testimony includes vicious bashings while in prison and attacks on villages and livestock in retaliation for the Papuans' agitating for independence.
Kids dumped under guard offshore: Giant leap backwards for Prime Minister
"At the moment all the asylum seeker children are held under guard and isolated as a direct result of a sharp degree of inflexiblity by the Govenrment, reminiscent of the days before a 3 year old born in detention named Naomi Leong coupled with the Vivian Alvarez and Cornelia Rau tragedies that blew open the problems with the implementation of a bad set of Immigration laws." said Mrs Bernard
West Papua: Asylum Seekers Move to Christmas Island Deplorable
[Rob Wesley Smith, the Darwin spokesman for "Australians for a Free West Papua"] says "It's quite shocking really that people who've come to Australia for political asylum and it's quite clear from the sign on their boat and so on and what we know about them, that they then get sent on a seven-hour Hercules flight almost to the door of Jakarta - get them as far away from people who might help them in Australia," he said. [...] "There is plenty of accommodation in Australia, in fact there is empty accommodation in Darwin and we offered to accommodate them anyway and to send them out to Christmas Island is a farce."
Jakarta warns asylum case endangers ties with Canberra
"The men in the group will be accommodated at the Phosphate Hill Detention Center, while the women and children will be placed in staff housing," [DIMIA] spokeswoman Sandi Longan was quoted by AFP as saying. Australian human rights groups and the opposition Labor Party criticized the decision to move the asylum seekers to Christmas Island rather than processing their asylum claim on the mainland. "I don't understand when there's excess capacity at mainland detention centers, why there's a need to take these asylum seekers as far away as possible from the best legal teams," said Tony Burke, immigration spokesman for the Labor Party.
Still locked up, long after winning freedom
AUSTRALIA'S longest-serving immigration detainee is still in Villawood detention centre, almost four months after he won all legal appeals against the Government's refusal to give him a visa because of war crimes allegations. [...] My belief has changed about human rights in this country," he said. "I can't see any sign of human rights. The Government knows I have a family of three young children and an ill wife who cannot work properly … [but] it still shamelessly keeps me in this detention centre." Mr Noori's wife, Karima, and his three children are Australian citizens living near Villawood. His son turns 15 today, but Mr Noori cannot even visit the family's modest unit to celebrate.
Another four Afghans given refugee status
FOUR more Afghans who have spent nearly four years on Nauru have been found to be refugees and will soon be resettled in Australia.But supporters are concerned about the emotional state of those who remain in the offshore processing centre, particularly an Iraqi man whose mother was recently killed in a car bomb blast in Iraq. [...] There are now 32 asylum seekers at the camp: 11 Afghans, 16 Iraqis, two Iranians, two Bangladeshis and a Pakistani.
Released immigration detainees experience life on the outside
ELEANOR HALL: The gates of Australia's immigration detention centres opened briefly two weeks ago for a mass release of 42 children and their families into the community.
It was part of a deal struck between the Prime Minister and several Liberal Party backbenchers to ensure that children seeking asylum are not placed under undue stress and trauma while their families' cases are being processed.
So how is community detention working for those now on the outside?
Karen Barlow went to Sydney's western suburbs to check on the progress of one family.
Baxter's changing role
TEN New Zealanders and four citizens of the United States and United Kingdom are being held in Baxter Detention Centre. [...] Australian Council for Civil Liberties spokesman David Bernie said it was an abuse of the purpose that Baxter was set up for. "If it's someone with ties to the community, why is there a need for detention at all?" he said. "With all these detention centres being set up around Australia and privately staffed, there's almost a detention centre industry and a need to fill them to keep them going. "Holding people in detention is the same as sending them to jail – it should be the last resort."
New look for Villawood as razor wire gets the snip
The razor wire around much of Sydney's Villawood detention centre will be removed in the next few weeks and landscaping will begin around the existing perimeter fence. [...]
She hailed the move as an example of the Government's softer approach since the scathing report of the Palmer inquiry into immigration detention. "This is a statement of good faith … building on steps already taken to remove all children from detention centres and providing a more hospitable environment for people located in such facilities, as well as their visitors," Senator Vanstone said.
Still stained by inhumane detention
It is hard to believe. Finally there are no children left behind razor wire. Perhaps a dark era in our treatment of children is coming to an end. If so, the question remains, how was it possible that we, as a nation, allowed children to be jailed? And how many Australians are aware of the trauma we have inflicted on children during the period of the Howard Government.
Detainees released from Christmas Island
The last 11 detainees remaining on Christmas Island have arrived in Perth and have been granted temporary protection visas. The three children and eight adults arrived at Perth's international airport late yesterday afternoon, tasting freedom for the first time in two years since they landed at Port Hedland by boat in 2003. Temporary protection visas have now been granted to all of the 52 people who were aboard the boat.
Detention centre contractor guilty of abuse
The company contracted to run immigration detention centres has been issued with penalties of more than $500,000 after a damning report found mistreatment of detainees. The new secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Andrew Metcalfe, expressed his "deep regret and concern" over the findings of an independent report, released yesterday, into the transfer of five people between two detention centres in 2004. The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, also expressed "extreme disappointment and anger" at the treatment of the five detainees, who were transferred from Maribyrnong to the Baxter detention centre last September. The report found access to toilets was denied, which meant the detainees had to urinate in the compartments in the van transporting them. They were also denied adequate food and fluids, rest, exercise and medical treatment and were humiliated, the report says. The detention officers contracted to the Department of Immigration were also found to have applied force to one detainee. The report said complaints by the detainees were not taken seriously. It recommended an apology to the victims, changes to operational procedures, retraining of officers, disciplinary measures, a review of complaints handling procedures and surprise audits of detention centres. Mr Metcalfe admitted the incident represented "a very serious breach of contract provisions by Global Solutions Limited", the detention centre contractor.
Asylum mentality
The new slogan for Australia's tourist islands should be "beautiful one day, gone the next". Dozens of islands have effectively been booted off the list of official territories under a change to the migration zone. The Whitsundays, Lindeman, Hayman, Magnetic and Dunk islands are no longer part of Australia as far as asylum-seekers are concerned. Boat people will need to sail farther to reach the mainland before being able to claim refugee status and apply for visas. Every island off the coast between Mackay, on the Queensland coast, and Exmouth, in Western Australia, is not Australia for migration purposes. [...] The president of the community association on Magnetic island, Lorna Hempstead, said the change did not make locals feel less Australian.
"It's just an administrative title," the tour bus operator said. "The chances of boat people arriving here are almost zero."
Govt 'quietly' excises islands
A Just Australia (AJA) national coordinator Kate Gauthier said that if the government was bringing in genuine reform of asylum seeker policy, it would not at the same time be finding ways to cut the ability of people to claim asylum. "AJA remains firmly against any excision, on the basis that it is a backdoor method of dodging our responsibilities under the (United Nations) Refugee Convention to people who are in need of our protection as a democratic country," she said. "Either Australian territory is Australian or it isn't."
A bridge on the road to nowhere
The moment often comes at night. For years some have waited, after fleeing persecution and surviving a base, bare existence of detention where their day-to-day lives drag against a backdrop of suicides, depression and mental illness. Then, often unannounced, an official finally brings the papers to be signed, offering the beginning of a life in Australia. It should be the point where they start to think of themselves as among the lucky ones. But standing in the night air for the first time outside the razor wire, there is no road of freedom before them. Placed on what is known as a "bridging visa E", the former detainees are generally forbidden to work, cannot study and have no access to Medicare. As of last month, there were about 8000 people across Australia on this type of visa. It is seen as a short-term option by the Department of Immigration, but officials cannot say how long people have been on the visas and support groups insist some have held them for years.
Human Rights Commissioner welcomes release of children from immigration detention
“It has been a long road to reach this milestone, which has been arrived at only through the hard work and determination of a large network of NGOs, community groups and individuals, whose genuine compassion and belief in this cause has finally resulted in change,” said Dr Ozdowski. [...] “There have been several thousand children held in immigration detention over the past few years. As I said at the launch of the report [A last resort?] - let no child who arrives in Australia ever suffer under this system again.”
Families released from immigration detention centres
"This is the way forward for better refugee policy," said Ms Gauthier. "There is no need to detain everyone in high security settings for the whole time it takes to process refugee claims. The releases are living proof that there is a better way that doesn't compromise security or proper processes. "This is a belated but positive step forward - now we ask the Government to ensure the release programs for families are covered by regulations, so that there is no danger of families being detained in future.
42 children released from immigration detention
MARK COLVIN: All children and their families are now out of Australia's immigration detention centres. Since Wednesday, 42 children from 17 families have been released from five separate detention centres, including the Christmas Island facility, which is now vacant. It means the Federal Government has met the deadline set by the Prime Minister six weeks ago when he announced a softening of the Government's mandatory detention policy and promised to release all children from behind the razor wire. Now it will be largely up to non-government organisations like the Red Cross to help the families settle into Australian life.
Last detention children released
While the 39 children detained on the mainland, and their families, still face deportation if their refugee applications are rejected, the Christmas Island group will be free to live in the community for the three-year duration of their TPVs. Dianne Hiles of ChilOut, formed to advocate that all children be released from detention, said 18 children were released earlier today from the Port Augusta and Baxter detention centres in South Australia.
Refugee groups praise families' release
The coordinator of the refugee advocacy group Chilout, Alannah Sherry, says it is not clear how the community detention restrictions will be applied to the released families. "So far we've only spoken to one who was one of the first ones to leave Villawood [in Sydney] and she said yes, we can go down to the shops without being accompanied so that's a good sign," Ms Sherry said. Immigration Department (DIMIA) spokesman David Seal has confirmed the families will be allowed to spend time away from home without supervision.
Last children in detention freed today
Among those being released today is a girl with special care needs, the last child held at Maribyrnong. A spokesman for the department said she would be released with her family and her "special care needs will be met in her new residence". Three children from two families are leaving Baxter, in South Australia, while 15 children from eight families are being transferred from Immigration Department houses in Port Augusta to community housing.
Cry freedom as families let go
Apolonia Djami and her son George, 9, spent nine months in Villawood. She looked forward to shopping and calling friends. "I am so happy and stressed and relieved, all at the same time. But I'm still so sorry for all the detainees still in there," she said.
New Community Arrangements for Families In Detention
Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, announced that families in detention had today started moving into residence determination arrangements within the community as a result of her department’s, and others’ hard work and determination to put in place appropriate arrangements for these families. [...]
The residence determination arrangements have been put in place in partnership with non-government organisations, which will be funded by my department to take care of housing and living expenses for the families. ‘The NGOs will also provide case officers to assist these families and to ensure they have access to appropriate services.’ ‘I would like to extend my gratitude and appreciation to the Australian Red Cross and the other NGOs with whom they are working for the care role they are playing and their continuing commitment to working with us and the families. [...]
Senator Vanstone said that using her new Ministerial intervention powers she had decided to grant Temporary Protection Visas to the remaining Christmas Island caseload. There are currently 11 people, including three children, on Christmas Island whose visas will take effect from tomorrow, when they are expected to arrive in Perth. In addition, there is one adult currently in alternative detention in Perth, while another is on a Bridging Visa. Both will also receive TPVs.
All remaining 13 Viet boatpeople on Christmas Island get TPVs
"We applaud the Minister's decision, which accords with the Australian ethos of helping people facing persecution", said Mr. Doan, General Secretary of the Vietnamese Community in Australia. All of the other 40 fellow asylum seekers on the same boat, "Hao Kiet", have previously been given refugee status. They all are in virtually identical circumstances, having been involved in dropping pro-democracy leaflets. The Hanoi regime, which kills or imprisons anyone who disagrees with the one-Party rule it has written into Vietnam's Constitution, would harshly punish them if Australia returns them. "We call on the Australian Government to drop people-smuggling charges on 2 of the people on that boat. One is now recognised as a refugee, the other is an Australian citizen, neither gains any profit from organising the escape voyage, yet both have been given 5-year sentences. The people-smuggling law is meant to target criminals who organise trips for profit, not asylum seekers who flee persecution with their loved ones.
Children in detention freed
Australia has abandoned one of the most criticised aspects of its immigration policy having released scores of children from detention. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has pledged that all minors remaining in custody will be free by the weekend. “As of this morning there were 42 children from 20 families in immigration detention centres. By the end of this week, there will be none,” the minister said in a statement. “With this new, flexible approach for families, the government is maintaining its strong stance on border control while being sensitive to the special needs of families in detention.”
Australia frees children from immigration detention
Under the new arrrangements, families will live in the community but will have to be available to report to the Immigration Department. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says the families will be provided with accommodation, mainly through the Red Cross, although the government will foot the bill. Dianne Hiles from the refugee advocacy group, Chilout, says it is really important to get children out from behind razor wire. "It's a fantastic development that children are not being locked up in these terrible high security places that are no place for children," she said.
Last batch of children released
Authorities have today begun releasing 45 children and their families held in Australian immigration detention centres. The families of the 21 children held at Villawood were today allowed to leave the detention centre. But are not free. They have been housed in serviced apartments under a community detention plan.
Last detained children set for release
The children, from 20 families, were being transferred to community-based accommodation, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said. "By the end of this week, there will be none (in detention)," Senator Vanstone said. There had been 59 children in immigration detention when Prime Minister John Howard announced changes to the system for families in detention on June 17, she said. Fourteen had since been granted visas, two were in alternative detention, and one had turned 18. Those in alternative detention would also be released into the community by the end of the week.
Immigration scrambles to meet child release deadline
There is frantic activity in Australia's immigration detention centres today as officials try to deliver the Federal Government's promise to release children into the community.
Court opens door for refugees
MORE than 1000 asylum-seekers facing deportation may be able to stay in Australia after a groundbreaking Federal Court judgment yesterday undermined a key plank of the Howard Government's visa protection system. The full bench of the Federal Court ruled that asylum-seekers whose temporary protection visas had expired could not be deported unless the government proved their country of origin was safe. It means that TPV holders can no longer be forced to again prove their refugee status when their three-year visa expires -- a process that could lead to deportation. Under the new ruling, they could instead be issued with a permanent visa.
Homes not ready for freed children
The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, would not say yesterday whether the department would be able to release the 45 children still in detention by Friday, but said the tightness of the Sydney housing market meant some families might have to go into temporary accommodation.
Vanstone backtracks on Hwang case errors
SENATOR AMANDA VANSTONE: The advice I have is that the children were taken to the facility at the request of the mother, but not themselves technically detained. And that's perfectly understandable - a mother's detained, she's entitled to ask for her children to be brought to her.
MARK BANNERMAN: Michaela Byers, though, utterly rejects this explanation.
MICHAELA BYERS: There was no dire or immediate need for these children to be with their mother. They were in the care of their aunty, attending Stanmore Public School. Of course, upon news of what happened to their mother they would feel some distress, but there was no request by their mother that the children be with her in detention.
MARK BANNERMAN: In fact, the decision to detain Ian Hwang and his sister Janie, who was born in Australia, takes on a far more sinister overtone when you know the Department of Immigration intended to deport the whole family within 14 days of their detention. With the children on the way to Sydney Airport, the plan was foiled only when a Federal Court order was faxed to Korean Airlines.
When those children were picked up, the intention was very rapidly to deport them. Now you acted to stop that.
MICHAELA BYERS: That's correct.
MARK BANNERMAN: Had you not acted, what would have been the result?
MICHAELA BYERS: The department would have had an opportunity to deport their mistake and no one would have known and I believe it wouldn't be uncovered at all.
Mike Steketee: Something rotten in Immigration
The ramifications of [The Palmer Report's] findings about government abuse of power are profound and long-lasting. At least they should be, unless John Howard is allowed to escape by managing them away as a short-term political problem. They are captured eloquently by Mick Palmer, the former Federal Police commissioner, when he observes in his report that Immigration Department officers "are authorised to exercise exceptional, even extraordinary, powers. That they should be permitted and expected to do so without adequate training, without proper management and oversight, with poor information systems and with no genuine checks and balances on the exercises of these powers is of great concern."
Locked up family held illegally, says lawyer
A family released last night from Villawood detention centre after being locked up for four months had not been illegally in Australia, their lawyer said last night. [...] The family's lawyer, Michaela Byers, said the Immigration Department had reviewed the family's files and found they had been in Australia legally since 1998. "There's a been a review of their files - meaning their parents' previous visa applications - in which they've found that there was an error," Ms Byers told ABC Television. "So, since 1998, technically the family have been holding bridging visas and have not been illegal. "They've been in detention for four months, so the department's had many opportunities to review their file, and it appears that they only realised within the past couple of days that there had been an administrative error."
Children freed after DIMIA realises mistake
Two young children, who were seized from school four months ago and placed in Sydney's Villawood detention centre with their mother, are free tonight after a surprise decision by the Department of Immigration.
Qasim thanks govt for freedom at last
"I am greatly thankful to Minister Amanda Vanstone for giving me visa to live in the community," the 31-year-old said in a statement he read to reporters. "And I would [give] thanks to Mr Dick Smith and all the politicians and backbenchers and my lawyers and all the lovely supporters who worked hard to get me my freedom."
Australia frees 'Indian' migrant
"Now I can be free and I can walk outside and I can enjoy my freedom," he said. "I don't know what my future is now but I am happy to have a chance to live a normal life." Ms Vanstone said Mr Qasim would probably leave his hospital on Monday when his doctors returned to work. Critics of Australia's immigration policy have used Mr Qasim's case to argue that it is unjust and harsh. Labor immigration spokesman Tony Burke said: "After seven years in detention for a man who, by all accounts, has done absolutely nothing wrong other than want to become an Australian, surely they can give some certainty to his life." Under the terms of his visa, Mr Qasim is able to work and receive benefits but has to accept deportation if it is ordered. Commentators say that is unlikely as no country in seven years has said it will accept him.
Fall guys' soft landing
Immigration placated the tourism industry by making entry to Australia easier through electronic visas, at the same time placating the xenophobes by being ostentatiously harsh on some - only some - people who were not authorised to be in the country. In short, the administration of immigration policy was, and is, driven more by political spin than national interest. When it suited the Government's political agenda to encourage department officers to be ruthless and tough, it did so, for political ends. When it became a problem, the bureaucrats became the fall guys, albeit guys who fell into very comfortable new jobs.
Pressure mounts on Govt over immigration bungles
Despite its limited scope, the Palmer inquiry, which was set up by the Government to investigate the wrongful detention of Australian resident Cornelia Rau, has made damning findings against the Immigration Department and recommended an urgent need for change. The former federal police commissioner, Mick Palmer, found that there were systemic failures in the department which he says is dominated by a "culture of denial and self justification" and that the Government's contract with the company running the detention centres is "fundamentally flawed".
Liberty disregarded by DIMIA: Palmer report
The statement reads: "Protection of individual liberty is at the heart of Australian democracy". They're the first words in a set of principles underlying Australia's immigration detention policy. But the Palmer report shows that for two women, individual liberty was disregarded by the officers and managers of the Department of Immigration.
Howard's apology to victims of system
JOHN Howard has made an official apology to Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez and flagged a shake-up of the Immigration Department after evidence of systemic failure in the organisation. [...] The Prime Minister embraced former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer's warning that change must come "from the top" by announcing the department's entire executive leadership would be moving on to new positions. Mr Howard also confirmed he would not support a royal commission or judicial inquiry into the matter, despite pleas for a further investigation from Ms Rau's family.
Commonwealth Ombudsman takes on immigration detention investigations
Commonwealth Ombudsman, Prof. John McMillan, is to undertake investigation of the 201 immigration detention matters identified by the Government. Mr Mick Palmer and Mr Neil Comrie and their team have partially undertaken an investigation of some of those matters, including the case of Ms Vivian Alvarez Solon. The Ombudsman announced that the Government has requested his office to continue the investigations under the Ombudsman Act 1976.
Commonwealth Ombudsman review of circumstances of long-term immigration detainees
From 29 June 2005, the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s office assumes the responsibility for conducting reviews of people who have been in immigration detention for two years or more. Under changes to the Migration Act 1958, the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) is now required to report to the Commonwealth Ombudsman every six months on the circumstances of each long-term detainee. The Ombudsman will examine each report and provide his independent assessment and recommendations on the appropriateness of the person’s detention arrangements to the Minister for Immigration, who must then table the assessment in Parliament. The Ombudsman may in his assessment recommend the release of a person, the granting of a permanent visa, the ongoing detention, or any other recommendation he considers appropriate.
Time to end failed detention system
"Both the Palmer Inquiry Report and the recent Auditor General's report has shown that outsourcing detention centres to private companies fails on all counts - legal, welfare and cost effectiveness. "It's time the Federal Government stopped ignoring the viable and effective alternative to detention that exists. Welfare agencies have been proposing it for over two years now.
Palmer Report fails to provide any real solutions
The ASRC is deeply concerned that the Palmer report will allow DIMIA to simply make cosmetic changes and avoid the complete overhaul that is required of our immigration system. DIMIA has already started embarking on an exercise of simply moving the deck chairs at a management level to create the impression of change (see press release of Peter Shergold, DIMIA Secretary http://www.pmc.gov.au/speeches/shergold/dimia_2005-07-14.cfm) rather than look to overhaul and change a detention system and culture that is unworkable, unjust and inherently harmful to asylum seekers.
Mental Anguish will Continue for Detainees
Senator Allison said Mick Palmer's scathing assessment of inadequate mental health treatment provided to immigration detainees has been highlighted in numerous submissions to the current Senate Inquiry into Mental Health. The Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma states in its submission that the "isolation and indefinite nature of detention under the constant threat of forced deportation is highly corrosive of mental health".
Family begins a new life after limbo of Nauru
There were tears of relief and joy as the Rehmatis - Mohammed Ali Rehmati, 39, his wife Alieya, 34, their daughters Ilham, 14, and Zahra, 7, and sons Mohammed Basit, 15, and Abbas, 9 - were greeted in Canberra by friends, community members and their migration agent Marion Le. [...] The Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, last week used her discretion to grant the family temporary protection visas - 3½ years after the family first attempted to reach Australia.
Freedom and friendship rediscovered
The Rehmati family, the last out of Nauru, arrived yesterday to an emotional reception from other Afghan families and migration agent Marion Le. Ilham Rehmati, 14, wept tears of joy as she hugged her friend Fahima Baqir. "I really missed her. I admire her, she's my best friend," Ilham said. Nauru, she said, was like a prison, especially after Fahima's family were granted visas in July last year and the pair were separated.
Tears for freed asylum family from Nauru
Ilham's sister, seven-year-old Zahra, was also reunited with her best friend Zahra Hussaini, who was released three weeks ago. The two Zahras were inseparable during their time on Nauru and will now start school together in Canberra. "I'm so happy she's here," Zahra Hussaini said. [...] A grateful Mr Rahmati spoke of his joy at the fact his children could now live a good life. But he urged the government to release the remaining 34 detainees on Nauru. "When I was on Air Nauru travelling to Brisbane I was crying for those people who are left on Nauru," Mr Rahmati said.
Nauru detention family calls for complete release
Ilham Rahmati, 14, says she is relieved to be settling in Canberra after almost four years on Nauru. "First I feel happy and then I feel my freedom, finally I got my freedom," she said. "I was like a prisoner there. My freedom was in my room. "I couldn't go out because I was single girl in there and now I feel free."
Back in the headlines, but now it's good news
Michael arrived in Melbourne on a Qantas domestic flight with 14 members of his extended family - his parents, grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins - to begin a new life in Australia. The Vietnamese family had been detained on Christmas Island for nearly two years after fleeing Vietnam on the small fishing boat, the Hao Kiet, which was detected in Australian waters off Port Hedland in July 2003.
Activist teen in running for prize
At just 17, Hannah Monagle, from Kyneton, could be internationally recognised for her views on public affairs and human rights issues. [...] Hannah said visiting detainees at the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia on three occasions was an eye-opener.
"Getting to know them beyond the news headlines has just been amazing," she said. "They really are beautiful people." As youth ambassador for Chill Out, which raises awareness of the plight of children in Australian detention centres, the teenager was among four young Australians who met Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone for breakfast last year.
IMMIGRATION DETENTION
The Australian Government has decided on a number of changes to both the law and the handling of matters relating to people in immigration detention. Read the full release...
Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Act 2005
Read the amendments and briefings on the web site of A Just Australia.
Read the explanatory memorandum on the amendments.The bill has now passed both the lower and upper houses.
Our secret children
THESE are the faces of the 27 children being held in the Villawood detention centre who could soon be freed under new Federal Government laws. [...] Many of them can't remember life on the outside. But under the Government's proposed new laws the children could be released into the community in Sydney while their families' claims for residency are investigated and assessed by the Department of Immigration. [...]
ChilOut spokesperson Alanna Sherry said she was unsure how many of the families would now qualify for release, but was optimistic about the changes overall. "Living as a detainee family outside the razor wire is a vast improvement on living as a detainee family behind it. But it doesn't remove the uncertainty and the fear of the future," she said.
Work in progress
The co-ordinator of the action group ChilOut, Alanna Sherry, believes there should be a presumption against the detention of children and has called for an amendment to the Migration Act. [...] She acts as an intermediary between lawyers and detainees, and says she also wants to quash misinformation, as well as shine a light on the plight of those who are suffering. "It's amazing how many Villawood detainees don't know what their basic rights are," she says.
Christmas Is detention centre construction to continue
The Federal Government says the construction of a $300 million detention centre on Christmas Island will go ahead, despite changes to the Government's immigration policy.
Australian senate approves new immigration detention policy
Australia's upper house of parliament has approved changes to Australia's policy on detaining people who arrive in the country without visas.
Family held in detention on Nauru to live in Canberra
Canberra resident John Maloney has been helping families to resettle and says it will take time for the Rehmatis to feel comfortable. [...] "Within 12 months one would hope that they have a sense of being part of our Canberra community and are happy here and are prepared to stay here."
Immigration Freedom Flight 'Half Full' Fiasco
The Immigration Department has chartered a jet to bring 20 Vietnamese Refugees who have been held in detention on Christmas Island since 2003, to Australia on a half full freedom flight. The jet will touch down in Perth at 5pm WST on Friday 24 June leaving behind 12 closely related fellow Vietnamese who are long term detainees, including 3 children. Refugee Advocate Mrs Kaye Bernard said, "The Immigration Minister could intervene and direct her department to provide boarding passes for the remaining 12 who fit the Bill for the PM's new Immigration policy." she added," the jet has 71 seats and the fiasco of leaving behind these 12 close family members, needs to be addressed by the Minister today."
Last family on Nauru granted humanitarian visas
Throughout their detention, the family, who are expected to arrive in Australia on Saturday, insisted they were genuine refugees from Afghanistan but for years their claims were rejected. Last month nine other Afghanis were granted humanitarian visas, leaving the Rehmatis as the last family on the tiny island. Shortly after 2pm yesterday, the family were given forms and asked to sign them. [...] Fourteen-year-old Ilham Rehmati was the only teenage girl held in the centre. In her letters to a friend in Australia, obtained by The Herald, Ilham revealed how traumatic her time in isolation had been. "In Nauru it is very bad. I always sit in my room," she wrote. "I can't walk. I can't run. Can't play. Can't talk loudly and can't sit anywhere."
Dissent flares over detention policy
As detention continued to embarrass Labor, a NSW Liberal backbencher claimed the Government's move to free children from detention would encourage asylum seekers to have children to avoid detention. Alan Cadman said the Government's proposed legislation would "encourage people, wherever possible, to have children, be they in detention or not".
Last child detained on Nauru to be freed
"This family have been granted temporary visas to allow them lawful entry to Australia," an Immigration Department spokesman said. "They are the last family group with children on Nauru. "When they arrive in Australia there will be no families with children on Nauru." The spokesman said the family would depart Nauru next week.
New detention laws pass lower house
Under the proposed laws, which now need to be passed by the Senate, new refugee applications will have to be processed within six months and the cases of all temporary protection visa holders seeking permanent residency will be decided by October 31 this year. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone will be given discretion to release children and their families, and long-term detainees, into community care and there will be a three-month deadline for the immigration department to make initial visa decisions.
Koreans in Australia demand release of two child detainees
The move to release the two from the Villawood Immigration Detention Center was initiated by parents of the Stanmore elementary school in Sydney where the two were arrested. Parents in Stanmore signed a petition for lawmakers saying that the children at the detention center suffer mental stress by witnessing other detainees attempting to hurt themselves.
Detained children could be freed by August
Mr Georgiou described the bill as a quantum leap in detention laws and thanked Mr Howard for his consideration. "The overwhelming reality is this legislation represents a major and essential step to ensuring a more flexible humane, compassionate and accountable framework for the treatment of asylum seekers and others," he told parliament. Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski, who has been scathing of the treatment of children in detention, welcomed the changes but warned more was needed.
'Significant' migration bill tabled
Peter McGauran, the minister representing the Immigration Minister in the Lower House, has introduced the bill. "These changes represent a a significant milestone in the department of migration law in Australia," he said. "I am proud to introduce the bill on behalf of Senator Vanstone the Minister for Immigration Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, and the whole of the Government and commend the bill to the House."
The day Howard bowed to winds of change
My sincere thanks to the Georgiou-Moylan group, and to the many who worked so hard to support them, for triggering this long overdue step on the road to real reform. The struggle must continue. [Tony Kevin]
PM admits immigration changes long overdue
KERRY O'BRIEN: But given that you are now acknowledging the long overdue fact that children and their parents should be in a somewhat softer form of detention than the kind of razor-wire detention that they have been subjected to, what sort of conditions will be imposed on these detainee families once they are removed into community detention?
JOHN HOWARD: Well, Kerry, it will depend on the circumstances of each case. What will have to happen - and we're talking here about a very small number, we're talking at the moment of about 25 to 30 children who are in detention centres. There are a number of children who are in residential housing, which is residential accommodation under 24-hour guard, which is an adjacent to a detention centre, so we're talking about a small number. What will happen is that each family will, as it were, be case managed by the minister and the department, and in some cases, the reporting requirements and the detention conditions will be light; in other cases, it will be heavy. Bear in mind that people who have overstayed a visa in this country are only taken into detention in practice if they have been multiple breakers of conditions imposed on their being allowed to remain in the country while their application for a new visa is being assessed. So not every case is quite as innocent as is often represented in the media.
Children to be freed under detention changes: PM
Mr Howard told ABC TV on Monday night that about 25 to 30 children were currently in detention centres. While there would still be some conditions placed on families living in the community, Mr Howard said they would depend on the circumstances of each case. [...] Mr Howard said the new policy would not apply to children living in offshore processing centres, such as Afghani children in detention on Nauru.
Kids to be detained as last resort: PM
"The objective of the changes is to - as far as is humanly practicable and consistent with that principle - that families with children should be in residence detention.
"In other words, in the community but still legally in the status of detention." Mr Howard said this would not involve 24-hour guards, as had been reported in some media coverage, and circumstances would vary in each individual case.
Conditions for latest bridging visa relaxed
The Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has relaxed the conditions for the new temporary protection visa, and she says that along with Mr Qasim she'll invite another 50 failed asylum seekers to apply for the "removal pending bridging visa".
Australia Announces Major Changes in Treatment of Undocumented Refugees
Prime Minister John Howard, under pressure from moderates in his own party, has announced major changes in the country's treatment of refugees who show up without any documents - many having survived perilous journeys for which they paid a life's saving - have been promptly thrown into detention centers.
How Howard got himself out of detention
The power the four wielded turned out to be extraordinary. This was all the more so when you remember that most MPs in the party room did not want to make big changes in the mandatory detention policy. They thought it just should be altered around the edges. What has been done goes far beyond that, although falling short of the rebels' wish list. The reforms will enshrine in law that children aren't detained and will get families out of detention. They will lead to the release into the community of most or all the present long-term detainees. They will put what the immigration minister does about long-term detainees under the scrutiny of the Ombudsman. [...] The steel of Georgiou and the stubbornness of Moylan were vital, especially round mid-week, when feeling within the Government back bench became palpably critical of the rebels. [...]
There remain worries among refugee advocates that things will go wrong in the delivery, and disappointment that the victory did not go further. But there are protections - of which one is legislation and the debate that will involve - and more gains by the backbenchers were simply not possible.
New detention policy flawed, say advocates
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre campaign co-ordinator Pamela Curr said detainees needed - at least - access to the Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme, generally unavailable to protection visa applicants seeking a review of their case through the Refugee Review Tribunal. She attempted to cut off potential criticism that ASAS payments would be untenable. "It's only 89 per cent of the dole," she said. A spokeswoman for Human Services Minister Joe Hockey said the potential benefits available to people affected by new policies would be discussed this week.
Palmer exposes 'mindless zealotry'
The Palmer report is likely to call for a big shake-up of the entire immigration detention system after finding that overlapping responsibilities between the Department of Immigration, Global Solutions and private health contractors led to the delays in identifying and treating Cornelia Rau, a mentally ill Australian resident wrongly detained at Baxter for months. The report devotes a chapter to the department and the "mindless zealotry" prevailing in certain sections, including the detection and compliance branch. It is believed to be scathing about the circumstances in which Ms Alvarez Solon was deported, especially the way in which a doctor's opinion was obtained stating she was fit to travel when she clearly was not.
Editorial: Political sense prevails
Mr Georgiou's colleagues, especially in the Senate, where the Government will have the slightest of majorities from next month, will have watched and learned. Most important, Mr Howard's announcement was also a triumph for common sense. It protected the policy of mandatory detention while ending its more outrageous applications. That mandatory detention of illegal arrivals is tough in principle and onerous in application has been clear for years. There was never a case for locking up kids. And leaving people in prison for years while their claims are considered by bureaucrats is unjust.
Senator to submit detention bills
"The Greens do not want people on Nauru and Christmas Island to become the forgotten people," he said. Senator Brown says if the Government is serious about a softer detention policy it should adopt his amendments. "If the Government's newfound sensitivity - for people who are languishing in mandatory detention, for people who are being mentally traumatised, for children who should never as innocents be locked up behind razor wire - is genuine, then those people from Nauru should be brought to Australia and brought here immediately," he said.
Refugee advocates seek more changes
The coordinator of the children's refugee advocacy group Chil-out, Dianne Hiles, says she cautiously welcomes the changes. "If it actually comes off we are ecstatic," she said. "We have had some false storms before but let's really, really hope that this time we are going to see the end of detaining children and families in our immigration detention centres."
Psychiatrists dismiss Vanstone's call to limit role
Some psychiatrists are worried the men may be sent back to the detention centre, but Senator Vanstone says that is not their concern. [...] "I think it's very much in a psychiatrist's role to express concerns about things that they think are damaging to their patient's health," [Jon Jureidini] said. "It would be negligent of a psychiatrist not to speak out against things that drive people crazy. "I know that the patients I've seen were driven crazy by being in Baxter. "To send them back there, once they'd recovered, would be to expose them to the same kinds of risks that caused the problem in the first place."
We've failed detainees - PM caves in
Mr Howard described the changes as "significant pieces of liberalisation" and "a good outcome for the Liberal Party", while admitting that with hindsight the Government could have acted sooner. "We have to confess that was one of the many failings of this Government," he said. Under the changes, all families with children currently in detention - there were 52 children in detention on June 8 - will be taken out of centres and kept in "community detention". This could occur within four to six weeks for those families whose cases have already been decided and are not currently being removed from Australia.
Howard yields to rebels
The changes will be put into legislation, amending the Migration Act, and overseen by an interdepartmental committee headed by the head of Mr Howard's department, Peter Shergold. The rebel Liberals have been dealt into the process - the committee will review progress with Mr Georgiou and his colleagues fortnightly. The Prime Minister refused to meet the rebels' demand to scrap indefinite detention.
Winners and grinners all round
The rebels have three protections against slippage. The deal is in writing. Changes will be legislated. And there will be regular liaison with the backbenchers. Despite yesterday's deal, the immigration agony is far from over. The Palmer report on Rau is said to be a real hair-raiser.
Asylum debate leaves public in the dark
Swift footwork averts a revolt
Georgiou no stranger to the politics game
Detention detente
Petro Georgiou and his moderate colleagues can walk away with honour. While Howard won the best of this compromise because he held most of the political cards, detention policy has been reformed significantly. [...] This modest policy change is underwritten by the shift in electoral sentiment since the 2001 crackdown. This reform is belated. It should have come sooner. In the end it took a political threat, a three-week saga and eight hours of negotiations between Howard and Liberal moderates to win the most important change to detention policy since the 2001 election.
MP confident party will approve detention deal
Mr Georgiou says it is still a win even though he did not get all he wanted out of the deal to drop two bills aimed at winding back the immigration detention policy. "We didn't get all we wanted but this is a step forward,' he said. [...] The director of the New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry, Dr Louise Newman, says the changes are a mediocre compromise that do not fully address the issues faced by families in detention. "The devil will be in the detail. "We need to certainly see what this actually means in practice. "While it's certainly good that children will no longer be behind the razor wire if they are still in forms of detention with relatively unsupported families, then unfortunately we can expect the same mental health and developmental problems."
Reforms a welcome step but Australia is still breaching the Convention on the Rights of the Child
ChilOut welcomes the Government's announcement that it will transfer all families - not just families seeking asylum - from detention centres to community detention. Fathers' inclusion in the definition of "family" is welcome, if four years late. However, ChilOut urges the Prime Minister to abandon community detention and embrace family bridging visas. See release for key points.... (PDF version...)
Reverting to a 'culture' of compassion and respect
On World Refugee Day (20 June), Human Rights Commissioner Dr Sev Ozdowski has called on all Australians to once again treat all refugees and asylum seekers with the dignity and respect they deserve. [...] "We should not assume these people are trying to undermine our migration system and treat them like criminals, it is important that we stop and show respect and compassion for asylum seekers, who are in essence fellow human beings in dire need. They should not be demonised or punished by being locked up indefinitely behind barbed wire, but should be saluted for their courage and their will. [...] "I once again call on the Australian Government to release all children and their parents from immigration detention and adjust our immigration laws so they comply with human rights," Dr Ozdowski said.
Australia softens detention rules
softened its controversial mandatory detention of immigrants who arrive without visas. The biggest change is that families with children will no longer be held in detention centres. The move follows recent media coverage of a three-year-old who had spent her entire life in detention and had mental health problems.
Refugee advocate says changes simply tinkering, not substantial
IAN RINTOUL: [...] I think unless the Government is willing to address the fundamental things that underpin that policy, the punitive nature of mandatory detention, the adversarial qualities of refugee determination, you know, no amount of fiddling at the edges is going to rectify the problem. The political crisis that surrounds the Government is going to go on.
EDMOND ROY: So what would satisfy you? A complete dismantling of the mandatory detention system?
IAN RINTOUL: Ah, yes, I think there has to be a dismantling of that. We didn't have mandatory detention prior to 1992, and the sky didn't fall, and I think we can go back to that situation where we had, you know, migrant hostels and not detention centres, where people were processed in the community and not behind barbed wire.
Georgiou withdraws immigration bills, as deal struck with PM
MARK COLVIN: There's to be a massive shake-up of the Federal Government's immigration detention policy. After marathon negotiations with a group of rebel Liberal MPs, the Prime Minister has announced numerous changes, including releasing all women, children and families from detention. The changes to the Migration Act will be introduced into Federal Parliament next week. The agreement reached between John Howard and the dissident MPs means the end to a divisive debate among Coalition MPs.
A great outcome for asylum seekers: Judi Moylan
JUDI MOYLAN: It's a great outcome for asylum seekers and for a more humane, flexible, transparent detention policy, and that's what we were looking for.
There have been compromises, that's true, but we believe that we've worked constructively with the Prime Minister to get the key elements of the requirements we laid out in the bill. Now, one of those is the release of families with children into the community, and that…
ALEXANDRA KIRK: Are there no strings attached to that?
JUDI MOYLAN: That will be enshrined in the Act.
Now, there will be some conditions around that, but they will be out in the community, not kept in detention centres.
Government detention deal
Prime Minister John Howard said Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone will be given new powers to specify alternative arrangements for a person's detention and grant visas to detainees at her own discretion. "The purpose of this, in shorthand, is to enable the detention of families with children to take place in the community where conditions would be set to meet their individual circumstances," Mr Howard said. "I stress their legal status would still be that of detention.
AUST DETENTION POLICY BACKFLIP
PM backs down over detention
The key changes announced by Mr Howard include releasing children and their families from detention, and moving to limit the time taken to process asylum claims, which can take years to work their way through Canberra's bureaucracy. [...] The Government would amend the Migration Act to allow families seeking asylum in Australia to be released from detention centres, he said. [...] The Government has previously refused to release children, arguing it would encourage people smugglers to choose families with youngsters in the knowledge that they would not be locked up once they reached Australia.
Compromise on detention policy reached
Mr Howard said although there was strong support for the existing policy, the Government would take the opportunity to see it was administered more fairly, flexibly and in a timely manner. Mr Howard said the Government would amend the Migration Act to allow families seeking asylum in Australia to be released from detention centres.
PM announces major changes to migration laws
Prime Minister John Howard has announced major changes to Australia's system of immigration detention. Families with children will be placed in community housing, rather than in detention centres, and thousands of those on temporary protection visas will be allowed to stay in Australia permanently.
IMMIGRATION DETENTION
The Australian Government has decided on a number of changes to both the law and the handling of matters relating to people in immigration detention. Read the full release...
NGOs challenge manager of Australia's detention centres
Five non-government human rights organisations have lodged a complaint against the company that administers Australia's immigration detention centres. The groups accuse Global Solutions Limited of breaching Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines on human rights. [....] They say they have lodged an 18-page complaint with government officials in Australia and in the United Kingdom, where Global Solutions is based. Patrick Earle from the Human Rights Council says it focuses on the company's compliance with the indefinite detention and the detention of children.
"These are perhaps the two clearest areas where the company is in breach of its obligations under the guidelines," he said.
International complaint launched against Global Solutions Ltd over Australian Immigration Detention Centres
The complaint - by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), the Human Rights Council of Australia (HRCA), Children Out of Detention (ChilOut) and the Brotherhood of St Laurence - is based on the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). [...] "GSL advertises that its policies 'are guided by respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights'. Yet Australia's detention regime for asylum seekers has been found to be in clear breach of international human rights," say the NGOs.
Backbench detention revolt 'political terrorism'
Mr Georgiou will introduce two private members' bills into Parliament on Monday afternoon that water down the policy unless Mr Howard can come up with an acceptable alternative. The MPs want children and their families released into the community, all detainees freed after 12 months in detention, and permanent residency given to temporary protection visa holders. [...] West Australian MP Judi Moylan, said she would not get into a "slanging match" with colleagues but said party unity had to be put aside to preserve human rights.
Lives built on longing
Turqy's wedding party is an example of the rigid departmental culture that Vanstone says needs changing. Rules and regulations too often preclude common sense and compassion. Splitting up families is supposed to be a decision of last resort. But even on the wedding day, immigration officials believed it appropriate that Turqy spend just 60 minutes with his daughter.
Detention report pressures Howard
A review body with powers similar to the federal ombudsman's is among the recommendations expected in a damning report by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer, who conducted the inquiry. [...] But in a bid to pre-empt the findings, to be presented on Friday, the Federal Government has already quietly accepted some major reforms.
These include:
Mothballing the much-maligned high-security isolation unit at the Baxter detention centre, near Port Augusta;
Significantly increasing psychiatric consultation at Baxter;
Improving health services and the faster processing of asylum-seeker claims, in line with Liberal MP Petro Georgiou's demands;
The removal of Immigration Department head Bill Farmer, although not immediately.
Howard keeps open mind on detention changes
Liberal backbencher Judy Moylan says Prime Minister John Howard has indicated he is willing to consider releasing families with children from detention. [...] Mr Georgiou met with Mr Howard yesterday, and emerged from the meeting saying that they had had some useful exchanges. [...] "I'm optimistic that we'll get a solution to the long-term detention of asylum seekers and a much more humane policy." Mr Georgiou will meet with Mr Howard again over the long weekend to discuss the unresolved issues.
PM buys time on rebel MPs' detention bill
The talks focused on how to treat families with children with more compassion, examining options such as community accommodation. They also looked at the legislation before Parliament that is designed to reduce the time spent in detention to see whether it could be amended to satisfy the MPs' aim. It is understood that some issues are unresolved, including automatic judicial review of detention.
Mom's sad recall
Virginia was among five, including two former detainees, who spoke at the rally themed ‘Enough is Enough’. The aim is to help free other children of detainees facing a similar situation Down Under. The rally was organised by ChilOut, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), in conjunction with the anniversary of the Human Rights Commission's recommendation to the Australian Government to release all children at such detention centres.
At the mercy of private guards
About a year ago, [Virginia Leong] climbed on to the roof of the detention centre with the child. The videotapes show what happened next. When she came down from the roof, Leong, a slight-built woman hardly larger than a child, was dragged along with her head held down by two large detention centre officers. When they reached the management unit, Leong was pushed face-down on the floor and a male officer about twice her size sat astride her, tightly holding her hands behind her back as a nurse instructed Leong, who was crying, to take Valium. In the world of DIMIA rules and regulations, Valium is a form of chemical restraint. Before administering it, detention centre officers must obtain the permission of Bill Farmer, the head of DIMIA. That's the theory, at any rate. In the real world, where Leong was being courteously restrained by detention centre officers engaging in an excessive use of force, the video shows a distressed Leong calling out: "I don't want the Valium." "Virginia, are you going to take the tablets?" says a nurse and, none too surprisingly, Leong, who still has the big officer sitting astride her tiny form, holding her hands behind her back, consents and takes the drugs.
Protesters demand end to detention of children
Hundreds of people gathered to protest against the detention of children. One of the speakers was Virginia Leong, who was released with her daughter from Villawood detention centre two and a half weeks ago. She says her daughter has spent her entire three-year-old life in detention and is now enjoying life on the outside. "She has changed, she eats more, she talks more," she said. "She is more active, she even hangs out with people more, everything's different." The Human Rights Commission tabled its report in Federal Parliament last year, demanding all children be released from detention by June 10. The lobby group ChilOut says there are 68 children still in detention.
New family friendly detention
Under the project, mothers and their children can live in residential housing under 24-hour surveillance. [...] "Yes, there's no razor wire, it's a calmer atmosphere but there's the infra-red detection system and the bottom line is, it's deprivation of liberty," [Alanna] Sherry, co-ordinator of refugee group ChilOut, said.
Vanstone's home away from home
Ignoring protesters' cries of "shame", Senator Vanstone described the centre, although guarded by security cameras and alarms, as utopian, upholding Australia's commitment to "border protection" but "softening the impact" on women and children. [...] Senator Vanstone said people smugglers should realise there was no point taking children on boats to smooth the passage into Australian society. The children would also be detained. But Ms Sherry said such an argument meant the children were in effect being used as human shields.
Asylum, of sorts, for seven-year detainee
AUSTRALIA'S longest-serving detainee, Peter Qasim, will today be transferred from Baxter detention centre to a psychiatric hospital in South Australia. [...] "They are going to send me to Glenside for mental treatment," he said. "I am feeling very depressed. DIMIA organised a psychiatrist and he said I better move there. It's been a very long time. I haven't heard anything."
Howard moves on detention to rein in MPs
The Prime Minister, John Howard, will offer improved health services and measures to reduce lengthy stays in detention when he discusses how to soften the impact of the mandatory immigration detention system with the Liberal MP Petro Georgiou. The talks are expected to include the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, and could be held as early as today. The talks are aimed at persuading Mr Georgiou to drop his proposed private members bill aimed at softening the detention rules and prevent the embarrassment of Liberal MPs voting against the Government on the detention policy.
Children As Human Shields Protest
ChilOut will stage an awareness-raising event tomorrow lunchtime in Martin Place, to highlight the plight of 68 children in immigration detention. Supporters will don human shields with the faces of current child detainees. [...] The Immigration Minister announced today that she would build a new detention centre - for families but excluding fathers - in Sydney's Villawood. "The last thing we need is another detention centre," Ms Hiles said. "Senator Vanstone should be closing them down, not building new ones."
Advocates criticise new family detention facility
Federal Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has turned the first sod for the new facility in Sydney's south-west. [...] "The Refugee Council has consistently argued that there should be opportunities for release from detention for people who are posing no risk to the community, particularly where you have children involved," [Refugee Council of Australia spokeswoman Margaret Piper] said. "They are still under 24-hour surveillance and their movements are curtailed and most significantly, they are separated from the father or male of the family."
New Villawood housing project launched today
Proponents of the concept say it's a humane response to the need to keep asylum seekers in detention. Certainly it provides an alternative for mothers and their children. Though it must be said that the so-called family-style accommodation does not accommodate fathers in any way. They have to remain in standard detention facilities, prompting the criticism that the housing projects force families apart.
Giau Nguyen spends 18th birthday in immigration detention
One asylum seeker who's been waiting and hoping for a successful appeal is 18-year-old Vietnamese schoolgirl, Giau Nguyen, who for the past two years has watched with increasing despair as others who came here with her by boat have been granted refugee status. She was the detainee whose case was raised recently in a Senate Estimates hearing when Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone was questioned about why detention centre guards prevented the delivery of a cake for her 18th birthday.
Ben Saul: Born-again Liberals grow a backbone
The architect of the bills, Petro Georgiou, and his colleagues, Judi Moylan, Bruce Baird, Russell Broadbent and Marise Payne, should be applauded for confronting Australia's cruel detention policy, which victimises vulnerable people for electoral gain and tramples basic legal principles.
Just let us return home
THIRTEEN children and their families are being held in the Villawood detention centre despite asking the Federal Government numerous times to be sent home. This latest case – uncovered by The Daily Telegraph – reveals the detention system's extraordinary problems where taxpayers are paying thousands to keep people in Australia who want to leave and the slowness in processing them. [...] The families say they are not coping with living in detention and want to go home. But the children born in Australia do not have appropriate travel documents and must be processed by the Tongan Government.
Note from ChilOut: The 3 Villawood families have been detained, waiting to be sent home to Tonga, since last July, October and November respectively.
Send them home
The children, who hail from three separate families, have been living in detention for between seven and 11 months. They have expressed a desire to return to their parents' homeland and claim they would leave tomorrow, if the appropriate travel documents were made available to the Tongan Government for processing. It is difficult to see why this has not been done already. Unlike many of their fellow detainees, these people have no desire to remain in Australia, and their repeated pleas to be allowed to leave the country have gone largely unheeded.
Luck of the draw for Aussie visas: Trung
Trung Doan, the general secretary of the Vietnamese Community in Australia which has been providing legal advice to detainees on Christmas Island, said the Refugee Review Tribunal gave inconsistent rulings and there was no rhyme nor reason as to who received a visa. Of the 53 Vietnamese asylum seekers who arrived at Port Hedland in Western Australia in 2003, 40 had received refugee status in Australia and 13 had been denied visas. "It all seems to be a matter of luck really," Mr Trung told ABC radio.
Australia's shame: report to UN raises plight of children
A delegation including several young people led by Judy Cashmore, president of Defence for Children International (Australia), will put its concerns to the committee on Thursday. [...] Dr Cashmore said the incarceration of children in immigration detention centres "was clearly in breach of the UN convention". She said the Government had claimed its policy on detention was in "the best interests of the children" because it kept them with their parents. "It was as if keeping them together was the only option," she said. "We are one of the very few Western countries in the world that arbitrarily detains children, and the only Western country that does it indefinitely."
Minister clashes with asylum bills backers
Another supporter of the Georgiou bills, the West Australian MP Judi Moylan, said she had begun to wonder whether the critics of the bills "have even read them". "It is not doing away with mandatory detention," she said. "It is making the process more targeted, more humane, and making decisions more at arm's length from the department. "It is the lack of hope the current system produces in asylum seekers, because they can see no clear end to the process, that is the most damaging aspect of it. I think Minister Vanstone has to demonstrate how our bill would undermine the system; to be more specific and constructive in her criticism."
We want to get out
"WE want to get out." This is the message from the 27 children who are growing up behind barbed wire at the Villawood Detention Centre. I don't want to stay here. I want to get out as soon as I can," says Valentia Gythalovesa, 16, is the oldest minor at the south-western Sydney compound.
Detention rift splits Liberals
Federal Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou has rejected claims by Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone that his private member's bills would undermine the migration system. [...] In a written statement, Mr Georgiou says Senator Vanstone's claims are "completely wrong". [...] He says it is the behaviour of the Immigration Department which is undermining the system. [...] Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd says the Government needs to change its detention policy. "Kids should not be behind razor wire and it's sad and disappointing that people like Amanda Vanstone and John Howard stick to a policy of keeping kids behind razor wire," he said.
Vanstone confirms male officers watch female detainees shower
Earlier this year Father Bourke became so concerned about the issue of women being seen in the shower or toilet by male officers in a part of Baxter known as the Management Support Unit, that he raised the issue at a meeting with the company that runs the centre, GSL Australia. [...] Late this week, one-and-a-half months after Father Bourke wrote to Senator Vanstone, he received a reply. [...] Senator Vanstone said in the letter that she was advised that wherever possible supervision of female detainees was undertaken by female officers but because of operational requirements and staffing rosters this could not always be guaranteed.
Asylum seeking Chinese diplomat makes kidnap claim
A Sydney-based Chinese diplomat seeking asylum in Australia claims his country is kidnapping people in Australia and repatriating them. Chen Younglin has been in hiding in Sydney for the past week since leaving his job at China's consulate-general to request asylum for himself and his family. Mr Chen has spoken at a rally in Sydney to mark the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He says the Australian Government refused him political asylum and does not want him to stay in Australia.
Australian toddler held in detention
A 22-month-toddler is being held in immigration detention despite being an Australian citizen. For the past 18 months, the toddler named Peter has been in the Villawood detention centre. Although his mother is married to a Taiwanese man, Peter's birth certificate apparently shows that his father is Australian.
Group of 15 found to be refugees
The parents of baby Michael, born under guard in Perth last week into a family of asylum seekers, have been found to be refugees. Hoai Thu Nguyen and Minh Dat Tran are among a group of 15 Vietnamese, all related, approved by the Refugee Review Tribunal, which overturned rejections by the Immigration Department. The group includes three cousins of Michael, aged 15, 17 and eight. [...] Advocate Kaye Bernard called on Mr Howard to apologise to the parents of Michael after he called them illegal last week.
Inside the Coalition's fractured conscience
Judi Moylan called them human shields, the long-term detainees, including children, held by her Government as a tragic border security insurance. "We are detaining refugees as a means to deter further boat arrivals," the West Australian MP told yesterday's Coalition party room meeting on detention policy. "At some point we must ask whether this is morally justifiable. [...] Moylan, though, was clear: you deter asylum seekers by co-operating with neighbouring countries and stopping people smugglers, not by making pathetic examples of an unlucky few. "When a policy and its administration cause such deep human suffering, it is time to put aside party-room and party solidarity in the interests of the preservation of human life and human dignity."
Religious leaders unite in support of bill
The Sisters of St Joseph, one of the largest congregations of Catholic sisters, issued a rare statement yesterday, saying many Australians were unwilling to "pay for 'the integrity of our borders' by inflicting suffering on children, the mentally ill and those who have a legal right as refugees to seek asylum". Sister Joan Healy of the Congregational Leadership Team said policies that denied "human dignity" had consequences not only for the individuals concerned but for policy administrators and Australia as a whole.
Howard stands by detention policy
TONY JONES: How do you intend to respond to the party-room revolt on immigration detention policy led by Petro Georgiou and his six colleagues?
JOHN HOWARD: Well, we discussed it today, and there's overwhelming support for mandatory detention; a belief that we shouldn't make changes that give the impression of any basic alteration; but a belief that, where possible, the policy should be administered in a speedier, more flexible, more humane way.
Moylan confident changes will come to mandatory detention policy
LOUISE YAXLEY: It sounds like you're hopeful that there'll be some significant change to the existing policy that can be arranged between Mr Howard and Mr Georgiou and people like yourself in coming weeks.
JUDI MOYLAN: Yes I am. I think there was many sentiments expressed about the administration of the policy, and as I said, much of what we're proposing in the bill does not undermine the Government's border protection policy, but it just asks for a more humane approach to the policy administration.
Howard agrees to detention talks
Mr Howard has offered to talk with Victorian Liberal MP Petro Georgiou after more than 40 backbenchers spoke out about the immigration laws during a three and a half hour meeting. Mr Georgiou and his supporters believe they now have 12 votes for his private member's Bills to water down the mandatory detention regime – should the legislation go to a vote.
Georgiou to go ahead with detention law
"I was heartened by the extent of support and depth of feeling amongst many of my colleagues for the need for further reform," Mr Georgiou said in a statement. "I am reassured that the proposed bills will provide a strong basis for discussions with the prime minister. "I remain committed to moving forward with the bills if the discussions do not yield effective results."
Rebel Libs leap from 5 to 9: Howard gets more talks
After a two and a half hour debate, Georgiou agreed not to introduce his bills this week as planned, and to advise the next party room meeting, on June 14, of his intention to do so if no compromise could be reached with Howard. He would then insert the bill for House of Representatives debate on June 20. In the meantime, Georgiou and the other rebels agreed to talks with Howard and Vanstone.
Meet the barcode kids in detention
These are the children behind the detention debate. Their images appear in security mug shots, complete with a barcode. "This is the first photo of my baby, on this card," a Tongan mother in Villawood detention centre told the Herald yesterday. "It makes my baby look like a criminal - it's like a criminal card." Meet the kids in detention...
The babes behind bars revealed
Speaking through an interpreter, Tina's father Hai Lin talked of watching his child's health steadily deteriorate. "When a baby is born it is very healthy, very lovely. But now, without proper food here, the baby cries all the time and is angry and upset, and often there is high fever," he said. "I wish, I wish just for the Government to allow the release of parents to give our children proper medicine. "My baby is not normal any more.There is no proper medicine. My child . . . is growing up now and starting to understand he is kept inside forever."
Refugee advocate seeks PM apology
"The Prime Minister today seems to have a chook pen full of egg on his face after calling Michael Tran, that poor little baby's parents illegals publicly," Ms Bernard said. "He's denigrated them, he should offer an apology. "Today I'm calling on the to Prime Minister [to] apologise to the baby Michael Tran's parents, they have been deemed to be refugees."
Six Liberals back detention bill
Parents and newborn moved to detention house
Ten long-term detainees released on new visa
No visa offer for long-term detainee Qasim.
Petro Georgiou's bills receive little support from Coalition
Howard remains firm on mandatory detention
No visa for Australia despite proposed changes to asylum seeker rules
Australia's laws regulating the reception and processing of asylum seekers are uniquely draconian: Australia is the only Western country with a mandatory detention regime for those who arrive without a valid visa. The detention cannot be reviewed by the courts, and there are no limits on its duration. Two private members' bills by Petro Georgiou address some of these concerns. However, while the bills represent an alternative to the Government's stance, they are far from radical and still lag behind international legal standards and best practice.
Detention overhaul mulled
A controversial plan to release children, their parents and long-term detainees from detention centres and into the community will be debated by government MPs and senators today.
Josephite Comment on Detention Policy and the ‘Conscience Vote
We Josephites have previously quoted the words of the late Pope John Paul II, ‘From bitter experience, then, we know that the fear of `difference,' especially when it expresses itself in a narrow and exclusive nationalism which denies any rights to `the other,' can lead to a true nightmare’. Australia has recently witnessed the nightmare of:
- a mentally ill resident detained as an illegal immigrant,
- an Australian citizen deported to the Philippines,
- a three year old child released from detention only when psychiatric assessments of the harm already caused by her lifelong deprivation of freedom gained media attention.
[...] Policies that deny human dignity have consequences not only for the individuals concerned but also for those who administer the policy, and indeed for Australia as a whole. The lack of compassion and even of due diligence in the culture of DIMIA has been acknowledged in the reports of recent miscarriages of justice. It is unacceptable that public servants are required to routinely administer and support harsh policies.
Minister Should Give Birthday Girl Freedom and Protection not cake
Refugee Advocate Kaye Bernard commented on the Minister's intention to give Ms Giau a cake personally, "I fear that Giau can't eat the cake that the Minister promises to deliver to the remote offshore detention facility. The young woman has been held since 2003 in the Christmas Island detention facility, and is suffering emotional turmoil with the uncertainty of her families future.The teachers at the school are worried about how much weight the teenage girls are losing."
Children who do not feel safe
Even if they were all released tomorrow, what are the long-term effects of the incarceration of children? Dr Louise Newman, director of the NSW Institute of Psychiatry, said on the ABC recently that detention was a very abnormal environment for child rearing, and that the majority of children the institute had clinically and developmentally assessed had shown signs of emotional and psychological trauma and stress, and their development had been affected. [...] When the children were eventually released, she anticipated, “Some will need intensive treatment and psychological support, as well as remedial education to get them up to where they should be”.
Rau family wants judicial inquiry over detention
The Rau family "recommends that the judicial inquiry report on the effects of mandatory detention on detainees", [the framily's submission to the Palmer inquiry] says. The family asks the Government to bring detainees before a magistrate to determine if their detention is reasonable. This should happen within 48 hours of arrest and then every fortnight. "We maintain that no Australian government authority should be able to lock up any person indefinitely without automatic recourse to the courts and without regular independent review of their detention," the family says.
Politicians must unite to end child detention
Any Australian who saw the pictures of three-year-old Naomi Leong running free in a Sydney park after three years' incarceration in Villawood detention centre must have been deeply moved. That we as a compassionate country could detain Naomi for the first three years of her life is not simply a procedural matter for the Department of Immigration; it is a most profound moral concern. To risk what some psychiatrists suggest will be the lifetime emotional scarring of an innocent child is the most serious matter of conscience for individuals and indeed the very soul of the nation. [...] The opportunity provided by Mr Georgiou's bills represents a turning point for Coalition members to show leadership on such a crucial issue of conscience and for the Labor Party to open the matter for debate. It is also a key moment for parliamentarians, especially those who have spoken openly of their Christian faith, to demonstrate that causing deprivation or harm to any child is a matter affecting one's deepest moral and religious sensibilities. And if that is not a matter of conscience, then Australians are entitled to ask: why not?
World Vision pushes for detention conscience vote
World Vision Australia head Tim Costello, the brother of Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, is urging both Federal Labor and the Coalition to allow conscience votes on releasing women and children from immigration detention. [...] Last night, Prime Minister John Howard appeared to be ruling out such a debate. "Mandatory detention is essential to maintain the deterrents that now exist for people to come to this country as illegal immigrants," he said. "We won't be altering our basic position regarding mandatory detention. "We will not change that policy but we continue, as we have in the past, to take opportunities of administering it in a sensible and compassionate fashion."
Labor moves closer to backing Georgiou plan to free detainees
Labor's shadow ministry is expected to approve a submission today from the immigration spokesman, Laurie Ferguson, to allow him to begin formal talks with a Liberal MP, Petro Georgiou, towards a unified position for change in the hardline detention policy. If they can agree - and there is not much distance between Labor policy and the proposals in two private member's bills drafted by Mr Georgiou - it will put immense pressure on other Liberal moderates, unhappy with the detention policy, to defy the Prime Minister, John Howard.
Keneally and friends set loose detainees' voices
TOM Keneally says the voices of asylum-seekers need to be set free. Yesterday he called on some of Australia's finest actors and authors to spread the message. Keneally appeared at the Sydney Writers Festival to host a reading from Another Country, an anthology of writing by asylum-seekers. He was joined by author David Malouf, who introduced the sold-out session, and actors Claudia Karvan, Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward, who read from the collection.
A little girl jumps for joy as she finds a new world outside the barbed wire of detention
Born in detention, Naomi has grown up behind locked doors, television her only portal to the outside world. [...] Four days after their release, Naomi is chasing after seagulls with a smile from ear to ear. [...] Dr Dudley says the problems affecting children in detention centres are so unusual there is no precendent. "These kids have multiple problems. We don't know of any population in medical literature with this rate of abnormality."
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AMA supports release of children from detention
More than 250 doctors meeting in Darwin for the AMA national conference have agreed to push the Commonwealth to release all children as well as people with mental illnesses. The move supports efforts by Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou to introduce a private member's bill to release women and children and asylum seekers detained for more than a year.
Nauru nine win freedom
After a sleepless night, Mr Mullaie, 23, and eight others were told yesterday that their claims for refugee status, repeatedly rejected in recent years, had been found to be genuine and they would be resettled in Australia. Among them is Ali Hussaini, whose youngest child, Saqlain Abbas, was born on Nauru in September 2002. [...] One of those with a compelling case, Arif Hussaini, collapsed yesterday after he was offered money to return. Only moments earlier, he had congratulated Ali Mullaie with a hug. "I couldn't contain myself. I just started crying," Mr Mullaie said. The only other asylum seeker family with children on Nauru was also extremely distressed. "This is the hardest time for my uncle's family," wrote Hassan Ali, who fears that his aunt and cousin will soon be the only Afghan women left on Nauru. "My aunty is going mad. Please help us."
Ferguson flags support for renegade detention bills
Mr Ferguson says he has spoken to Mr Georgiou about the bills and they are broadly similar to Labor policy. [...] "I don't want us in any manner to be seen as stymieing or blocking or hurting the initiative of Petro," Mr Ferguson said. "The real issue now - a crucial issue in Australian politics - is how many of the Liberal Party members are behind him. A significant number are needed to actually get this up." [...] For Mr Georgiou's bills to be debated and voted on, he needs the Government's permission or he would need the support of Labor, all the independents plus 13 Coalition MPs.
Michael Row the Boat Ashore: Sailing Toward Decency in Australia
With the Immigration Minister's cries in Parliament, Michael's face was captured for Australia to see and the river of divide went chilly and cold as Australia faced the fact his mother was guarded while the doctors performed a caesarean delivery. How stupid we have allowed ourselves to become, hit home on the airwaves and on TV screens in the lounge rooms of average Australians with moving pictures of the most vulnerable.
200 wrong detentions and the Government is in the naughty corner
Moylan, who has done most of the public talking about the need for the bills, says: "We tried to work through discreet channels. We tried for several years both to release women and children and have long-term detainees released. "It just wasn't working. We can't even get the figures from the department, but we believe there are still over 60 children held in detention both on and offshore. That's despite the changes that came about from our lobbying."
Driven mad by cruel uncertainty
Psychiatrists have told us for years that detention centres drive people crazy. And that the system of three-year temporary protection visas for "genuine" refugees who arrive by boat only exacerbates the psychological damage. Now new research quantifies the human costs of a Government policy that has inflicted unprecedented levels of mental illness on its victims.
Australian migrant policy under scrutiny
The proposed changes would not see an end to mandatory detention, but would set a limit of 12 months behind bars for most asylum seekers. The dissenting MPs also want women and child detainees to be allowed to live in the community while their claims for refugee status are investigated. Refugee advocates say this is "a most significant and welcome step in the right direction". Prime Minister John Howard is said to be furious at this public challenge to his authority. But Mr Howard is a wily campaigner, whose astute political instincts could well be telling him that a grand gesture is needed.
Whole new world for curious Naomi
Park, shopping, car, train, elevator, ice cream, stores and supermarkets — these are some of the new words that three-year-old Naomi Leong is learning. [...] Virginia said Naomi, who was born at the detention centre, had been asking her a lot of questions over the past three days. "She is so excited. I have difficulty explaining things to her as everything she sees now is new. I tried my best to explain as simply as possible to enable her to understand."
Let the babies out, says detained Chinese mother
After the release of Naomi Leong from detention on Monday, the mother of Bonnie Yu, another three-year-old who has spent all of her short life in detention, cannot comprehend why the Government won't free her child too. "I'm really happy Naomi is outside, but I want my Bonnie to look like Naomi is looking outside, so she can be in Australia and have a new life," Bonnie's mother Li Xia Yu told the Herald from the Port Augusta residential housing project, which is part of the detention system. [...] When asked if she had a message for the Government, Ms Xia said: "Let the babies outside. Let the babies outside."
"[T]he family can of course go back to Vietnam at any time"
No, Prime Minister Howard, these Vietnamese asylum seekers cannot
According to yesterday's media reports, the Prime Minister said the above in relation to the Vietnamese asylum seekers who are parents of baby Michael Andrew Tran. No, they cannot go back. They have been involved in an organised operation of dropping pro-democracy leaflets in Vietnam. This is considered by Hanoi's kangaroo courts a crime against the state, and subject to long imprisonment. [...] · Mr. Minh Dat Tran and Mrs. Hoai Thu Nguyen named their son Michael Andrew Tran because they learned that "Michael rowed to the shore", and because they are grateful to Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett who had visited the group on Christmas Island, showing much genuine concern for the unnecessarily harsh treatment that they received under the current mandatory detention regime.
Baby's parents illegals, says PM
People should remember that the Vietnamese parents of newborn Michael Tran were illegally in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday, as he denied making policy on the run about where they will live.
Vanstone's Detention Photograph Forward Roll turns into Back Flip by Immigration Department
Refugee Advocate Mrs Kaye Bernard said, "I was called yesterday, by senior GSL (Global Solutions Limited) management and told that, 'from now on only DIMIA officers with DIMIA photographic equipment will be allowed to take photo's of kids in detention'. I was shocked. The Officer told me that if there was a problem for the parents of Michael, 'call DIMIA in Canberra'." "I have given Baby Michael's dad a camera and GSL are keeping it because DIMIA have instructed that despite what the Minister said in Parliament, only DIMIA will take photo's of their child from now on, " said Mrs Bernard.
Detainees 'need mental care'
Refugee rights campaigner Kaye Bernard yesterday told of widespread depression among Vietnamese asylum seekers on the island who had not been seen by a psychologist for months. "They say there is serious depression amongst every one of the group, including the eight children who have been held on Christmas Island since July 2003," Mrs Bernard said. The parents of Michael Andrew Tran, who was born in Perth on Monday, will now live in community detention on mainland Western Australia following mounting concern over children in detention.
Vanstone to give detainee 'sorry cake'
A Senate estimates committee has been told that a visitor was recently not allowed to take the cake into the centre. Senator Vanstone told the committee that she will personally pay for a cake for the young woman. "There are very good reasons for wanting to control the quality of food that's there," she said. "Having said that, commonsense, which of course is a misnomer, should apply. "A kid should have a birthday cake, even if someone has to stand and watch people eat it, to make sure there isn't a file in it."
Immigration Changes
Under mounting political pressure the government has signalled changes to the culture and practice of the Immigration Department. Mandatory detention of asylum seekers has bipartisan support and is here to stay in some form. So how do we make it fairer and more effective?
Churches call for support for new detention Bill
The National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) today congratulated Liberal backbenchers for announcing two private members' bills to reform Australia's system of mandatory, indefinite and non-reviewable detention and restore access to permanent visas for refugees in need of Australia's protection. [...] "This Bill is the circuit breaker we've been looking for" said Mr Thomson. "Its time Australia wiped the slate clean and started afresh with a humane system of detention."
Why we need a new policy on refugees
It's time for compassion and accountability in handling asylum seekers, writes Petro Georgiou. [...] In recent months, many Australians have told me that they supported the framework of stringent measures in the context in which they were introduced. But they now believe that reform is necessary and can be achieved without compromising the security of our borders and our community. I agree.
They are disturbed that children, women and men are imprisoned for lengthy periods simply because they came without prior authority, without any independent assessment of whether they pose a risk to our community. They believe that fundamental Australian values of fairness and decency demand a new approach. I share those feelings.
Read the proposed measures in Petro Georgiou's private member's bills...
Naomi Leong's release gives hope to other child detainees
TONY EASTLEY: The mother of a 3-year old girl being held in detention says she wants the same deal for her child and herself as that granted to Naomi Leong and her mother who were freed from Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre this week. The 3-year old being held in Port Augusta, has, like Naomi Leong, spent all her life in detention. And in Perth the asylum-seeking mother of a newborn baby says she hopes her child can grow up outside of a detention centre.
Govt apologises for Immigration mistakes
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: Baby Michael Tran was born in detention on Monday night in Perth. His mother, an asylum seeker, has been in detention since 2003 on Christmas Island. She was taken to Perth for the birth. Her husband was also there. Just before lunch today, Steve Davis from the Immigration Department told a Senate hearing the baby would be returning to the detention centre.
STEVE DAVIS: My understanding is our intention is that the family return to Christmas Island to be with the rest of the extended family group, of which they are a part.
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: But facing a backbench revolt with moves to introduce two bills to release long term detainees as well as women and children in detention - barely two hours later the Prime Minister stepped in.
JOHN HOWARD: I have been informed that the young child born in Perth last night will not in fact go back with her parents to, or its parents, to the detention, to, I think, it was an offshore centre, but rather will live in community accommodation in Australia.
[...]STEVE DAVIS: I expressed those comments as a personal expectation, given the relationship of that family to the broader family group on Christmas Island. When the family came to the mainland, we looked at flexible options for the family, as we do with women and children in detention, and they were placed in the community prior to, prior to the birth in the hospital. Once they leave the hospital that arrangement will continue, and there's no immediate plans for the family to return to Christmas Island.
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: Labor's Kim Beazley doesn't know who to believe.
New arrival makes it 68 children in detention
A baby boy born in a Perth hospital on Monday takes the number of children in immigration detention to 68, a human rights groups said today. [...] Co-ordinator of the group Chilout: Children out of Detention, Alannah Sherry, said there were 62 children in mainland Australia centres and six on the Pacific island of Nauru. "The longest children [have been] in detention are those six in Nauru who are Pacific Solution victims," she told ABC radio. "They've been in for well over 3½ years now.
Naomi Leong's release highlights plight of children in detention
NICK GRIMM: This week's release of three-year-old Naomi and her mother, Virginia Leong, has re-focussed attention on the number of children who continue to live inside Australia's immigration detention centres. Alanna Sherry is the coordinator of the human rights organisation, ChilOut, "children out of detention".
ALANNA SHERRY: That's 62 in Australia and six in Nauru. The longest children in detention are of course those six in Nauru, who are Pacific Solution victims, so they've been in for well over three-and-a-half years now.
‘It’s crazy! How can I pay?’
They may have gained their freedom at long last, but toddler Naomi and mom Virginia Leong, a Malaysian, must pay a “crazy” price for it. A whopping A$500,000 (RM1.5 million), to be exact. That is the bill the Australian government wants Virginia to settle for the four years she spent at the Villawood detention centre in Western Sydney, and for the three years Naomi stayed there since birth.
Division among Liberals over detention policy
The Victorian backbencher Petro Georgiou has prepared two bills, to be debated by the Coalition party-room next week. Three of his Liberal colleagues voiced their support in the party room today. The first Bill aims to free all children and their parents from detention, as well as all failed asylum seekers who've been in detention for more than a year, while their cases are assessed. The other Bill aims to overturn universal mandatory detention and replace it with a so-called "targeted" system of detention.
Financial aid offered to Solon
The Government will pay for Vivian Solon's airfares, accommodation, income support and medical expenses. Mr Howard says further assistance will be forthcoming once the Palmer Inquiry into the wrongful detention of more than 30 people releases its findings. [...]
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: Questioned over the detention of children, after the overnight release of three-year-old Naomi Leong who's spent her life in the Villawood detention centre, Mr Howard rejected suggestions the Government's immigration policy isn't working, and he insisted this is not a softening of mandatory detention.
JOHN HOWARD: The decision taken last night, so I am advised, was a decision that was taken by the Immigration Department in its inherent administration of the immigration policy.
No more razor wire for 3-year-old detainee
Then yesterday came the Immigration Department's sudden turn around, with Virginia Leong's lawyer invited to a meeting to discuss her client's options.
SARAH CRICHTON: The Department is continuing to work towards a positive resolution for the family.
NICK GRIMM: Sarah Crichton is a spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration.
SARAH CRICHTON: Discussions between Mrs Leong and her legal representative and DIMIA have led to the issue of bridging visas which enable the family to live in the community while outstanding immigration matters are under process.
Visa hopes for mother and child detainees
Michaela Byers is Virginia Leong's lawyer and she spoke to Nick Grimm.
NICK GRIMM: Michaela Byers, how did all this come about?
MICHAELA BYERS: Well, it's really hard to say. There had been a lot of concern about Virginia's daughter Naomi, on her mental health condition and we started to lobby that she should be allowed out of Villawood Detention Centre to attend a playgroup and it seems to have grown from that first idea.
Naomi 'jumping up and down' after night free
Naomi was enjoying being on the outside of Villawood, where she has lived since her birth. "She is very active, jumping up and down like a monkey," Ms Leong said. But Ms Sherry said 67 other children remained in Australia's immigration detention centres, including 27 at Villawood and six on the Pacific island of Nauru. She called on Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone to grant Ms Leong and her daughter permanent residency immediately.
Naomi's Free! Aussie Govt releases Naomi and Mom Virginia
After three long years in an immigration detention centre in Australia, three-year-old Naomi Leong, and her Malaysian mother Virginia were freed last night. Front page story...
Get kids out of detention: Beazley
Mr Beazley says children should not be kept in immigration detention. "It does look suspiciously like the Malaysian media in this instance has embarrassed the Government into doing the right thing and getting kids out of detention," he said.
"Kids don't belong in detention, full stop." Naomi has been one of 62 children being held in detention in Australia. Until her release last night, however, she had been there the longest.
Psychiatrists criticise 'piecemeal' release of detainees
Psychiatrists attending the annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists in Sydney say the release of Naomi Leong from immigration detention is heartening but does not go far enough. [...] College spokeswoman Dr Louise Newman says the Government's piecemeal approach to releasing children does not solve the issue of the psychological damage which they suffer. "We currently have several children who have been in detention for up to three years and little Naomi released last night was one of those children who were born in a detention environment," she said. "All the clinical and research work that our group and others have done supports our contention that these children are very damaged about the experience of detention."
Villawood child set to leave detention
A three-year-old girl who has lived all of her life at the Villawood detention centre is tonight preparing to leave the centre with her mother. The ABC's PM program understands that an agreement has been reached which will allow Virginia Leong and her daughter Naomi to leave the detention centre.
Come home, Malaysia tells Naomi
"My son is my punishment, my daughter is my torture," Ms Leong told the Herald from Villawood yesterday. "I am so desperate. I can't see my son because of my situation, but I see my daughter every day and she is so sad.
THE VIRGINIA AND NAOMI LEONG CASE In the depths of despair
Virginia Leong’s psychiatric evaluation report paints a picture of a woman in the depths of despair. Tears, and fears for the future are her constant companions. The only thing that keeps her going is her daughter, Naomi. [...] The spokeswoman for Children Out of Detention (Chilout), a group campaigning for children held in detention centres, said that Virginia’s and Naomi’s conditions have deteriorated. "They need urgent help. They need to get out of the centre as quickly as possible."
Life inside the ‘chicken coop’
She said Naomi has no friends and "even if she had one, they would leave after a while, leaving her without a playmate." Virginia said she has tried very hard to entertain her daughter but it was difficult to cope in such an environment, especially seeing Naomi growing up without knowing life in the outside world. [...] The plight of Noami and Virginia Leong at the Immigration detention centre in Sydney has become the central campaign for the Australian Children Out of Detention (Chilout) group to get children out of detention centres.
Advocacy bodies looking into ways to help mom and child
Sydney-based Australian Malaysian Singaporean Inc (AMSA) is discussing with several advocacy networks there on how to help a Malaysian mother and her stateless daughter in a detention centre. [AMSA president Marc] Rerceretnam said it is a “very sad case” especially for Naomi who was born at the detention centre. “We are in discussion with some of the local advocacy networks here on how to relieve Leong and Naomi of their misery.
In joyful strains then let us sing … to prove we're fair-dinkum Aussies
The Australian authorities, in a blinding fit of compassion, this week allowed Naomi to attend a local playgroup, to enjoy a few hours playing with other children. They see this as a means to stop the head-banging. It's unclear why they finally softened their usual harsh stance. Maybe they were worried about their walls.
A flexible Minister meets unbending injustice
Every individual I met [on Nauru] has a tragic tale they can tell, each one compounded by having spent the last three and a half years of uncertainty in this remote and very isolated location. It is hard to single out particular stories, as it might imply that one is more special or 'deserving' than the others. However, it is impossible not to make special mention of the children. 6 of them remain – all Afghani – from 2 families. There is a 2 year old boy, born on the island, the only toddler there. There are two little girls, both called Zahra, aged 7 and 8, who will have memories of little else in their lives, but who know the memory of seeing all their other friends leave. [...] He described the day when all the other children left and his little girl went from room to room where all her friends had lived and came back asking where they had all gone and when was she going to join them. Every time I think of that story it chews me up – perhaps imagining my own little girl in this circumstances gives it a bit more poignancy – but I can only imagine what it does to the heart of this man, day after day.
THE VIRGINIA LEONG CASE ‘I won’t give up any of my kids’
Virginia and Naomi can come back, says High Commission KUALA LUMPUR
This is Naomi’s ‘home’
Three-year-old Naomi Leong’s world is the Australian Immigration Detention Centre in Western Sydney. She knows no other life apart from the centre which is protected by a high barbed wire fence and guards. The mental health of Naomi and her mother, Virginia, were reported to have deteriorated so much that Australian psychiatrists and refugee advocates had recommended that they receive psychiatric care.
Free to find her true colours, if only for a day
When three-year-old Naomi Leong left Villawood yesterday to attend a playgroup, she spent the morning painting in vivid colour. It was the first time she has played with children outside the detention centre. [...] Shortly after 2pm, when officials arrived to collect Naomi, her mother, Virginia, bounded to the gate, eager to hear everything about her child's day. Naomi stood at the door, clutching her purple hippopotamus backpack, asking not to go back into Villawood. [...] Apart from her day in the child-care centre yesterday, Naomi has been outside the detention centre only on two occasions: once to accompany her mother to court, and once on a two-hour trip to a farm.
Seven seek detention redress
The Federal Government is facing seven claims for compensation for wrongful detention, apart from any claim to be lodged by a woman wrongly deported to the Philippines and the results of an inquiry into 33 possible cases of illegal detention by immigration authorities.
A Knife's Edge
Virginia and Sereana share a sorry story. Both came to Australia on tourist visas more than ten years ago, fell in love, married, had children and stayed living here illegally. Both were picked up by the Immigration Department and sent to Villawood Detention Centre in 2002. They have been there ever since – separated from their children.
Compensation for Vivian Alvarez; Management Units;
What legal options are open to Vivian Alvarez, the Australian woman deported to the Philippines? And, we get a rare insight into life inside a management unit in a detention centre.
Australia is still abusing children’s human rights with impunity
A year ago today, Australia’s human rights watchdog, HREOC (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) released the much-anticipated report of its National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. [...] HREOC made many findings of Australia breaching international law with respect to detained children. Australia’s mandatory detention system failed to ensure that detention was the last resort and for a short period only. Australia failed to make the best interests of the child a primary consideration: if children were not in detention centres in the first place, then they would not have been exposed to fires, riots, tear gas, water cannons and mass self-harm. Australia failed to treat children with respect and dignity, or help then recover from past torture and trauma.
AMA calls for health funds in detention
The Rau case highlighted the significant problems with identifying and managing cases of mental illness within the immigration detention centre, the submission said. The AMA said there was overwhelming evidence pointing to significant mental health problems among those in custody and immigration detention. The AMA's submission called for the release of all child detainees, saying Australia's immigration detention system had a particularly harmful impact on children and the government had a duty of care to all asylum seekers. The submission also suggested moving immigration detention centres closer to capital cities to ensure improved access to adequate mental health services.
Vanstone speaks over wrongful detention
TONY JONES: Is it true, as it's been reported, the Immigration Department knew, as long ago as 2003, that Mrs Young had been wrongfully deported?
AMANDA VANSTONE: I have advice that, at some point in 2003, someone at the operational level in DIMIA apparently did make a match between the name of the person who had been sent back to the Philippines and the name of the person that we'd had in detention.
TONY JONES: And what happened to that information, Minister? Was it passed up the chain to the minister at the time or subsequently to you?
AMANDA VANSTONE: No, the advice I have is that it was not, and that's a part of what Mr Palmer is looking at.
Deported mum left toddler behind
IT was a hot and humid February morning when Vivian Young dropped her five-year-old son at the childcare centre inside Brisbane's City Hall. As her youngest son joined the noisy throng of happy children on the eve of the 2001 state election, Mrs Young said her goodbyes and walked out into King George Square. It was the last the boy was to see of his Philippine-born mother who, though an Australian citizen, was later deported by immigration officials.
Small example of a bigger problem
How can the Australian people possibly condone the incarceration of a three-year-old child in Villawood detention centre ("Girl's case to be reviewed", Herald, May 6)? I can't think that there are any circumstances that could justify this inhumane treatment, which results in a child being mentally disturbed and suffering. What can we possibly hope to gain by this treatment? [...] Carolyn Penn, Mosman.
A prisoner all her life, this girl bears the scars
Three-year-old Naomi Leong was born into detention and has known no other life but still asks her mother when they are going home. She started off warm and engaging but became increasingly disconnected as she grew. Now she is listless, will not play with other children and wants only constant nursing by her mother. "Every time she sees me upset and feeling sad she bangs her head against the wall," her 31-year-old Malaysian mother, Virginia Leong, told the Herald from Villawood Detention Centre yesterday. "But there's nowhere I can hide. I am unstable and screaming all the time. I cannot help it."
Court slams the treatment of detainees
In a damning judgement, the Federal Court found yesterday the Government had breached its duty of care in failing to provide adequate psychiatric care for the two Iranians held in the detention centre in South Australia. The court also found that the Government's conduct "contributed to the progressive deterioration of the applicants" and that it "continued to commit itself to treatment plans that may have been exacerbating, or else inadequately or inappropriately treating" their conditions.
Immigration Department yields to psychiatrist's requests
The Immigration Department has today yielded to a psychiatrist's campaign to allow Naomi a taste of life outside, and said she could visit a children's playgroup centre. But there are also concerns about the department's treatment of Naomi and her mother Virginia Leong last year when the woman protested on Villawood's roof against their living conditions.
Detained children allowed play group visits
The Immigration Department has reached an agreement to allow pre-school aged children in detention centres to attend play group centres in the wider community.
Just another birthday behind the razor wire
[W]e begin tonight with the story of a little girl called Naomi who turned three today. But she won't be having a party like any normal child. Instead of the bubbly and interested little girl that a child psychiatrist says she promised to be, Naomi is now sullen and withdrawn, a result of spending her life locked up in the Immigration Department's Villawood Detention Centre. Naomi has never known life outside. She was born in Villawood after her mother was picked up trying to leave Australia without the proper documentation. The psychiatrist who has visited her is so concerned at the effect of confinement on the child's mental health that, in March, he asked the Department to allow Naomi to visit a children's playgroup centre for two hours a week. This afternoon the Department told PM it was still considering whether to allow pre-school children to attend childcare outside. But for today, it's just another birthday behind the razor wire.
Doctor concerned over detainee treatment
"She spent all her life in immigration detention, where there's traumas and losses, and I guess she's had very little opportunity to interact with peers and teachers and others on a regular basis and we therefore thought it was important that she had some chance to get into child care or something like that," [Dr. Dudley] told ABC radio. An spokesman for the Immigration Department said the proposal was being considered, and indicated Naomi would be allowed out for play group. "Agreement has been reached for children from the centre to attend an early childhood centre nearby and we expect this to commence very soon," he said.
Mother and baby kept in isolation
He said Ms Leong was separated from her child for more than a week in July last year, when she was sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility after participating in a protest at Villawood. [...] Dr Dudley said Ms Leong was moved to a restricted part of Villawood with her daughter after returning from the hospital.The move was clearly intended as punishment for her participation in the protest, he said. "In all that time they did not see other families, or play with other children," Dr Dudley said.
Detained toddler denied playgroup access
A leading child psychiatrist has told the ABC's Investigative Unit that the girl, who turned three today, urgently needs a nurturing environment. Dr Michael Dudley, from Sydney's Children's Hospital, says the girl, Naomi, has deteriorated to the point where she bangs her head against the wall, is constantly anxious and is also often mute and unresponsive. He says refugee advocates have been negotiating with the Department of Immigration for five months to allow the toddler and her mother access to a playgroup outside the detention centre. He says the department's inaction is taking a terrible toll.
Great Grandma, Named 'Australia's Number One Mum in Detention 2005'
74 year old Great Grandmother, Mrs Thi Tu Nguyen, has been named as the '2005 Australian Mother of the Year in Detention' today. [...] Thi Tu has single-handedly raised eight children after the Viet Cong beheaded her husband during the Vietnam War. Not only has she cared for her own children but also took on and lovingly raised children orphaned as a result of conflict. Throughout that time Thi Tu and her family have been persecuted (because the family are pro democracy supporters) by the Communist authorities who are specifically cited by the UA as amongst the worst abusers of human rights in our region.
Disgrace of Immigration's lost Australians
The Government has admitted it deported an Australian four years ago - and that the woman is still missing overseas. It began looking for the woman after the family contacted the Immigration Department a month ago.
Baxter psychologists 'lack qualifications'
Dr Lawrence said three people provided these services at Baxter under the title of psychologist, but two of them were not registered with the South Australian Psychological Board. The one who was registered had a bachelor of education and a graduate diploma in science, majoring in child psychology. "This person has no clinical qualification. There are very few children at Baxter," she said. Dr Lawrence said the psychologists had a clear conflict of interest because they were engaged not only to assess and counsel the detainees but to counsel the department's employees.
Minister denies asylum policy change
"Christmas Island is used for unauthorised boat arrivals who arrive in areas that are excised from the migration zone, and there's no plans to change that," the spokesman said. Australian Democrats immigration spokesman Andrew Bartlett said the Government's denials should not be believed.
Detention role for island to expand
[...] Gordon Thompson, the shire president of Christmas Island where Australia is building an 800-bed immigration facility, said today he had been told the government had changed its policy. "It's the government's intention that all refugees who come by boat to Australia, whether they make the migration zone such as Port Hedland or they get to the area that's excised from the migration zone, such as Christmas Island, they will be detained on Christmas Island," Mr Thompson told SBS TV's Insight program.
Dems urge end to detention
THE Federal Government must admit its immigration detention policy is causing chronic mental health problems among asylum seekers, Democrats leader Lyn Allison said today. After hosting a vigil at Maribyrnong Detention centre, Senator Allison said it was now common knowledge that asylum seekers were suffering depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviour from the trauma of being detained.
Stop holding detainees with criminals: Bartlett
Senator Bartlett described Baxter as worse than a jail in many ways. He said two men convicted of child-sex offences are being held in a compound within the facility. He says people in administrative detention should not be housed with known criminals. "They shouldn't be subjected to the fear of being locked up with people who have been convicted of violent crimes in the past," he said.
Mum's The Word On Australia Detention
In Australia, on Mothers Day we have a picture of plump pillows and toast and tea in bed. For the Mums behind the razor wire life could not be anything more different. The asylum seeker women wake each day with their children with the cold empty thought of not knowing what will become of their families.
UN critical of refugee detention on Nauru
NEIL WRIGHT: In most cases it's not good for their mental health to be there, and particularly in the case of women and children who are particularly vulnerable. And there's one woman who I met once whilst I was there who has nobody else that she can speak with who is of Arab origin. So she's feeling very lonely and very depressed, and it's also not a place, I feel, where, although they receive basic education, children can be brought up for any length of time.
Accept Nauru detainees as migrants: UN
The Federal Government will be asked this week to find a humanitarian solution for 54 asylum seekers who are still in offshore detention on Nauru. The request will come from Neill Wright, the regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who visited the island last week and found the detainees to be in a desperate state.
'This is not detention, this is hell'
This week, Mullaie and the others on Nauru were finally able to plead their case directly to the outside world after Nauru's Minister for Internal Affairs, David Adeang, allowed the Herald unfettered access to the asylum seeker camp and its population of broken souls.
Nauru child detainees running on empty
Ilham Rehmati, 14, is the only teenage girl in a detention camp that is overwhelmingly comprised of young men. On the tiny, near-bankrupt island of Nauru she goes everywhere with her parents. She says she is very depressed and lonely. "It's very hard for me. I cannot go outside [alone]; I cannot go to the dining room; I cannot go shopping or swimming. I [only] go with my family." When the family's most recent application for asylum was rejected last year, Ilham's younger brother, Abbas Ali, was ill for 10 days, vomiting and complaining of headaches. His cousin, Hassan Ali, 21, says: "When his father took him to the doctor, he said, 'Your son is very lonely. There is no treatment'."
Telling his story
IRANIAN refugee Shahin Shafaei brought the human face of the Australian Government's refugee policy to the people of Orange last night. Shahin, who told his story and played himself in the Ros Horin play "Behind the Wire" at Orange Civic Theatre, hopes today will be the day he is granted permanent citizenship in Australia. [...] Shahin made his way to Malaysia and bought a ticket to Australia through a people smuggler. "I knew nothing about Australia but time had run out for me," he said. In Orange yesterday he told of his 11-day journey in 2003, aboard a tiny vessel crowded with 112 men, women and children, and the events that led to his 22-month internment in Curtin Detention Centre.
Academics take on immigration detention investigation
Academics are beginning their own inquiry into immigration detention in Australia by taking evidence in Port Augusta, in South Australia, at the end of the month. The Australian Council of Heads of Social Work Schools says the move has arisen from community frustration with the Federal Government's handling of the Cornelia Rau affair.
UN urged to investigate Nauru detainees
The Human Rights Council of Australia made a presentation about the asylum seeker children living in detention on the Pacific island nation to the UN's Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. [...]
Mr Glenn said there was no doubt if the children had their asylum claims heard in Australia, under Australian law, judicial review and media scrutiny, they would have got refugee status. He said the children and their parents were living in traumatic conditions.
ABC Sunday Profile - Senator Amanda Vanstone
Attard: Can I say for you, at least for you, you believe that it is morally wrong or at least undesirable for children to be in detention?
Vanstone: I wouldn't say it's morally wrong, it's undesirable but when people come unlawfully and unannounced, I support mandatory detention to just sort out who they are, sort out their immigration status. If they come with children, I don't approve of putting the children in a place other than where the parents are. God we've put millions of dollars into finding alternative detention for women and children. We've not only got the housing project at Port Augusta, we're building another housing project or two more I think so that where there are children, at least the women and children can go to more of a normal home style environment and I think that's very important. We've put it on a high priority; I regard it as a great improvement on Labors' mandatory detention policy.
Mandatory detention fair: Govt tells UN
Australia has told the United Nations it stands by the country's mandatory detention system for asylum seekers, saying it is just and fair. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has tabled in parliament Australia's latest official response to the UN convention against torture and other cruel treatment.
Anna's Story
"She was manhandled every day to get back into her cell," says a former prisoner. "They’d push her in and slam the door. She had no concept of where she was and she couldn’t understand why they were being so mean to her. She cried all day." Read transcript...
The forgotten
Susan Metcalfe believes the Nauru caseload should be reassessed on the basis of new evidence. The families and two young Iraqi men should be brought to Australia immediately, she says. “Life in a detention camp is a terrible way for anyone to live, but it is certainly not an environment for children to be growing up in. The remaining six children have no friends to spend time with. They are becoming more depressed and lonely each day.
Detention like hostage taking: lawyer
"We know that the people who are held in immigration detention have not committed any offence. "Quite frankly, if they had committed an offence, do you think that any court would sentence children to three years imprisonment for coming along with their parents without a visa? Of course they wouldn't. It is not an offence to arrive in Australia without a visa and ask for asylum."
Why no bridging visas for babies and children? Put children first, Minister!
ChilOut welcomes the Australian government's announcement to create a new class of Bridging Visa for some immigration detainees whose appeals have been exhausted. However, they won't benefit the 81 children currently held in immigration detention. Their appeals have not been exhausted. Nauru detainees - including 6 children - have been in detention more than three years. There are toddlers and babies in Port Augusta, Christmas Island and Villawood who have been in detention their entire life - including two 3-year-old girls. ChilOut spokesperson, Dianne Hiles, appealed today to Minister Vanstone to prioritise children. "There are 3 unaccompanied children in high security detention centres - why are they not in foster care? And will the further 78 children in detention with parents be granted bridging visas to live in the community while their visas are finalised? Why doesn't the Government listen to its own Human Rights Commissioner?" she said.
Price of pragmatism is human rights and freedom
Lord Hope said that the right to liberty belongs to each and every individual. In the face of the British Government's attempt to justify, on pragmatic grounds, the detention without trial of terrorist suspects, Lord Hoffman said: "The real threat to the life of the nation comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these." How much more forcefully those words apply when the person detained by order of parliament is not suspected of any offence at all.
Liberal moderates want more detention changes
Bruce Baird is one of the Liberal Party backbenchers who has been pushing for change. He has described the new visa as "progress" and "a small step forward" but he thinks more work needs to be done.
Detainees given exit strategy
New regulations to take effect within weeks will allow some long-term mainland detainees to be released into the community -- but only if they "accept the umpire's ruling" and agree to return to their country of origin at the earliest opportunity. They will be eligible for social services such as Job Matching, child care, rent assistance and Medicare.
Refugees must pay high price for freedom
The new "Removal Pending Bridging Visa", announced yesterday by the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, will be granted to a small number of detainees who have lost their claims for refugee status but cannot be sent back to their countries. But the new visa will be hard to get, with detainees having to end all litigation and refugee claims and agree to leave Australia when told to do so by the immigration authorities. [...] Amnesty International Australia's refugee co-ordinator, Graham Thom, said the Government was "asking people to give up some pretty fundamental rights to take up this visa". "It doesn't do anything for the vast majority of people who've been there five or six years."
Long-term detainees set to be freed
The Federal Government will unveil a change to its immigration detention policy today, so asylum seekers awaiting repatriation can be released into the community. Prime Minister John Howard says it is sensible to free some long-term detainees who have been in detention centres for years, and cannot yet be sent home.
Broader Powers for Immigration Minister to Manage Long Term Detainees and Removals
The Government will introduce regulation changes to the Migration Regulations as soon as practicable to create a new class of Bridging visa (to be known as The Removal Pending Bridging Visa), which will provide greater ability to manage the cases of long term detainees who are awaiting removal,’ the Minister said. ‘Although most unlawful non-citizens spend very short periods in detention before departing Australia, there are some who can remain in detention for extended periods because a variety of reasons make their speedy removal difficult. The key element of our policy to remove people with no lawful basis to remain in Australia remains unaffected by these new measures.
Immigration raid angers community
GILLIAN CALVERT, NSW COMMISSIONER FOR CHILDREN: We know detention centres do not meet children's needs. We know detention centres add to the trauma of children's lives. These children had a need to be able to maintain as normal a life as possible. That need wasn't considered or met.
Howard rules out major detention changes
A newspaper report says the Government is considering releasing failed asylum seekers who have been detained in Australia for more than three years and cannot be repatriated.[...] "We're not going to make any major changes to the policy," he said.
"We're going to obviously retain mandatory detention and offshore processing because they have been the cornerstones of the very successful policy."
Ghastly resonance of children taken from school to jail
At what point does the Howard Government recognise that the lack of humanity in its disgraceful immigration/refugee policies is immoral? Going into schools and removing children seems to be its latest outrage. Further, at what point do Australians intend to stop accepting this horror? A fair go and compassion no longer exist in the "lucky country". Shane Westall Potts Point
Carr condemns removal of children
"I think it's outrageous that we've got children in detention," Mr Carr told reporters. "We shouldn't have that and I think it's a simple humanitarian message here to the Commonwealth government. "Prising children out of schools is repellent I think to all of us."
Parents, teachers slam schoolyard raids
In the Federal Parliament, Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, has been defending the removal, saying the children's parents had been staying in the country illegally. But parents, teachers and the Federal Opposition claim the forcible removal, during school hours, was outrageous.
Children removed from schools by immigration officials
Children in detention has been a hot political issue ever since the children overboard incident. Refugee advocates have made frequent pleas for minors not to be held behind bars. Now they say, the issue has spread to Sydney schools with a number of children of parents who've overstayed their visas having been hauled out and placed in detention without warning.
Department Sensitive to School Children Issues
A spokesperson said that in situations where people become unlawful the department only detained children in nine percent of cases and women in only twenty per cent of cases. [...] ‘The number of cases where officers need to enter school premises to detain children is very small,’ the spokesperson said. ‘We work closely with the school in question to ensure as far as possible the cases are handled sensitively. Where there is a necessity to go to the school, we attempt to engage the assistance of the school principal to resolve any issues relating to pupils.’
Outcry over school 'raids' to detain children
The [NSW Teachers Federation] maintains that children as young as six were taken to Villawood detention centre, in some instances after being removed from their school yards by immigration officials. It is investigating immigration raids on schools in Stanmore, Kogarah, Chester Hill, and a Seventh-Day Adventist school. In one instance, two girls aged 11 and six were taken from a school in Sydney's inner west and immigration officers refused to allow the principal to contact the children's carer, the federation's senior vice-president Angelo Gavrielatos said today.
Help sought for Vietnamese detainee
Activist Kaye Bernard said Mrs Nguyen, who speaks no English, was spending 14 hours a day locked in her cell without access to an interpreter while she waited for treatment of a gynaecological problem. She is also recovering from recent cataract surgery. However, a spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) rejected the claims. [...] Concerned Perth residents were urged to take their own grandmothers to a protest outside the Perth Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) last night. "We just want to let the government know this is neither appropriate nor acceptable," she said.
Students 'put in detention centre'
Students as young as six had been locked in detention, some after being whisked from their Sydney schools by Immigration Department officials, the NSW Teachers' Federation said today. [...] "It's not appropriate that this action has occurred on school premises and is not in accordance with past practice," a spokesman said. "It's distressing for the students involved and for the other students and teachers in the school."
Wingham community supports refugee plight
The Wingham community has featured prominently in the recent highly successful launch of Rural Australians for Refugees for the Manning. [...] Three other guests travelled from Sydney to represent ChilOut, a national group dedicating to changing the government policy of keeping children in detention. Dianne Hiles showed artwork by a young refugee boy which reflected the trauma and mental deterioration he experienced at being detained behind bars and razor-wire, and witnessing violence, including two suicide attempts.
Expect to see a more mellow Howard this time around
Three backbenchers - Bruce Baird, Petro Georgiou and Phil Barresi - visited the Baxter detention centre where Rau was detained. Baird, Georgiou and Judi Moylan raised concerns about the detention system at last week's party room meeting. Georgiou has been pressing for major changes, including granting the 7000 people on temporary protection visas permanent residence and having a federal judge review cases a year after detention.
Bartlett renews Rau inquiry call
New claims about a lack of care for the wrongfully detained mentally ill woman Cornelia Rau illustrated the need for a judicial inquiry, the Australian Democrats said today.
The party's former leader Andrew Bartlett said people's faith in the existing review into Ms Rau's case would be diminished.
Request to put Rau in hospital ignored: psychiatrist
The psychiatrist, Andrew Frukacz, was reported yesterday as having recommended that Ms Rau be admitted to hospital, a month after she was sent to Baxter immigration detention centre in South Australia. Ms Rau was held for another three months at Baxter, where she was put into solitary confinement because of her behaviour. "If that were happening to a patient of mine, then I would be outraged and appalled," Dr Frukacz told Channel Nine yesterday.
MPs, Dick Smith to visit longest-held detainee
Mr Smith yesterday told The Age he was willing to go to Kashmir to discover Mr Qasim's background. The high-profile visits put fresh pressure on the Government over the Baxter long-term detainees, especially Mr Qasim. His application for an Australian visa has been rejected and no other country will accept him. He has been in detention for more than six years. The Government backbenchers are Victorians Petro Georgiou and Phil Barresi, and Bruce Baird from NSW. They have all pushed for a more compassionate policy on asylum seekers and refugees.
Odyssey of a lost soul
This is a story of official bungling, denial and cover-up. And the whole sorry saga happened for no good reason. David Marr with Mark Metherell and Mark Todd reveal the facts behind the imprisonment of one very troubled and confused Australian.
If you create the system, tragedies will follow
The crucial point is that the Rau tragedy does not represent a failure of the system of immigration detention; it is a product of the system. This was a tragedy waiting to happen because of the framework that had been put in place.
Vanstone in new mental health row
The Department of Immigration has disclosed it paid for a consultant's report it had not commissioned which criticised research findings of widespread psychiatric disorders in detention centres.
Researchers accuse Govt of smear campaign
"There is a growing body of evidence that essentially all points to the psychological harm of prolonged detention and I think that's beyond question," Dr Newman said.
Dr Newman and her colleagues claim that a little-known psychiatrist with no research experience is on a Government-funded mission to discredit their research.
MP urges asylum seekers' release
Victorian Liberal Petro Georgiou has spoken out against the Government's current immigration policy. "We need to release asylum seekers in detention of who there are only a couple of hundred and who passed health and security checks," he said.
Give all detainees residency: Lib MPs
[A]t a meeting of the Coalition party room yesterday several Liberal MPs voiced their dissatisfaction with the Rau case and the problems it highlighted in the mental health and immigration detention systems. One, Petro Georgiou, said it was time the Government reassessed its detention policy and gave all the 7000 people who are now on temporary protection visas permanent residency, following health and security checks. He said the system often left asylum seekers in limbo because the Government could not find a country to return the detainees to. Another MP, Bruce Baird, told the meeting that detention centres were treating mentally ill detainees insufficiently. He also attacked the use of isolation rooms, which he said created "detention centres within detention centres". The MP for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, asked the Government to say sorry to Ms Rau. "It would seem to me on the face of what I know that certainly an apology should be made. "Based on what we know, it does seem as though pretty serious errors have been made."
Inquiry to shine a torch in the darkest corners of detention system
It has taken the circumstances of Cornelia Rau's treatment to finally focus public attention on what happens to many more people behind the barbed wires of the country's notorious detention centres.
Rau: alarm first raised in May
Immigration authorities were alerted as long as nine months ago about serious concerns for the mental health of wrongly detained Australian resident Cornelia Rau. [...] Debbie Kilroy, director of prison advocacy group Sisters Inside, said when she spoke to the woman known as "Anna" in contact visits at Brisbane's women's prison in May, she told them: "I shouldn't be here." She said Ms Rau, 39, was "subdued and obviously wasn't well" and Sisters Inside called the department many times about her condition. Ms Kilroy said the department's response was that the case was not in the group's jurisdiction. [...] The German Government also signalled it would ask the Immigration Department to explain how Ms Rau, a German national who came to Australia when she was 18 months old, had been detained for 10 months. Germany's ambassador Klaus Klaiber said: "I think the inquiry should be public. Why do they have anything to hide?" He said it was unfortunate that, due to her illness, Ms Rau had falsely claimed she was an illegal immigrant. "But I remember when she was first found by police in Queensland (in March), she saw our honorary consul." Dr Klaiber said the consul told immigration authorities there was something wrong with her and she should see a doctor.
My sister lost her mind, and Australia lost its heart
For the past 10 months Cornelia has been locked up - for six in a Brisbane prison and four in South Australia's Baxter detention centre for illegal immigrants. Her crimes: having a mental illness, giving authorities false identities and speaking a foreign language. [...] Our greatest fear is that these months of incarceration - any restrictions on freedom are anathema to her - have irretrievably tipped her over the edge and we'll never find her again. [...] We don't blame [John Howard], Amanda Vanstone, assorted officials or anyone individually for the damage done to Cornelia, incalculable damage beyond price. (It would be nice, though, if there were an apology, financial assistance with accommodation in Adelaide and follow-up treatment for Cornelia.) [...] But now we move on to the real questions: How could the system allow Cornelia to suffer such horror? Are there others who have similarly suffered? And what must be done to ensure it never happens again?
This could happen to you: warning
Pamela Curr, co-ordinator of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne, who tried to help Cornelia, said her fate could befall Australia residents who could not confirm their identity, whether ill or not. It highlights that section 189 of the Immigration Act is open to abuse with its proviso that "an officer may require a person they reasonably suspect to be a non-citizen to prove who they are and their visa's status, and if they don't produce evidence of that, they can then be detained". An immigration department spokesman confirmed that someone believed to be "an unlawful citizen" could be required to produce records of identity such as passports, birth or marriage certificates. "If they are not co-operative, it is possible they may be detained," he said. [...] The president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Surgeons, Helen Newman, the South Australia Health Authority, and QC Gordon Barrett from the Refugees Advisory Service in South Australia were all blocked by the department when they tried to get access to "Anna". Under the Immigration Act, a detainee has to sign a written request authorising such interventions and, even with a psychiatrist's recommendation, the department has final say in whether a detainee receives hospital treatment.
Farewell to the rabbi of tolerance
On the eve of his retirement after 32 years as the senior rabbi of Sydney's Great Synagogue, Apple says that for a long period he feared that dream had been lost, that tolerance was no more a feature of our social landscape. The Australian response to the tsunami disaster has restored his faith but, despite the pulling together of the community in the past few weeks, he is still concerned. [...] Can the Rabbi's comfortable dream of an Australia populated by decent, fair-minded people be realised? It will take time, he says, and education is the key. "Kids need to discover that other kids are human beings like themselves. Kids have to experience multiculturalism and good-humoured tolerance with each other.
PM orders inquiry into mentally ill woman's detention
The Federal Government today ordered an inquiry into how a mentally ill Australian woman came to be locked up at an immigration detention centre, despite being listed as missing. Prime Minister John Howard today said an inquiry would be held into the "very regrettable incident", amid claims the woman was subjected to degrading treatment at the Baxter immigration detention centre in South Australia.
Christmas Is detention centre condemned
Construction of the 800-bed facility on the remote Indian Ocean island starts this week. Federal Finance Minister Nick Minchin has estimated the 18-month project will cost $336 million. Margaret Piper from the Refugee Council of Australia says asylum seekers are unlikely to get the help they need at a detention centre thousands of kilometres from the nearest capital city. "There are many, many logistical difficulties getting people with specialist legal expertise, also the necessary psychologists that are required by refugees to such a remote location," she said.
Forgotten detainee only dreams of flight to freedom
[...] Whatever terrible scars Habib will bear, he is free. He can see his wife and children, and get a chance to rebuild his life. There is another detainee who faces a much bleaker future. He languishes not in Guantanamo Bay but in the Baxter detention centre in South Australia. His name is Peter Qasim. He has been locked up for 6 years even though he has committed no crime, faces no charges and is not considered a terrorist, an "enemy combatant" or a danger to Australia. This detainee, virtually unknown outside a small circle, faces life-long detention.
Asylum seekers offer money
Vietnamese asylum seekers held on Christmas Island for more than 18 months have raised the equivalent of $100 to help tsunami victims. Trung Doan, general secretary of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, said some of the 39 Vietnamese people still on the island had asked a compatriot in Melbourne, released on a protection visa, to donate an amount equal to that gained in points though chores such as cleaning bathrooms.