ChilOut Media Releases.
Minister for Immigration's 2004 Media Releases.
Australian Democrats press releases for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
Bob Brown, Leader of The Greens, Media Releases. Kerry Nettle, Greens Senator.
ALP News Statements.
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.
"A last resort?" HREOC's report of its National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention was tabled in Parliament, on Thursday, 13 May 2004. Read media releases and news reports...
Bakhtiari family deported under cover of darkness
At just after 2.30am yesterday, Alamdar Bakhtiari, 16, the oldest of the six children, was glimpsed at the window of the RAAF charter plane flown into Port Augusta by the Department of Immigration to remove the failed asylum seekers. "He looked out and gave us a sad wave," said a refugee supporter who rushed to the airport after hearing around 11pm on Wednesday that a special flight to deport the family was flying in and would be leaving again some time before 3am.
Bakhtiyari family has left Australia
In a statement, Senator Vanstone said the family had been flown out of Australia after being declared medically fit by a doctor. "The timing of the family's departure was determined by the availability of the charter aircraft and transfer arrangements en route," she said. "The family had been advised last week that departure from Australia was their only option and arrangements were being made for them to return to Pakistan." [...] Justice for Refugees South Australia chairman Dr Don McMaster said the department's deportation of the Bakhtiyaris over the Christmas holiday period was a ploy to avoid media coverage. "It's doubling distressing for them because one, they don't want to go to Pakistan, and the way it is being done is very cloak and dagger," he said. [...] Meanwhile, Catholic welfare agency Centacare director Dale West said security guards took Mr Bakhtiyari out of the Baxter detention centre at 1am (AEDT) today. His wife and children were removed from their accommodation at the same time. "They have been the public face of the way people are treated in our detention system and people don't realise that one o'clock in the morning is the standard approach," he said.
Government defends secret deportation, 30 December 2004, The Age.
Bakhtiari family wants time to say goodbye
One of the Bakhtiari children, Muntazar, 14, on Monday pleaded for the Government to give them enough notice of their deportation to let them say their final farewells. "They probably will tell us five minutes before and that's it," Muntazar told Channel Ten News.
"Please inform us before so at least we can say goodbye to our friends."
Bakhtiaris prepare for deportation
The Bakhtiari family is expected to be flown to Adelaide on Monday morning to prepare for deportation from Australia, a refugee advocate said. Despite anxiously waiting for news on Boxing Day, Justice for Refugees South Australia president Don McMaster said a flight for Pakistan would depart on Monday at 3.30pm (AEDT) and the family, staying at a Port Augusta detention centre, was expected to board a charter flight to Adelaide on Monday.
Speculation continues on Bakhtiyaris' deportation
Dale West, from the Catholic welfare agency Centacare, says the family packed their bags on Christmas Day. He believes they will be flown out of the country today.
When a family tree casts only shade and doubt
The fate of the Bakhtiyaris now rests with Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone. With all avenues of legal appeal exhausted and an Immigration Act that requires her to remove asylum seekers who have no valid claim for refugee status, plus documentation from the Pakistani Government that the Bakhtiyaris are Pakistani nationals, her options are severely limited. She could exercise ministerial discretion and grant the family visas on compassionate grounds, acknowledging that they are Pakistani but also that there is plenty of evidence that they have sustained much emotional damage, and the children cannot be held responsible for their parents' mistakes.
Bakhtiyaris' last-ditch plea rejected
IMMIGRATION officials last night confirmed the Bakhtiyari family would be deported after federal minister Amanda Vanstone refused to consider a plea to reopen the asylum-seekers' case. Department officers said the minister would not consider the application as there was nothing new in it.
Locked in an identity crisis
Among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who queued for their country's historic October election stood voter No.0547012 - a failed asylum-seeker named Mazhar Ali. Said to be the brother of Australia's most famous would-be refugee, Roqia Bakhtiyari, Mazhar Ali was branded a bogus refugee - a Pakistani, not an Afghan - by then immigration minister Philip Ruddock and deported to Pakistan in 2003. Why Mazhar Ali would go to Afghanistan and vote in the national election, braving snipers from the deposed Taliban regime as they fired into the queues, if he was a Pakistani is a puzzling notion.
Afghans reveal 'link' to Bakhtiyaris
Joining public debate over the family's identity for the first time, Afghan officials in Canberra said their Government had been "investigating" Roqia Bakhtiyari's claims that she was from Afghanistan since late 2003, but the evidence was "as yet inconclusive". "It is understood at least one person in the Jaghori district of Ghazni Province, whom Mrs Bakhtiyari has claimed to be related to, has confirmed the existence of such relations," the embassy said. Lawyers for Mrs Bakhtiyari's husband, Ali, wrote to Senator Vanstone yesterday urging her to use her discretion under s48B of the Migration Act to allow a fresh application for protection on the basis of new evidence that could prove they were Hazara Afghan refugees. The courts were unable to review the new evidence over the past two years.
In an interview with The Australian, Senator Vanstone said the new evidence had been considered by an Immigration Department "decision maker" and had been rejected. The department "was satisfied" the family was from Pakistan, Senator Vanstone said.
Protestors seek 'Afghan' family's asylum
About 100 protestors gathered outside the Federal Immigration Minister's office in Adelaide, demanding the Bakhtiari family be allowed to remain in Australia, The Australian reported.
The new Australian fair go
And so the story moves towards its end. The Bakhtiyari family's phones have been confiscated and they wait in the Baxter detention centre to be taken to Pakistan. They are asking to go to Afghanistan because that is where they come from, but Amanda Vanstone won't let them go there. Although they speak no Pakistani language and speak Farsi, the language of their home region of Uruzgan in accents appropriate to the region, they will go instead to Quetta, in Pakistan.
Welfare agency asks New Zealand to open its doors to Bakhtiari family
The South Australian Catholic welfare agency, Centacare, has written to the New Zealand Immigration Minister, Paul Swain, asking him to take in the Bakhtiari family. [...] Mr West said the letter had been sent while all options for the family's future were being explored the day before their sudden return to immigration detention early Saturday. He said he was less optimistic about New Zealand accepting them since they were returned to custody because the situation had become more political. "New Zealand doesn't want to embarrass Australia," Mr West said.
NZ refuses Bakhtiyari pleas (21 December, The Age).
Vanstone slams Bartlett hunger strike
Senator Vanstone said it was irresponsible for a member of parliament to set an example that could result in serious health problems. [...] "I hope to make them (asylum seekers) aware there is a lot of people in the Australian community supporting them and pressuring on their behalf, that they're not alone and they don't need to harm themselves further on top of the harm that's already been done to them by the government," [Senator Bartlett] said.
Government refuses Bakhtiari plea
The federal government today dismissed appeals from the Bakhtiari family to be returned to Afghanistan amid criticism it lacked compassion for the family's plight.
Labor backs Bakhtiyari verdict
LABOR'S immigration spokesman Laurie Ferguson yesterday joined the Howard Government in dismissing the Bakhtiyari family's plight, declaring the asylum-seekers' story lacked "credibility" and they should leave Australia.
Community devastated after Bakhtiyaris moved
Two of the Bakhtiayri children attended Adelaide's St Ignatius College.
Prayers for the family were offered at a church service held at the school this morning. Teacher Dianne Campbell says the community is shocked that no-one had the chance to say 'goodbye' properly. "We can't just give one more hug and say goodbye, that's what's hurting me the most you know," she said. Class mate Sam Hooper says he is sad for his friends. "As Amanda Vanstone says they've exhausted all their options, but I don't understand why they can't stay and become Australians or live amongst us like they were," he said.
Refugee family goes back into detention
Senator Vanstone said the return to guarded three-bedroom accommodation at Port Augusta, nearer to Ali Bakhtiyari who remained in the Baxter detention centre, would benefit them all. She said Mr Bakhtiyari's fortnightly visits to Adelaide to see his family - where he would stay under guard in a motel not far from their home - were unsatisfactory. While agreeing that the move was not wanted by the family, she said the return to detention in Port Augusta would benefit them.
[...] Mr Bakhtiyari's lawyer, Paul Boylan, said no one who knew the family doubted they were from Afghanistan, but the Government could not admit it was wrong. "They have to save face," he said. "These are the most high-profile refugees in Australia."
ChilOut deplores treatment of Bakhtiyari family
ChilOut is outraged by the Australian government's treatment of an Afghan family of seven who have been seeking asylum for the past four years. At 7 o'clock this morning, the mother, five children and baby were forcibly transferred to Port Augusta's immigration detention centre. They fear that they will be deported to Pakistan tonight. Grave fears are held for the family's safety. ChilOut and other human rights agencies are alerting international bodies such as the Red Cross, UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF that Australia may dump an extremely vulnerable refugee family in Pakistan.
Vanstone defends decision to move Bakhtiyaris
Immigration officials went to the Bakhtiyari family home at 7:00am ACDT to collect the family and take them to the Residential Housing Project at Port Augusta, in South Australia's north. A spokesman for the family says Immigration Department officials turned up at the house unannounced this morning and made the family leave immediately in two cars. They claim the family was not allowed to pack belongings and mobile phones were confiscated.
Bakhtiyari family moved
Lawyers representing Australia's highest-profile asylum seekers, the Bakhtiyari family, say the mother and her six children have been moved out of a house in Adelaide to Port Augusta, possibly in readiness to be deported.
Iraqi refugees ready for new life
Four families were among a group of 23 Iraqi asylum seekers who arrived in Australia to begin a new life after being detained on the Pacific island of Nauru. The 23 people were found to be refugees earlier this month after fresh interviews and a reassessment of their status on the basis of new information on conditions in Iraq. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said most of the 15 adults and eight children would join relatives in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and regional Victoria.
Iraqis Arrive From Nauru
Lips sewn in refugee hunger strike
"Many others will join the strike in coming days and we will continue until our situation is resolved," the detainees said in a statement issued by refugee advocates. "Many of us have been here (in detention) for four or five years and we are tired, frustrated and extremely depressed. "We are peaceful people and will harm nobody but ourselves in our quest for freedom. [...] An immigration department spokesman blamed misinformation spread by refugee advocates in relation to the Sri Lankans' hunger strike for the latest, similar action.
Hunger strike fails to spark Baxter asylum review
The hunger strike is now over, with refugee support groups claiming the Immigration Department has agreed to review the Sri Lankans' visa applications. But the department has issued a statement rejecting that. It says while it appears the hunger strike is over, it has not made any undertaking to review the cases of the Sri Lankans. It says to do so would be irresponsible and would raise false hopes among the detainees.
The law, but hardly just
There are about 40 people in immigration detention centres who have been there for four or more years. The Law Council says lawyers have a responsibility to fight for the "fundamental human right" to liberty. It has set up a working party to examine the possibility of further legal challenges to the Migration Act. The Law Council's broad aim is to change the process so that if there must be detention, it has built-in limits that ensure release after a set period. Indefinite detention may be the law but it is not just, and the Law Council is right to seek to change it.
Author hungers with poet detainee
Mr. Keneally, 69, who has authored more than two dozen books, has gained a reputation in Australia for his eloquent attacks on detention. He became involved with asylum seekers about four years ago when researching one of his books, "The Tyrant's Novel." "We can't legitimately call ourselves a free country when we do this," said Mr. Keneally, who is hoping Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone will listen to the request to release Mr. Amarasinghe, who is a member of PEN.
Most Iraqis on Nauru win refugee status
Two-Thirds of the Iraqi asylum seekers left on Nauru have been reassessed as refugees. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today will announce that 27 of the 41 Iraqis remaining on the island have had successful reviews. Five families, including 10 children, have been declared refugees after being detained on Nauru for three years. The reviews leave 54 asylum seekers on the island. Sixteen of the refugees will be resettled in Australia and should arrive in about a month. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is looking for countries to accept the other 11.
Afghan men granted permanent visas
Seven young Afghan men have been granted permanent visas after three years in detention or temporary release in South Australia. The men had initially been found not to be refugees. Their cases were reconsidered as part of a reassessment of all Afghan applications announced earlier this year.
Seven asylum seekers get visas
Senator Vanstone used her ministerial intervention powers to grant visas to the seven young men, who arrived in Australia without a parent or guardian in 2001 and have been in immigration detention or foster care since. [...] The men are now entitled to live in freedom in Australia and apply for the full range of benefits available to other Australian residents.
Hunger strikers in hospital
Two Sri Lankan men remained in a stable condition in hospital today as a group of detainees at the Baxter detention centre vowed to continue their hunger strike until they died. [...] Ms Wroblewski said the hunger strikers had vowed to continue their action until they were freed from detention or they died. "They're very determined. It's not a decision they entered into lightly," she said. "There's not even a sign that any of them are not going to continue. It's very sad."
Interned Sri Lankans begin hunger strike
Sarath said the hunger strike had begun because the Government failed to listen to their concerns after a peaceful protest in the past few months. The Sri Lankans had refused to sleep in their quarters, instead staying outside. "If we die here, no problem because if we go back we will die," Sarath said.
Judge renews call for bill of rights
Justice Kirby raised the issue of a bill of rights as he referred to recent High Court decisions upholding the mandatory detention of children and the indefinite detention of stateless asylum seekers. In those cases, the court found Parliament's laws to be valid despite a breach of international law. He said it was inevitable that calls for a constitutional bill of rights would grow as the High Court's "willingness" to find rights implied in the language and structure of the Constitution receded.
Claudia Karvan
Karvan is steadfast on one issue. She has spoken publicly, challenging the government's line on asylum seekers and is a patron for A Just Australia, a group sympathetic to the cause. Tears well and her voice cracks as we discuss the topic.
Family stalked by shadow of Bali finds hope
Tow years ago the lives of Sara and Safdar Sammaki were torn apart. Their mother was killed in the Bali bombings and their father, Ebrahim Sammaki, an Iranian refugee, was in detention at the Baxter Detention Centre. Now, a year after his release, the children are finally settling into a normal life.
Protesters rally for refugees
[Y]outh ambassador for Children Out of Detention (ChilOut), 16-year-old Canberra schoolboy Will Mudford said he expected better of the government than to lock up children. "What this Howard government is doing is creating this century's stolen generation, it's terrible the way Australia treats children," he said. "We expect better of other countries and we should expect better of ourselves and our representatives in parliament."
Protesters rally over refugee treatment
About 400 people have rallied outside Parliament House in Canberra, protesting against the Howard Government's treatment of refugees. [...] Speakers at the rally have attacked the Howard Government for failing to end the detention of asylum seekers. Many of the speakers were particularly angry at the detention of children, describing it as inhumane.
STAND UP FOR REFUGEES RALLY
A broad cross-section of Australian society will rally at Parliament House at lunchtime today to maintain public awareness of refugee and detention issues. Thousands of refugee supporters will ask politicians to use their commonsense and compassion in the next parliamentary term. The crowd at the "Stand Up for Refugees" will represent the thousands of Australians who care about this issue and are swelling in numbers. They simply demand humane and dignified treatment of asylum seekers and respect for their human rights. The return of the Coalition Government does not give it a mandate for human rights abuses.
Children freed from Villawood
Four Australian-born children are finally being released from Villawood Detention Centre this week but their Fijian mother, who is facing deportation, is being kept behind bars. The two eldest children of Seseana Naikelekele were released from Villawood on Friday into the custody of a relative. Their siblings [...] have spent the past two years behind the wire at Villawood, but will be released this week into the custody of another relative.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FUNDS NAURU ASYLUM ACTION
Lawyers acting for asylum seekers say it is disgraceful that the Federal Government is funding a challenge to its own laws which could prevent the High Court ruling on the fate of asylum seekers on Nauru.
Canberra funds Nauru legal attack
Nauru's challenge, heard by the High Court yesterday, was not defended by the Government - a situation described by Justice Michael Kirby as "remarkable, bordering on astonishing". [...]
Nauru is challenging a Commonwealth law that makes Australia's High Court the final arbiter for appeals from Nauru's legal system. The action aims to prevent the High Court hearing an appeal lodged by Melbourne lawyers against a decision by Nauru's Supreme Court that upheld the legality of detaining asylum seekers on the island.
Aussie Champion Betty Cuthbert Champions Kids' Rights
Australian Olympic champion, Betty Cuthbert will be visiting the kids on Christmas Island to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child on the 20th November 2004.
The visit will commence on 18 November 2004. Betty will be visiting the local school and meeting the kids there and presenting awards at the year 12-graduation ceremony. The 10 Vietnamese Asylum Seeker Kids on Christmas Island will also get an opportunity to talk to Betty about her life achievements.
Refugee blunder costs ASIO
ASIO has been forced to pay about $200,000 in compensation to a refugee it falsely classified a national security risk, causing him to be locked up for two years. [...] He was released after ASIO was forced to admit he was classified "directly a risk to Australian national security" solely on information provided by the secret police who had persecuted him.
Lock up strains ties
She said she was supposed to be deported on Saturday but no one came to pick her up from the centre. "My lawyer is preparing documents to put a stay on the deportation order," Ms Naikelekele said. "No one from the immigration section contacted me and I am in the dark. My five children and I share two rooms and eat at the mess in the centre. "I am spending sleepless nights with the thought that I will have to leave my children behind if I am deported.
Detention centre vital for Nauru
"It's not a lie to say that the standard of living being provided to residents in the centres is better than what most Nauruans are living today," Nauru Minister for Health Kieren Keke says. But for bankrupt Nauru the detention centre provides jobs and much needed cash. Keke says it provides cash flow on the island, economic activity, and job opportunities. So far Nauru has received tens of millions of dollars for operating the centre - and it can't afford to lose that income.
Deportation to Fiji splits family of six
More than 100 children from Macarthur Adventist School, where Sally and Jope have been students for the past two years, wrote cards to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone pleading for their friends' mother to be allowed to stay. School principal Jill Pearce said they received no reply. "Their mother is being forced to suffer, not knowing if she will ever see her children again," Mrs Pearce said. "She is making a terrible sacrifice. What love she is showing to give her children a better life." Mrs Naikelekele had been in Australia for 15 years when she was arrested for overstaying her visa. Her husband, from whom she is estranged, is also about to be deported. She will probably never be allowed back into Australia to see her children. She will have to pay an $80,000 bill for her stay in Villawood on top of expensive visa fees.
Court grants injuction to halt student's deportation
The girl was taken to Villawood detention centre last Friday and was at the airport this afternoon, waiting to be deported. Justice Richard Conti has told the court it is extraordinary that the Immigration Department waited two-and-a-half years before detaining the girl in the middle of her exams. He made interim orders preventing the girl's removal from Australia until her case is heard fully next week.
Fijian woman deported after 15 years in Australia
Ms Naikelekele and 3 of her children (Lomani, Mereani and Glen) have been living at the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney for the past 2 years and were joined this year by her two older children Sally, 12 and Jope, 10 (Australian citizens) who had been attending the Macarthur Adventist School in Sydney for the past 3 years. Sally and Jope have now been prevented from attending this school despite repeated appeals by school principal Jill Pearce. Ms Naikelekele will leave behind her children this Saturday, rather than risk losing their rights to claim Australian citizenship. With a three year re-entry ban and a debt for her detention of between $60,000 and $80,000, there will be little chance for her to return to Australia.
Deported mother to lose her kids
A SINGLE mother will be separated from her five Australian-born children when she is deported at the weekend, after the Federal Court ruled in favour of the Howard Government's plan to forcibly remove her to Fiji. But plans to deport two of the five children were overturned when the court granted an injunction pending the outcome of a citizenship case involving the pair.
Aussie kids's mother fights deportation
Lawyers for a Fijian mother of five are seeking a Federal Court injunction to stop her and two of her children being deported. Sereana Naikelekele, who has been living at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre since 2002, was served a deportation order for her and two of her children by immigration officials. Ms Naikelekele has five children aged three to 12. But only two of her children are included in the deportation order - Lomani Koroitamana, four, and Mereani Koroitamana, six.
MORE CHILDREN IN DETENTION SINCE ELECTION
ChilOut is outraged to learn that the number of children in detention has increased since the federal election. Enough is enough - ChilOut calls on the Minister for Immigration to amend the Bridging Visa regulations so that all children in detention can immediately be released with their families. As around 60,000 students around Australia sit for their HSC today, there's one who will not be joining their ranks. Velicia was supposed to be sitting for her HSC exams this week. But on 27 October she was taken to Villawood - in the middle of her HSC - despite an undertaking from the Department of Immigration that she would not be detained.
Kids move into detention centre
Three Australian children have given up their freedom and moved in with their mother at Villawood detention centre. Eleven-year-old Sally Koroitamana and her brothers, Jope, 10, and 3-year-old Glen now live at the centre with their mother Sereana Naikelekele and younger siblings Lomani and Mereani, who were born in Australia but are not classified citizens. Sally and Jope were previously being cared for by their father, but moved into Villawood when he was also detained. It's a situation their mother claims is doing them irreparable damage, despite her insistence that they remain with her.
Family detained over two years
A FIJI-BORN woman living in a Sydney detention centre with three of her five children since 2002 is fighting for her family's right to stay in Australia.
Cruel policy splits families
On October 13, Mohamed�s bridging visa expired. He was asked to go into the immigration department�s compliance office by himself the next day. Carissa refused to let him, terrified that they would deport him. Carissa phoned Vanstone�s office, and was reassured by the man she spoke to that Mohamed�s deportation didn�t affect her or her children, because they were all Australian citizens and could remain here. Carissa couldn�t believe her ears, and told him exactly how the stress of potentially losing her husband had affected her, explaining that she had a miscarriage. To her horror, the man told her he didn�t care.
Children punished by Australian law
Born in Fiji, Sereana Naikelekele has lived in Australia for almost 16 years. She is married to Maika Koroitamana and has five Australian-born children. Her eldest child, 12-year-old Sally, is a citizen. Her youngest, three-year-old Glen, is also a citizen. Jope, who turned 10 on August 26, is due to receive a certificate confirming his citizenship. In July 2002, when Sereana was working to support her family, but without a permit, she was dobbed in to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) and taken to Villawood detention centre. Two months later, her three youngest children, Glen, who was then only one and still being breast-fed, two-year-old Lomani and four-year-old Mereani, were brought to join her, because their father had been struggling to look after all five of the children on his own. For the past two years, Sereana has been fighting to get out of detention and for her right to stay in Australia.
After the party it's back to Baxter
It was a time for celebration on the weekend at the first birthday party of baby Mazhar.
Proud dad Ali Bakhtiyari was allowed time away from the Baxter Detention Centre to attend the party on Friday and was "beaming" to see his children. It was the first time Mr Bakhtiyari had spent time with Mazhar and his other five children in the Dulwich house where his wife, Roqia, lives. Father Greg O'Kelly, headmaster of St Ignatius College � which Alamdar and Montazer Bakhtiyari attend � said the event was heartwarming. "It was lovely, they were all holding the baby and helping him cut the cake," he said.
Human rights 'at a crossroads'
Australians were witnessing an unprecedented increase in the state's capacity to directly intervene in the affairs of an individual, he said. However, there were no counter-balancing measures that provided proper oversight of the integrity of the process. The Government also came under fire from Dr Ozdowski for continuing to hold children in detention. He said the single biggest human rights issue facing the nation was the lack of a domestically enacted, actionable bill of rights.
Bill of rights needed now, says QC
Mr Burnside told the Australian Lawyers Alliance national conference that the Government had breached "baseline" values in laws that validated inhumane treatment of refugees. Denying he was a "rusted-on leftie", Mr Burnside said he had previously opposed a bill of rights as unnecessary. Mr Burnside, who has acted for asylum seekers in the Federal and High courts, said lawyers had to face the fact that sometimes upholding the law was a betrayal of justice. "Any society which has legalised the mistreatment of innocent and defenceless people is a great challenge for lawyers," he said. "We face a stark choice. We can lend our arm to enforcing immoral laws or we can try to change those laws. We can't advise people how to break them, but we can help people resist them."
[...] An Iranian Christian convert asylum seeker forcibly deported to Iran last week has told refugee activists in Australia he was arrested on his return to Tehran. The man, 36, who phoned a contact in Canberra yesterday, said he was interrogated for more than 24 hours before being charged with leaving the country without appropriate permits.
Download and print petition in support of Iranian Christians facing deportation...
Read letter from Sister Anne Higgins...
Love behind the razor wire ends up in a play
An Iranian actor who spent almost two years in an asylum-seekers' detention camp where he fell in love with one of the guards is telling his story in a new play that could embarrass the Australian government over its tough immigration policies. "Through The Wire" traces the ordeal and romance of Shahin Shafaei, a 30-year-old actor and playwright, who fled Iran after the Ministry of Culture banned his work.
Memorial to mark sinking of SIEV X
memorial to the 353 asylum seekers who died on the ill-fated SIEV X voyage will be unveiled in Hobart on Tuesday on the third anniversary of the tragedy. Tasmanians for Refugees spokesman James Boyce said the memorial, a bench at Cornelian Bay, would provide a quiet place to remember the 146 children, 142 women and 65 men who drowned when their overloaded boat sank en route from Indonesia to Australia on October 19, 2001.
The tragedy that Australia refuses to remember
Amal Hassan Basry, an Iraqi survivor of the tragedy who now lives in Melbourne, says at least three women gave birth as the boat sank. The tragedy induced the births prematurely. Amal recalls the events of that day with great clarity. She knows the exact moment the boat capsized: 3.10pm. Many watches stopped at that time. "Because I was waiting for my death, I saw everything," Amal has told me. "I was like a camera. I can still hear the shouting, the screaming. I see the people going under. The gates of hell opened up." Today is the third anniversary of the tragedy, which claimed 353 lives.
Lawyers Welcome Human Rights Ruling
Lawyers today welcomed a Court of Appeal ruling which declared that the Human Rights Act can apply outside the UK in certain circumstances. The same court, headed by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, also pronounced on when British officials have a duty under the Act to refuse to hand over people to a host state. Judges said the duty arises where it is �clearly necessary in order to protect them from the immediate likelihood of experiencing serious injury�. But because of the newly-defined criterion, two children of asylum seekers in Australia failed in their claim that officials at the British Consulate in Melbourne abused their human rights by refusing to help them and ordering them out of the building.
Where Do We Go From Here Now? � reflections and a proposed strategy, on the occasion of the third anniversary of the sinking of SIEV X
If we now shrug off the 353 deaths on SIEV X as past history, if we complacently or fearfully say "what�s done is done", and turn our backs on the need to establish proper accountability, worse will follow.
Asylum-seeker now a national hero
The teenager, who fled Afghanistan at 15, received the Rescue Medal, just one rung below the highest award, the Bravery Cross, for his attempted rescue "under extreme or difficult circumstances" after the asylum-seeking vessel Sumbar Lestari caught fire and sank in November 2001 off Ashmore Reef. Despite a disabled arm and being almost unable to swim, he spent almost an hour trying to save fellow passenger Nurjan Husseini.
Concern over education access for children detained in Australia
Education authorities in the Australian state of New South Wales are concerned over school access for two Fijian children in a Sydney immigration detention centre. The two children, an 11-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother, are Australian citizens, but have failed to return to the school which they have attended for the past three years. They are currently living with their mother and three siblings at the Villawood detention centre. The principal of the Macarthur Adventist School, Jill Pearce, says she has asked the detention centre to allow the children to return to school, but has not received a reply.
Asylum law wins over child charters
The decision will be seen as a victory for the Howard Government's hardline stance on immigration, forged by former immigration minister Philip Ruddock, who introduced temporary protection visas and the Pacific solution for boat arrivals, and for the mandatory detention system introduced by the Keating Labor government in 1992. Labor immigration spokesman Stephen Smith promised yesterday to remove children from detention if his party won power in tomorrow's election, with the Australian Democrats and Greens vowing to back the necessary legislation.
Court backs detention of children
Justice Michael Kirby said the suggestion there had been some oversight or failure of Parliament to consider the immigration detention of children was fanciful. "Detention is the deliberate policy of the Australian Parliament, repeatedly confirmed," he said. "In default of a constitutional basis for invalidating it, it is the duty of this court to give effect to the act, whatever views might be urged about the wisdom, humanity and justice of that policy." The decision led to calls from refugee advocates for a bill of rights and to enshrine international conventions in law.
Read the judgement...
Children need Bill of Rights, says top jurist
THE treatment of refugee children in Australian detention centres, the abuse of children in the care of state authorities and a society approving of children's physical punishment underlines the need for a Bill of Rights, according to the former chief justice of the Family Court. [...] Criticising both current and past Liberal and Labor governments, Mr Nicholson said the recent Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report on detained children was a "devastating indictment of successive Australian governments and their treatment of children in detention".
High Court proves we need a change of government: Greens
�There are current 86 children in detention, in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. But the High Court�s hands are tied.� �The only way to get those kids out of detention is to change the Migration Act. To do that we need to change the government.�
Child detention is legal: High Court
In an unanimous decision, the High Court held it was within the power of the Commonwealth to legislate for the detention of children as well as adults. It said the Migration Act did not distinguish between unlawful non-citizens who were above and below the age of 18 years. The court also rejected a claim the Migration Act was invalid because children lacked the capacity to request their removal from Australia.
Law sanctioning child abuse must change: Democrats
The Australian Democrats today vowed to work to introduce laws making it illegal for children to be held in immigration detention. The promise followed a High Court ruling today that it was legal to lock children in immigration detention. [...] "The system of detaining children is child abuse and there is no excuse for child abuse. "This is another reason why we need federal child protection laws to give children some protection against severe breaches of their rights contained in laws such as the Migration Act." [Democrats leader, Andrew Bartlett]
High Court: Legal to hold children in detention
[T]he court, in a unanimous decision, has found the government has the right to make such laws and the children were lawfully detained under the Migration Act. The court acknowledged, though, that Australia may be violating international conventions. It is the second time the High Court has dismissed a challenge to the detention of children.
Afghan children lose High Court battle against detention
Mr Vadarlis says he does not believe Australians would approve laws that allow the mandatory detention of all children. "Under this decision, they'll be there until either they're released on a visa which in most cases is unlikely or returned to their country, and they can't go back because there is so much trouble happening back home, or until they die," he said.
Amanda Vanstone: pragmatic or compassionate?
It has been a remarkable 12 months, with 417 visa applications being dispensed from the minister's office. But does all this make Amanda Vanstone a more compassionate, a more reasonable person than Philip Ruddock, indeed a subverter of the Howard hardline on refugees? The short answer is no. Nothing in what she has done subverts the policy, or even significantly changes it. She has simply adjusted its implementation to match the changing political environment.
Couple take out ad to raise issue
When Ben Lochtenberg arrived in Bunbury on a cattle boat from Indonesia on his 11th birthday, the local community warmly welcomed him and the other 500 boat people. [...] Six decades on, Australia's policy of keeping child refugees in detention centres has disgusted Mr Lochtenberg, the former chairman of chemical company Orica, and his wife Margaret, prompting them to take out a full-page advertisement in today's Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Detainees on election hunger strike
Up to 200 detainees at Sydney's Villawood immigration detention centre have launched a four-day hunger strike to ensure they are not forgotten in the election lead-up, a refugee action group said today. [...] The group's members would not eat again until Saturday's federal election, but would sit together, many through the night, in a show of solidarity.
Will refugees unseat the love rat?
The strong turnout at the recent Parramatta candidates' forum on refugee issues showed community concern about current policies on asylum seekers. Anthony Meggitt, Chairman of the Parramatta Refugee Action Group, believes that the refugee issue may be a decisive factor in the marginal seat of Parramatta this election: 'It is a very strong refugee oriented area. Lots of people, from a whole host of different countries, work and live in Parramatta. I think that makes a huge impact.'
PM's poll pitch: Labor will minimise choice
[John Howard interviewed by Peter Hartcher]
On asylum seekers
Are you disappointed that there are still 56 children in detention?
Look, I would like to see all children out of detention but not at the price of weakening the policy and sending the wrong signal to prospective future illegal immigrants.
There are still 16 kids on Nauru and 11 on Christmas Island.
Yes. Well, that is not easily solved because of the complexity of the return arrangements. There's only one child of a boat person in detention on the mainland. But the overwhelming message that comes out of all of that is that our policy worked. The boats have stopped coming. The Pacific solution has been very successful despite what people think.
Are you expecting any solution to the remaining children any time soon?
We're working it and we'd like to, yes. We don't enjoy having children in detention. Nobody does. But we enjoy even less the policy that allowed for Australia as an open target. This couldn't have gone on.
The issue politicians hope will just go away
While there may be too few who care about decent treatment of refugees to cause a big swing in Saturday's election, there are seats where the candidates are being forced to take a lot of notice -- especially as AJA is running ads in local papers urging people to "vote for a country we can be proud of again".
Lib MP contradicts refugee policy
A senior Liberal MP today contradicted the Coalition government's tough stance on asylum seekers, declaring children and their families should be removed from immigration detention. Trish Worth, the parliamentary secretary for health, also believes all asylum seekers should be released from detention after 90 days following health and safety checks.
Showbiz hits centre stage 'to end the lies'
A giant rubber rat dubbed the "Lying Rodent" loomed over a large and noisy crowd in Sydney yesterday � a crowd that ignored the rugby league grand final and the beach to voice its opposition to John Howard and his policies. The End the Lies march and rally, which organisers estimated attracted about 9000 people, was one of the last opportunities for musicians and artists to speak out against the Coalition before the election. [...] Among the crowd were representatives of 75 organisations and individuals, including three survivors of the Siev X children overboard tragedy, in which 353 people died. They had come to give a human face to the disaster, said Kayser Trad, a director of the Lebanese Muslim Association.
Thousands attend 'Lies' rally in Sydney
Police estimates put crowd numbers at the End the Lies Sydney rally, which marched from Town Hall to Belmore Park, at about 6,000. Protesters represented a broad range of political agendas and came from an even wider range of political and social organisations.
Similar rallies took place in capital cities and regional centres across the country ahead of next Saturday's federal election.
Thousands march against Howard
Thousands of people from a variety of community and political groups took to the streets today as part of a nationwide 'End the Lies' campaign to oust the Howard government.
A cage fight
CHILDREN'S author Paul Jennings said watching the distress his grandson showed, seeing him locked in a cage, drilled home the seriousness of conditions for asylum seekers in Australia. Mr Jennings was among those who spent time enclosed in a cage on Warrnambool's Civic Green on Saturday to raise awareness of issues surrounding refugees in detention.
Church head attacks morals
In what many will see as an intervention in the last week of the election campaign, church head Peter Carnley made a scathing attack on the "so-called war against terrorism" and the Government's treatment of asylum seekers.
Artists call for truth in government
People in the arts strove to "bring to the world, images and entertainment that reflect the integrity of the Australian community", the letter said. But the "deceitful behaviour" of the Government, its commitment to an illegal war, misinformation about the behaviour of asylum seekers, and its "disgraceful imprisonment of children" had all "greatly besmirched Australia's international image".
Thousands turn out to protest against detention
Organiser Tim Petterson, from the Refugee Action Committee, estimated the crowd, which spread from the steps of the State Library across Swanston Street for one block, at between 5000 and 10,000 people - while police estimated 1000 to 2000 people attended. "We're really pleased and think it's a fantastic turnout," he said. "There is a real sense of a hope in being able to change Australia's unjust refugee policies. This rally sends the message to all the political parties in Australia that we are unhappy with our treatment of refugees and there is a real need for them to lift their game." Demonstrators held banners that read "Tampa Lies Stole the Last Election" and "We want a Prime Minister who won't Tampa with the truth".
What our leaders are not saying
Refugees -- along with the Labor talismans of Aboriginal reconciliation and the republic -- were also not touched upon in Latham's Labor launch. The Coalition, apart from one half-hearted press conference, has hardly raised the issue of border protection. Yet at the 2001 election Howard's declaration that he would decide who stepped on to Australian soil was central to his campaign launch. Similarly, neither side really wants to talk about asylum-seekers. Howard seemed to turn the last round of allegations -- that he was told before the last election that claims about children being thrown into the water were false -- into a positive by declaring he "stopped the boats". Labor, which has virtually an identical policy on refugees in most of the important areas, has not pursued the first of the three R's during this election. Latham's ALP conference address in January showed where he stood on asylum-seekers and Labor's Left agenda was stranded.
Doubt over deportee claims
"I am advised the Edmund Rice Centre would not co-operate with the department in relation to the preliminary report. That does make further inquiries extremely difficult," Senator Vanstone said. However, the centre's director, Phil Glendenning, said: "It's not true and it's silly. We have co-operated fully." Department officials had been fully briefed and shown supporting documents in Geneva and Sydney. The Australian Democrats leader, Andrew Bartlett, said: "I don't know how the Government can dismiss it when they haven't done the research themselves."
Read Deported to danger?...
Hazara leader runs for Qld Senate
An Afghani leader in Australia aims to attract the Islamic vote when he stands for the Senate in Queensland as an independent in the upcoming election. Hassan Ghulam, who migrated to Australia 19 years ago and now lives outside Brisbane, has become a vocal critic of the government's policies on immigration and detention. His role as a refugee advocate evolved gradually after he became known as a spokesman for Afghani people through his role as the president of the Hazara Ethnic Society of Australia, a persecuted ethnic minority in Afghanistan. His reputation soon spread to other refugee communities and detainees on the island of Nauru, who still contact him every couple of days seeking his help.
Refugees and elections
Anybody expecting the Labor Party today to pursue a small target strategy (with regard to refugee issues) during the election campaign and then, if elected, close the detention centres, give permanent residence to all TPV holders, declare an amnesty for illegals, triple Australia�s refugee intake, and substantially increase its contribution to the UNHCR ought to have a good look at the policies of previous Labor governments.
Candidates ranked on refugee policy
An advocacy group has produced rankings of candidates' stances on refugee policy which could play a pivotal role in tight marginal seats on October 9. A candidate survey by The Justice Project group will be used to develop how to vote cards - which could prove to be crucial in some seats where the issue is dominant. Justice Project spokesman and prominent lawyer Julian Burnside, QC, said the rankings were expected to have a considerable impact.
MP contradicts refugee policy
Federal Labor backbencher Anna Burke has contradicted her party's policies on refugees, saying that asylum-seekers should be released from immigration detention after health checks. Breaking from Labor's policy of mandatory detention, Ms Burke, who holds the marginal Victorian seat of Chisholm, also said that asylum-seekers should be entitled to work in the community and to receive Medicare, while awaiting the outcome of their claim for refugee status. Ms Burke's surprising statements were contained in answers to a survey of 35 federal electorates, including 27 marginal seats, by refugee advocacy group The Justice Project led by prominent Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside QC.
View candidate rankings from The Justice Project...
The shape of the argument
How could there be so little interest in the evidence presented to the Certain Maritime Incident enquiry? So little curiosity about what happened to the sailors and asylum seekers caught up in the naval blockade of the boats? How so little protest from the media - virtually none - at finding itself banned from Operation Relex and from Australia�s gulag on Nauru? So little curiosity to examine why, after going to such extreme lengths to keep these Afghan and Iraqi refugees out of the country, Australia was forced in mid-2003 to begin bringing them ashore? I can tell you the answer there. It�s because the rest of the world -apart from New Zealand - told Australia to fuck off. It�s a big story with a humiliating payout for the Howard government. It�s barely rated a mention in the media.
Save child detainees: former judge
Modest amendments to the fortress-like Migration Act could give children in detention the urgent access to welfare agencies they need while retaining the Howard Government's commitment to mandatory detention, a former Family Court judge said yesterday. A sometimes emotional Richard Chisholm, who resigned from the Family Court in June to re-enter academia, said the subject of children in detention was so deeply distressing that "it seems extraordinary to me that I should have to be making these proposals".
Why are the children still locked up?
Soon after I began visiting the Maribyrnong detention centre in 2001, I took in my son, who was then seven years old, and introduced him to children his age and younger, including some who had been born in detention. My son was uneasy at first. The detention centres are prisons. We had to enter through a series of locked doors. However, he befriended some of the children and became a regular visitor. Whenever we left the prison and stepped out into the fresh night air, my son would ask the simple questions we should all be asking our Prime Minister as he travels the campaign circuit. Why are the children in there? Why are they locked up? He could not understand it. Neither can I. This is why I will not be supporting the re-election of the Howard Government. [Arnold Zable, writer and spokesman on refugee issues for Melbourne International PEN.]
Refugees sent back to danger: claim
In their push to get rid of detainees, authorities "often took a reckless" view of the dangers they faced once deported, the report, by researchers from the Edmund Rice Centre and the Australian Catholic University, said. "Some were locked up and badly treated immediately on arrival in countries from which they had fled for various political and religious reasons," the report, Danger to Danger, said.
Deported to Danger
Researchers from the Edmund Rice Centre the ACU have interviewed 40 rejected asylum seekers in 11 countries. Of the 40, the report found that only 5 were safe after being deported from Australia. In addition to the 40, another 10 were found to be in so much danger that it was not safe to interview them. �We were deeply shocked by the stories of these people. It is clear from this study that Australia has been putting people into situations where their lives are at risk once they have been removed from the country. This represents refoulement and is contrary to international law�, said Edmund Rice Centre Director Phil Glendenning. The report also found that the risks to deportees were increased by Australia engaging the services of private security companies, giving information and documents to authorities overseas, and paying overseas government officials to accept deportees, inviting the accusation of corruption. �What we have found here will shame most Australians who subscribe to the values of respect for the rule of law and the sense of a fair go. We call upon a re-elected Howard Government or a newly elected Latham Government to change this policy and ensure that Australia meets our international obligations and return the policy to one where the safety of people is not neglected�, Mr Glendenning concluded.
Home is where the hurt is
Matthew's first political mistake was to be born into war-torn Angola as a member of the Bakongo tribe whose members' lives are made doubly dangerous through ethnic discrimination. His second was to join the Youth Party that opposed the ruling regime during the African nation's long civil war, leading to his persecution when he refused to act as a government spy. His third error was to think that Australia would give him asylum. Instead, he was bustled straight from the airport to immigration detention for 3 years. When he was thrown into jail for participating in a protest, he was raped twice. But these horrors are just a prelude to his story as told in a new report Deported to Danger?, which has traced the fate of 40 rejected asylum seekers Australia sent packing - often back to the countries from which they originally fled in fear of their lives.
Report slams Govt treatment of rejected asylum seekers
The ABC's Lateline obtained a copy of the document, compiled by the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education, which says the Howard Government has allowed political agendas to dictate its refugee policy, rather than the rule of law.
The report says 35 out of 40 deportees interviewed are now living in danger, and another 10 are in so much danger it was not safe to interview them. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says she will look at the report's findings, but stressed it seems similar to an interim report by the same organisation, which she has already dismissed.
Home is where the hurt is
Matthew's first political mistake was to be born into war-torn Angola as a member of the Bakongo tribe whose members' lives are made doubly dangerous through ethnic discrimination. His second was to join the Youth Party that opposed the ruling regime during the African nation's long civil war, leading to his persecution when he refused to act as a government spy. His third error was to think that Australia would give him asylum. Instead, he was bustled straight from the airport to immigration detention for 3 years. When he was thrown into jail for participating in a protest, he was raped twice. But these horrors are just a prelude to his story as told in a new report Deported to Danger?, which has traced the fate of 40 rejected asylum seekers Australia sent packing - often back to the countries from which they originally fled in fear of their lives.
Meet the women who have John Howard worried
[T]he anger of these women is incandescent and their outrage overflowing. What riles them are failures of compassion, honesty and morality - they see these as traditional Liberal values and they believe they have been abandoned. [...] If anyone exemplifies the incongruities that sometimes emerge in modern politics it is Ms Swansson, the former Liberal staffer who is preparing to vote Green but is also an avowed monarchist. Her message for the PM? "You are dishonest, morally corrupt and you will do anything to remain in power. I want you to know that I know that."
Out of detention into their own hell
Heavily sedated, Parvis Yousefi stays in his bedroom all day, every day. After three years and two months in South Australian immigration detention centres, he has now created his own prison in a rented flat in suburban Adelaide. He takes a mix of drugs to cope with his constant fear and confusion: 5mg a day of the anti-psychotic Olanzapine; 20mg of the anti-obsessional Fluoxetine; and up to three tablets daily of the tranquiliser Diazepam. At 4.30pm, his 13-year-old son, Manucheher, will return home from school. Like his father, he takes an anti-psychotic. As the child's mother, Mehrnoosh, explains, the prescription Neulactil is more suitable for children. In the words of their former GP, Simon Lockwood, this family were "broken" during their lengthy stay in the desert immigration detention centres of South Australia.
See also The damage detention has done.
Academics join call for honesty in government
A group of academics from almost every public university in Australia today joined the chorus of professionals calling for truth in government. Previously, 43 retired defence chiefs and senior diplomats and 54 doctors and medical specialists have issued statements criticising Australia's role in the war in Iraq and calling for greater honesty. Today, about 380 academics, including 160 professors, urged the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, to restore the nation's reputation as an honest broker.
Inside Baxter
An Age investigation into conditions at the purpose-built two-year-old Baxter Immigration Detention Facility has found that despite greatly improved amenities, it faces many of the serious problems that plagued Woomera and led to its closure. They mostly stem from aggressive, disruptive, self-harming behaviour by depressed and isolated detainees who cannot cope with the mental stress of indefinite long-term detention.
The third man
As for the issue that provoked the most heated debate over the past three years, the Government's treatment of asylum seekers, Costello is an unapologetic defender of the Government's record. "Our policy is now giving priority to those people assessed on the basis of need and I think this is far more humane than letting people select themselves," he says. "My feeling is what we did, we had to do. I think it was successful. I wish the legal process had been quicker. I wish that we'd been able to get, by now, and we nearly have, all the children out of detention. And I wish that we could have run an orderly refugee program for really needy people."
Transcript of interview on TOP FM with Hon Alexander Downer, MP
MINISTER DOWNER: [...]I think we�ve been incredibly tough on illegal immigration, and by the way, some of your listeners will, may think well you have been, but you�ve been a bit inhumane, and I�d like to just say something about that.
COMPERE: I tend to think that we�ve been a bit tough. I think with kids, I think with women, I, most, 93% of them end up being released on a visa �
MINISTER DOWNER: Yeah, well there are two things to say about that. First, if we blink and give an opening to the people smugglers, if the people smugglers are able to say Australia�s gone soft on this issue, we can start business flowing again, we�re gonna have people crammed in, paying money, and being crammed into little and dangerous boats � like SIEV X, which sank with 350 lost souls � we�re going to encourage those sorts of hazardous and dangerous journeys. Let�s send a strong message. Secondly, we�ve, with the detention centres, I know a lot of people think this is tough, but these people who are not found to be refugees, do not have to stay in detention centres. They are perfectly welcome to go home. But they choose to stay rather than go home.
Voters-overboard risk for three Libs
Private party polling on both sides has detected a mood shift on the debate that defined the 2001 federal election. While only three Liberal seats are seen to be directly at risk -- Wentworth, Deakin and Adelaide -- Government ministers in safe seats have been comparing notes on the rumblings from formerly rusted-on supporters.
'Doctors' wives' to cut loose
"In our own way, we're conservative types but we're incensed," said Ms Chaikin, who is planning to vote for Labor and the Greens, in protest against the Coalition's treatment of asylum-seekers, the children overboard affair, the Iraq war and the environment.
Evocative message of despair through a lens
"The film is not about politics, it is about moral issues... it's about what a leader should be... it's about human beings and humanism. If we only talk in terms of economic rationalism or how much you can earn and whether this government is going to benefit you, then I think we are heading in a very destructive direction, because at some stage . . . all of this will come back to you and haunt you." [Clara Law, Film maker, Letters to Ali]
Australia asks PNG to keep Manus immigration detention centre running
The Manus Centre has been vacant since May this year when its last resident Aladdin Sisalem was granted a visa to live in Australia. The centre can house up to one thousand asylum seekers, and remains on one week operational standby. An agreement for the centre's operation is due to expire late next month, and while PNG has indicated it wants the centre to close, it's understood Australian officials have sought a further two years extension, to allow a new facility on Christmas Island to be completed.
Life beyond rent-a-crowd
I used to wonder why Australians are such a greedy, hypocritical bunch. How could we turn away refugees when there is one square kilometre of this stolen country for each person that lives here? But on that hot day at Villawood I realized that it is not greed that allows the Australian government to lock people in the desert and turn back boats. It is absolute fear of change. I will admire the first Australian prime minister who has the guts to confront the issue of Australia's reception of refugees head on. Who acknowledges the grey areas and works to placate the deeply-rooted fears of most - if not all - white Australians, while at the same time employing a humane, generous and discriminating (not discriminatory) immigration policy. Because I know that for all my opinions and good intentions, I couldn't handle that job. [Marni Cordell]
Witnesses say detainees forcibly moved to Baxter
Detainees at the Maribyrnong detention centre say that people are being forcibly removed to Baxter at short notice without a chance to call family or lawyers. They described the process, which sparked a protest by detainees over the weekend, as "inhumane" and "unfair". Detainees who spoke to The Age yesterday from Maribyrnong said four people were given less than an hour to pack for their transfer to the Baxter detention centre in South Australia on Friday. In one case, a middle-aged Vietnamese man was not allowed time to contact his son and daughter, who live in Melbourne.
Life finally deals Mandaean refugees a good hand
Najieh lost hope of a new life in Australia, of joining her sister, Jila, and 13 nephews and nieces in Sydney. Deportation seemed unavoidable. Like so many detainees, she became depressed, her blood pressure rose, and she became increasingly disoriented and had difficulty remembering. Last month Najieh and Jafar Ascher Sobbi were released from the Baxter detention centre following a high level review ordered by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone into the plight of Sabian Mandaeans. They are the last of 160 Mandaean men, women and children to be released from detention after their claims of religious persecution in Iran were finally recognised.
Experts set to criticise Aust over children's policies
The way governments treat children is one of the key topics being discussed in Brisbane at the 15th world congress on child abuse and neglect.[...] According to conference organisers, Australia will be criticised for Indigenous policies, children in detention centres and for participating in wars which impact on the young.
Time runs out for asylum seekers
A hunger strike, a High Court action and a direct appeal to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone are among last-ditch efforts to stop the forced return of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka.
Baxter protest reaches day four
A protest by a group of Sri Lankan asylum seekers at South Australia's Baxter detention centre has ended its fourth day with no sign of resolution. Of the 16 Sri Lankan men at the centre, 11 of them have been holding a peaceful protest in a bid to get Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone to review their cases in light of the deteriorating situation in their home country.
Refuge Australia
Klaus Neumann has drawn many similar stories from the Australian Archives to illustrate his Refuge Australia: Australia's Humanitarian Record. This little, ironically titled book is the first overview of Australian refugee policy and practice from Federation to 1973 and in it Neumann explores the historical origins of current Howard Government asylum and refugee policies with the aim of debunking four ruling assumptions that have surfaced during the current debate: that Australia has traditionally accepted more than its fair share of the world's refugees; that the Indochinese arrivals in 1976 were the first onshore asylum seekers; that governments have always supported international legal instruments to protect and succour refugees; and that the Howard Government pioneered forcible repatriation of refugees and the granting of temporary protection visas.
Detainees readied for deportation
Afghan asylum-seekers on Nauru fear they will be forced to return to the strife-torn country after immigration officers travelled to the Pacific island this week to convince the detainees to leave. [...] Afghans were being "asked to consider their options" but the department would not specify what officers said in the interviews.
Return to sender
A final image in Melbourne filmmaker Clara Law's first feature documentary is a sunset. The pink-edged clouds look like a dragon bringing her babies home. In that single shot, Law encapsulates the story of Letters to Ali. The dragon in this film is Dr Trish Kerbi, a determined, fiery Victorian mother of four. In 2002 she started corresponding with a 15-year-old refugee locked up in Port Hedland detention centre. Kerbi encouraged her children to also write to the boy, whose family is missing, presumed dead. Kerbi's family, including her husband Rob Silberstein, visited the refugee they call "Ali". Slowly, he became a surrogate son.
Les enfants r�fugi�s divisent l��le continent
Les initiatives citoyennes de " ceux qui disent non " se multiplient depuis 2001 en Australie. Symbole le plus affirm� d�une rousp�tance gagnant en cr�dibilit�, l�association ChilOut, groupe de volontaires, " des citoyens australiens normaux ", comme nous d�crit sa coordinatrice Alanna Sherry, oppos�s � la d�tention des mineurs. "
Reality rebel with a cause
Since 24 year old Merlin Luck made his 'free the refugees' protest on reality tv show Big Brother in June, he has travelled the country addressing diverse audiences and speaking on panels with human rights lawyers and politicians. In scores of media interviews he has sought to increase the public's awareness of Australia's policy of mandatory detention.
Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers Plead for Compassion
Sixteen Sri Lankan asylum seekers marked the third anniversary of their controversial arrival in Australia's migration zone with a heartfelt plea to Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, in Baxter Detention Centre, South Australia, today. They are asking the Minister to reassess their cases for asylum in light of the rapidly deteriorating situation in their country.
At last, magic for Aladdin
"Yes, I start to be involved within the normal life. I start to think like most people, how to build my life, how to survive, things like that. I start to feel that I am a member of some community or something. I start to believe that I am here." [Aladdin Sisalem].
What the pollsters say
[T]he quarterly survey we do for the JOBfutures organisation showed that as long ago as last September, 61 per cent of the Australian workforce had come to the view that asylum seekers posed no threat to the security of Australia. Successive JOBfutures surveys have also shown a clear trend over the past year towards a more tolerant view of asylum seekers among people in the Australian workforce.
Detainee pleads for a fair go
THE detention of one Kashmiri asylum-seeker for the past six years is estimated to have cost nearly $400,000. [...] The 30-year-old has been refused refugee status and, as India has refused to recognise his nationality, he is effectively "stateless". A recent High Court ruling found unsuccessful asylum-seekers can be held in detention until they are returned home, irrespective of how long this takes.
3 months and children still in detention
3 months after the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity called on the Australian government to release all children and their parents from detention, 108 children reamin in detention, 81 of which are in secure facilities in Australia and on Nauru. Hundreds of people came to Sydney's Pitt St Mall to mark the occassion.
September 10, 2004 - Who cares? We do!
Standing in Pitt Street Mall you'd be excused for confusing us with David Jones' employees. Dressed in black, we 20 or so volunteers from ChilOut mark the three-month passing of a deadline to release children from detention.
Born in Australia, but child's wish to stay denied
A five-year-old girl born in Australia could not stay here because her Indian parents had failed to win residency, the High Court ruled yesterday. The court said under the Citizenship Act, Tania Singh could only be treated as an Australian if at least one parent was a citizen or a permanent or long-term resident. The 5-2 decision is also bad news for the Bakhtiari family, whose case has been a focal point for refugee activists. Justice Michael Kirby said "the same result must follow" for Mazhar Bakhtiari, born last October. His father, Ali, remains in Baxter Detention Centre.
Children born in Australia 'can be deported'
Tania's lawyers argued that despite her lack of Australian citizenship, her birth in Australia necessarily meant she was not an alien, and treating her as such was beyond Parliament's scope. Lawyers for both children hoped that if their challenge succeeded, it would prevent them and their families from being removed. [...] Constitutional expert Mary Crock said the decision, along with a recent judgement on stateless asylum seekers, marked the "death of implied rights" in the constitution under the High Court's present make-up. "They are very literalist in their approach," she said.
Six-year-old Indian girl loses case against Australia
In 2003, Malkiat Singh, sought a High Court declaration that because Tania was born in Australia, the Migration Acts power to remove unlawful non-citizens did not apply to her. However, the Court said that Parliament does have the power to treat someone like Tania, born in Australia, as a non-citizen. Australia is one of the few countries, where citizenship is not granted by birth. The verdict in the Singh v/s Commonwealth of Australia case will have a far reaching impact on migrants born in Australia.
Citizenship is no birthright
Citizenship is only available to a person born here if at least one parent is an Australian citizen or a permanent or long-term resident. The key issue for the court was whether Section 51 of the Constitution, which gives Parliament power to make laws on naturalisation and aliens, empowered it to legislate for the removal of someone in Tania's position.
Australia's six years of shame
Senator for South Australia Natasha Stott Despoja has written to the Prime Minister urging him to demonstrate compassion in relation to Mr Qasim's case and grant him a visa as a matter of urgency.
No crime but life imprisonment
Australia has refused their requests for asylum but the countries of their births will not take them back. Up to 80 other countries have also refused their pleas for a home.
Protests over indefinite detention
A High Court ruling found it was lawful for "stateless" people, such as Mr Qasim, to be held in detention indefinitely. "My mistake was asking for help from a country that didn't want me," Mr Qasim said. "I have asked 80 countries to give me a home, but all have refused."
Six years a detainee, man still after home
Mr Qasim, Australia's longest-serving detainee, continues to be locked up in the Baxter detention centre in South Australia because Australia can find no country to take him. He said the worst thing was the uncertainty. "Even a criminal knows the length of his sentence but I have no such comfort," he said.
A man with no past, no future, no hope
Figures from the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and ALP immigration spokesman Stephen Smith reveal Australian taxpayers have paid $612,066 to keep Mr Qasim locked up. [...] His last bid for freedom in Australia failed on August 31 when Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone refused to exercise her discretionary power to release him. He will now be held at Baxter detention centre indefinitely � a ruling that has left Mr Qasim despairing for his life.
Sign the Peter Qasim petition...
One of two asylum seekers camps on Nauru closes
One of the two asylum seeker processing camps on Nauru will be mothballed following the departure later today of 22 inmates who have been accepted as refugees by New Zealand.
The camps were set up on Nauru as part of Australia's Pacific Solution program. Sean Dorney reports that the camp known as Top-side will be closed and all 82 remaining asylum seekers will be housed in the remaining camp known as State House.
Last 21 Afghan refugees accepted
Refugee Muhammad Ali Amiri said in an email from Nauru yesterday that he was looking forward to being free of the Nauruan camp. The camp had been his home for three years, almost to the day. "On the 19th of this month, it will be three years that we are in Nauru," he wrote.
"We are ready to go to New Zealand tomorrow . . . it is great we become free from Nauru."
Immigration Minister Paul Swain said New Zealand agreed to take the 21 single male Afghans and one Bangladeshi man after a request from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.
Playing a different race card
Immigration is an election issue, but there is evidence that Australians are growing more tolerant of refugees.
Fewer on move from world trouble spots
Australia is experiencing a fall in applications for asylum under what the United Nations describes as a sharp drop worldwide in asylum claims. [...] In Australia, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, the average numbers of monthly asylum claims were the lowest since 1990.
PM targeted over human rights "blot"
The Howard Government had "put a blot" on Australia's record for being fair and generous, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan said in Adelaide last night.
French fury over detainee's death
France has slammed Australia over its treatment of asylum-seekers following allegations a 74-year-old French citizen detained in Sydney's Villawood detention centre was denied medical treatment and later died of a brain haemorrhage.
Howard and Latham test what suits by political cross-dressing
Those [in Liberal Sydney city seats] planning to desert the Liberals say they are not happy with Howard, citing the environment, truth in government and asylum seekers, especially the detention of children.
No crime but life imprisonment
Peter Qasim and Eidriess Abdulrahman Al Salih are two of 13 stateless asylum seekers who face indefinite detention in Australia. They are currently in Baxter Detention Centre. Australia has refused their requests for asylum but the countries of their births will not take them back. Up to 80 other countries have also refused their pleas for a home. [...]'What is my crime?' asks Peter Qasim. 'I asked for asylum after my father was killed and I was tortured by the security forces in Kashmir. It was a mistake to ask people who didn't want me, but I have already been punished for my ignorance longer than some murderers and my sentence has no end. Please give me freedom, send me anywhere. You can't ask a human being to live the rest of his life locked up.'
Please call me Michael
"The first thing I said is, 'I hope you're quiet'," says the 85-year-old widow. Michael, or Usama, as some of his friends call him, remembers the exchange just a little differently. "I think you said, 'you're not bloody noisy are you?'," he says. They laugh together at this. "I said 'we're all very quiet people here and that's the way we want it'," says Sylvia. Since then, Usama, 33, and Sylvia have found an enduring friendship.
Refugees and bleeding hearts, wedging back
Rural electorates played a key role in the federal government�s recent decision to allow refugees on temporary visas to apply for mainstream migration visas.
Sanctuary Australia: a lost dream?
In the end the Howard Government could not sustain a policy that lacked the compassion and decency that Australians expect to be extended to people in trouble, no matter from where they originate or under what circumstances they arrive. The uncertainty implicit in sending people back to countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq could not be justified. The question remains, however, of what damage has been done to those people and at what cost to Australia's reputation as a place of refuge from tyranny?
Somehow, we need to make politics cool again
You can have a good time with your mates and still care about the suffering of others, writes Merlin Luck.
Stateless detainees get bridging visas in review
Two stateless men who faced indefinite detention because of a High Court ruling have been granted bridging visas by the Federal Government. They were among nine stateless asylum seekers given the visas after a review of 24 cases by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone. The review followed a High Court ruling that failed asylum seekers who could not be removed to another country, despite their wish to leave Australia, could be held in immigration detention indefinitely.
See also: Al-Masri Decisions, Media Release, Sen. Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Immigration, 31 August 2004.
Reassessment of Afghani Nationals in Mainland Detention
Minister for Immigration, Senator Amanda Vanstone, today announced the reassessment of asylum seeker claims of Afghani nationals in Australian mainland immigration detention had been completed. 'I announced in July that my Department would reassess asylum seeker claims by Afghani nationals in mainland detention,' the Minister said.
'This followed updated country information being provided to the department by the UNHCR. 'Of the 85 people reassessed, I have decided to allow 57 to lodge new applications for temporary protection.
MP hounded for refugee quarantine analogy
Called on to justify the government's policy of mandatory detention, the parliamentary secretary told the crowd that she hated the thought of anyone being held in detention.
But she said there were "some very practical reasons" for that. "I mean, if you bring a dog into this country or a cat from some countries ...." she said, before being drowned out by a rumble of interjections from the audience.
Quarantine remark 'poor choice': Worth
"It was a poor choice of words," told AAP. "But people who know my stance on refugees, and the work that I have done for refugees in the community, would know that I would never ever make such a comparison." Ms Worth accused her political opponents of dirty campaigning. "I totally reject attempts by my political opponents to misrepresent my position on the treatment of refugees," she said.
Bartlett calls for 'children overboard' eyewitness
"Given that there has not even been an apology forthcoming for these refugees who were seriously defamed by the Prime Minister and senior Ministers, the least they deserve is an opportunity to have their say before the Senate Committee that has spent so much time investigating the matter." [...] "Labor says they will release children in detention- but they will be in mini-detention centres, so-called 'residential housing projects'. These projects are surrounded by fences, cameras and guards � therefore children are still in detention."
Headmaster optimistic over Bakhtiyari claims re-examination
The head of the Adelaide school attended by two boys of the celebrated Bakhtiyari asylum seeker family has expressed optimism that fresh attempts to prove they really are from Afghanistan, not Pakistan, will vindicate the family and lead to a more humane attitude on the part of the Australian Government.
Campaigning over DIMIA broken promises begins
Refugee advocates around Australia, including renowned Canberra-based migration agent Marion Le OAM, are furious about what looks like deliberate stalling of refugee assessment outcomes for Afghanis in the Baxter detention centre by the Department of Immigration, DIMIA.
Police alert sparks boatpeople fear
Indonesian police commissioner Tri Priyo has told The Australian the Australian Federal Police informed his people-trafficking unit earlier this month that Sri Lankan people-smugglers are organising a voyage to Australia.
Lying is not the issue?
Rural Australians for Refugees will make sure that trust is an election issue in all 15 marginal rural and regional seats in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. "Mr Howard may believe that his Government's treatment of asylum seekers in the lead-up to the last election 'is not an issue' for most people, he will find that it is very much an issue for the thousands of rural and regional Australians whose lives have been touched by refugees," RAR national co-ordinator Rob Simpson said yesterday.
Spotlight on detainees less glaring this time
The Government has also been releasing women and children from detention into residential-based detention, in a softening of its border protection policy. [...] Labor would also release all children from immigration detention. It would also release entire families into residential housing, unlike the Government, which only allows mothers and children to live in alternative detention arrangements outside the centres.
Lingering pain of Tampa
Three years ago, Mohammad Asif was plucked from the sea by sailors aboard the Tampa.
On that day, the anniversary for which fell on Thursday, he unwittingly became one of the refugees at the centre of one of the most bitter election campaigns in Australian history.
He spent almost all of those three years in a prison camp in the scorching heat of the tiny central Pacific island of Nauru, as the heated politics played out in Canberra. Now he's working on a building site in suburban Sydney, but the pain is not over. He's desperately hoping that some day he can bring his wife and son from Afghanistan to Australia. "Without family, life is not good," Mr Asif said. "When I go to work I think about my job, but when I go home all I think about is my family. "It is very hard when you have married someone and love her and you have a child to be without them."
The Dark, Unacknowledged Truth of The Children Overboard Scandal
"It has never been properly emphasised that the simple fact is the children and their parents would never have ended up in the water, requiring the crew of the HMAS Adelaide to bravely risk their lives to save them, were it not for the specific policy and orders of the Government," Senator Bartlett said. "It was a specific policy decision of Mr Howard's Government not to rescue these refugees who were at risk in an unseaworthy boat. This callous disregard for human life is a far worse crime than the defamatory lies that were repeated stating that the refugees deliberately tried to drown their children." "Previous practice was always to get the refugees to safety first and then examine their refugee claims. The most disgraceful of Mr Howard's many decisions in this sordid saga was to change this to give lesser priority to the lives of the refugees and only allow them to be brought to safety if their boat actually sank!"
Refugee throws Lib's tale overboard
With the refugee boat disintegrating around her, Mrs Al Raheemy was one of 223 passengers and crew scrambling to make it to Royal Australian Navy rescuers. "I knew life was not useful for me because I thought my children would die," Mrs Al Raheemy said. But her subsequent joy at being reunited with her terrified son and daughter turned to disbelief weeks later when Mrs Al Raheemy found out that Australian voters had been told the asylum-seekers deliberately threw their children into the sea. "Children are part of our hearts � how could we ever throw them into the ocean?" she said.
'Overboard' Iraqis to be reassessed
"If the United Nations High Commission for Refugees says they've got fresh information, we'll always take it and we'll redo the caseload." The reassessments apply to 27 Iraqi nationals, including seven children, being held on the Pacific island of Nauru.
Faces behind the controversy
The dramatic sight of navy gunner Laura Whittle swimming to the rescue of a young boy and his mother was used by then-defence minister Peter Reith to support the Government's claims. It is now a matter of Australian political and maritime history that the photograph was taken the day after the supposed children overboard incident. In truth, it was a close-up shot of a daring ocean rescue involving hundreds of terrified asylum-seekers. The mother and son pictured with Able Seaman Whittle yesterday spoke for the first time of their ordeal and how they felt when they learned their image had become the Government's "proof" of children overboard claims. [...] "Of course we were upset because none of us would throw children into the sea. "We waited with our children until the very last moment to leave the sinking boat." Hassan's sister Zaynab, 18, who was also rescued from SIEV-IV, put it this way: "So my mother would come all this way just to throw her children overboard?"
Clouds over the playground
Dale West, who heads the Catholic welfare agency that sponsored the children's release through the Family Court, said he began with an open mind but now believes the family is from Afghanistan. The boys have been embraced by other Afghan students at St Ignatius and play soccer for an Afghan team. "I am convinced now because they phone relatives in Afghanistan and they phone back," Mr West said. "I've got to know the boys really well. I'd drop dead where I'm standing if it was ever proven they really weren't from Afghanistan because I don't think kids could have pulled it off for so long. I would be absolutely stunned if it turned out to be a ruse."
Court to re-examine Bakhtiyari claims
[Ali Bakhtiyari's] lawyer, Steven Churches, sought a reopening of the case on two grounds: that the Refugee Review Tribunal behaved inappropriately by pushing aside material it found too difficult to deal with, including linguistic analyses that concluded Mr Bakhtiyari was from Afghanistan, and because new evidence from Afghanistan had emerged.
New allegations of Navy cruelty
Australian navy sailors served 'inedible' chilli-smothered meals to boatpeople and took children ashore without their parents in order to break a protest aboard the HMAS Manoora in 2001, according to refugees.
Lost on land, reborn at sea
Many of the young Tampa boys, given refuge in New Zealand, did not know their dates of birth. When given the chance to choose their birthday many plumped on August 26, Tampa Day, as they now call it. Baqir was one of 179 Tampa people who returned with a $2000 assistance package from the Australian Government after their refugee claim was rejected. Many have since moved on to Quetta in Pakistan where their problems continue. In Quetta, Hazaras - the ethnic group many Tampa people belong to - can be arrested and returned to Afghanistan simply because they don't have valid papers, says Baqir. "[But] there is not any organisation to give such documents or take responsibility. All are saying you have to go back at any cost but there is no one to answer these question: How? Where?" he wrote to the Herald.
A day to celebrate refugees� contribution to Australia
Human Rights Commissioner Dr Sev Ozdowski said that Refugee and Migrant Sunday (29 August) is an important occasion to celebrate the valuable contribution that migrants and refugees have made and continue to make to Australia.[...] �It is only through promoting awareness of the valuable contribution that refugees have made and continue to make in Australian society that entrenched stereotypes and prejudices will be erased,� the Commissioner said.
PM dented by blaming other people, polls show
Liberal party polling is showing voters are concerned about children in detention, a cause raised again this week by the Treasurer, Peter Costello. The Human Rights Commissioner, Sev Ozdowski, said yesterday the issue had spurred one of the larger civil rights movements since the Vietnam war, with a recent poll showing 77 per cent of Australians now opposed it. But he said children were still being detained in Australia, in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. "We still have the laws which make detention of children a first resort, not the last resort and the laws that permit detaining them for an indefinite period ... We are still robbing these children of their childhood."
Australia 'obliged' to free children
Human Rights Commissioner Dr Sev Ozdowksi, who earlier this year released a damning report into immigration detention, said that while the report had been embraced and debated, laws still allowed the government to indefinitely detain children. "Remember, Australia is currently the chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission," Dr Ozdowski told the National Press Club. "And we still have laws which make the detention of children a first resort, not the last resort, and the laws permit detaining them for an indefinite period of time.
New Refugee Visa Measures - The Lies Continue - One Step Forward Follows Ten Steps Backwards
"The Government's temporary visa policy has deliberately torn families apart and left thousands of refugees in a state of uncertainty and insecurity. The Government is putting a band aid on a gaping wound and then trying to con Australians into thinking they are being humane. "While this move will eventually provide some people with security and safety, it continues the Governments practice of fixing up problems caused by bad policy by adding another one, rather than admitting the original mistake and fixing it. It is more bad policy that will lead to more unnecessary suffering. Refugees deserve certainty and protection because they are fleeing persecution, not because the Minister thinks they might be able to fill employment needs.
A tale of two 12-year-olds
What matters to me is that children and their families who arrive in this country as refugees are put in detention centres and are imprisoned for an average of one year and eight months. I'm sure that most Australians like to feel that they are caring and respect human rights. Although our government signed the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which protects children's welfare, it seems that if you are a refugee you don't count in Australia.[Haydon Knight, year 6 student at Cranbook, Winner in the "What Matters" writing competition].
ALP slams Costello's detention comments
Mr Costello said he thought immigration policy should aim to keep children out of detention centres. But he said this could be achieved through reforms to the lengthy court appeals process for asylum-seekers and an end to illegal immigration, as well as the existing program of moving mothers and children into community housing. Mr Costello said there were now very few children in immigration detention, and he hoped there would eventually be no children detained in Australian centres. Mr Smith said that currently there were between 30 and 35 children in Australian-run detention centres.
Costello immigration comments back Govt policy: PM
Mr Howard says there is nothing new in his comments and Peter Costello's views on immigration are in line with Government policy. Mr Howard says there are only two children in immigration detention in Australia today. "I would like a situation where there were no children in custody any longer," he said.
No children should be in detention: Costello
"I would look forward to a situation where there are no children in detention and I think that's got to be the aim of policy," he said. "Bear in mind if you had no unauthorised arrivals you would have no children in detention."
Sympathy shifting to asylum-seekers
ASYLUM-seekers have become a popular cause, with 61 per cent of voters now wanting some or all boatpeople to be allowed to enter Australia -- reversing the mood during the last federal election.
'Children overboard' debate highlights plight of asylum seekers
As the Prime Minister continues to dispute claims that he misled the public in the "children overboard" affair, refugee advocates are pointing out that the broader issues involved are hardly ancient history. The allegation that asylum seekers deliberately threw their children into the sea helped the Howard Government three years ago to sell its so-called "Pacific Solution" strategy to the Australian electorate. And that strategy of assessing illegal boat-arrivals offshore remains in place today, with more than 100 detainees still being held on Nauru. Nine months ago, a group of asylum seekers on the Pacific Island began a hunger strike after their claims for refugee status were initially refused. Many of those hunger strikers are now in Australia as officially recognised refugees.
Howard was told the truth
A central figure in the children overboard affair has broken a three-year silence, directly contradicting John Howard's election eve statements of November 2001 that children had been thrown overboard from an asylum-seeker vessel the previous month.
'PM told no children overboard'
Read the letter printed in The Australian from Mike Scrafton, of Melbourne, Victoria.
'I told PM overboard photos were wrong'
Aide reveals children overboard advice
New children overboard revelations from former senior advisor
Children overboard chronology
Democrats to discuss re-opening of children overboard inquiry
A case of truth in government will out?
Editorial: A certain maritime mess haunts Howard
'Overboard' Affair Shakes Up Australia
Howard accused of misleading voters with boat people claims
Senate inquiry into children overboard likely
Official backs Scrafton's version
No children overboard: Navy gunner
What PM's man knew about photos
Mr Jordana was told unequivocally that the photos were of the sinking of the refugee boat on October 8 - the day after the Government said the children overboard incident occurred.
New children overboard inquiry just a stunt: PM
Ex-minister defends Scrafton
Ban indefinite detention: Lawrence
"The decision should shock all Australians because it shows that in this so-called advanced democracy, we have no effective protections against arbitrary imprisonment by the state," she said. Dr Lawrence also said Australia needed a bill of rights "to protect citizens and those who come to our shores".
From Dreamtime to Nightmare: John Howard's Olympian Deception
October 1, 2000 the word 'Eternity' was up in lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a multicultural Australia welcomed people from all over the world to the Olympics. [...] One year later everything had changed. Australia, instead of stepping boldly and independently into the future, was lead backward to revive the most repressive and cruel aspects of a colonial past. The voice of human rights, reconciliation and understanding was dismissed by the strident bullying voice of authoritarianism.
Democrats will pursue every avenue to defend rights of asylum seekers
"The High Court's decision undermines one of the most fundamental principles that our country and our rule of law are built upon: the right to freedom. Freedom from arbitrary imprisonment by an executive government is now clearly at risk. "Indefinite detention without charge, where a persons freedom is dependent on a government Minister without any scope for judicial oversight or intervention, is a hallmark of oppressive regimes around the world. We must not let Australia slide unwittingly into such a situation.
Democrats call for immigration law change
South Australia's Democrats have welcomed a Federal Government review of long-term immigration detainees but say a change of the law is what is really needed. [...] "It's good news that the Minister will review the cases of these people but it doesn't bode well for the future because unless the law is changed other asylum seekers could be caught in this same legal loophole in the future," [SA Democrat Kate Reynolds] said.
'Every night I couldn't sleep'
Amin Jan Amin remembers the night he fled his village in the Paktia province of Afghanistan as if it was yesterday. "I remember kissing my children while they were asleep. My wife was crying. I was crying," he says of the night of June 25, 2001. But what he cannot remember are the faces of the two youngest of his five children, and this is one of the things that causes him pain. [...] During an interview with The Age, he broke down as he explained that he has not been able to make contact with his family and how letters of support from Australians had sustained him on Nauru.
Long-term stateless to be reviewed
The Federal Government will review the cases of long-term stateless asylum seekers after a High Court decision last week. The review will include Peter Qasim, whose six years in detention makes him Australia's longest-serving detainee. [...] Mr Qasim, a stateless Kashmiri, has been detained nearly six years since coming to Australia in September 1998. It was accepted that he was from the disputed region of Kashmir and had been tortured, but not that he faced persecution. [...] "My regret is if you mention 'refugee' in Australia at the moment, most people think of detention centres," [Minister Vanstone] said. "I do genuinely worry that we are doing two things: teaching young Australians that their Government is mean and harsh - and I don't care who is in power, that's not a good thing to teach kids - and also teaching some other people, maybe rednecks or something, that it's OK to say no to refugees, and Australia never has done that."
Visit the site for The Peter Qasim Appeal...
The truth overboard
Ali Alsaai tells his story through an interpreter, careful to include every detail, every nuance, of his family's escape from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to Footscray. It is almost an hour before he gets to the most important bit, the moment when he and others on the boat known as SIEV-4 were accused of throwing their children overboard. [...] Alsaai says the thing that hurt him and other parents most was the charge that they were bad parents. "We come from a society where we are family-oriented. We are very close to family members. We don't throw our children overboard."
The Temporary Protection Visa Must Go!
For most TPV holders, the uncertainty and anxiety under temporary protection is compounded by anticipatory stress about the possibility of forced repatriation. Many, therefore, feel imprisoned in hopelessness, unable to plan or even hope for the future. As one refugee put it: For me, the TPV is a prison. Our life is without hope, or purpose. The simplest thing that a person wants in his life is hope. Without hope, life is meaningless.
Undoing the damage caused by this unsettling episode in Australia�s humanitarian record will require a major overhaul of the policy, something that many in the community and among politicians on both sides have been calling for.
IMMIGRATION DETAINEES REVIEW
The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, says she's conducting a review of every person in long-term detention to decide if she should use ministerial discretion to allow them to remain in Australia.[...] "It's not for life, there is a ministerial discretion, there is the opportunity for people to be given relief and stay in Australia, so it isn't a case that people are necessarily detained for life."
Stateless men's fate questioned
I hope that Minister Vanstone, as we speak, is now contemplating whether it's appropriate that those two gentlemen be released, in accordance with the exercise of ministerial discretion, back into the community on similar terms and conditions. "You have to make a judgment as to whether the return to Baxter (Detention Centre), at taxpayers' expense, is sensible given the fact that these two gentlemen have been in the community for at least a 12-month period under various terms and conditions." [Opposition immigration spokesman, Stephen Smith]
Democrats to fight 'eternal jail' power
Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett said his party would explore a range of options to force some action, including amendments to the Migration Act, debate on a bill of rights, or a policy of non-co-operation in the Senate that would prolong some of the chamber's procedures."People always assume there is some underlying protection, either in the constitution or international conventions, that prevents people being locked up without charge indefinitely on the whim of the minister."This just shows there isn't," he said.
The tragic fate of asylum seekers
Minister Amanda Vanstone says the High Court's ruling confirms the unambiguous intention of the legislation governing mandatory detention. But it also illustrates the limitations of the Australian legal system, which has now upheld legislation that runs counter to human rights principles.[...]It is an enduring - and many would say a just - criticism of Australia that it is now one of the few countries in the Western world that does not have a bill of rights." The absence of a bill of rights has allowed Australia to enforce the mandatory detention of asylum seekers even though, as Justice Bhagwati and others have pointed out, this is in violation of international covenants to which it is a signatory.
Refugees gone in 2 years: Nauru leader
The Australian detention centres on Nauru could be cleared of boat people within two years, Nauru's new leader said yesterday.
Court upholds indefinite detention
Liberty Victoria president Greg Connellan said it was unacceptable that the executive arm of government could determine that people who had never been charged with anything could be detained indefinitely. "It sends a horrific message to the rest of the world and seriously compromises our ability to argue that other countries who have used arbitrary, mandatory, indefinite detention are somehow doing the wrong thing," he said.
Stateless detainees get life sentence
In what one judge in the slim majority who found in favour of the Government described as "tragic", the court had to decide that asylum-seekers who were stateless or lacked identification could be detained forever in Australia under the law. The decisions on both grounds could see 13 people previously released into the community under a Federal Court decision hauled back into detention.
Govt urged to show asylum seekers compassion
Supporters of asylum seekers have called for the Federal Government to show compassion in the wake of a High Court ruling allowing their indefinite detention. The High Court ruled that immigration laws are valid and that failed asylum seekers who can not be deported can be held indefinitely.
Court: Stateless can be held indefinitely
Australia's highest court, in a ruling affecting asylum seekers, said such people can be held indefinitely in immigration detention centers.
High Court Grants Govt Absolute Powers to Detain People
"Our High Court has unfortunately found that our legislation allows the government to lock up people for the rest of their lives, people who have committed no crime, who have merely come to Australia seeking protection. "The potential for this massive increase in Government power, without legal protection, is chilling. This means the Government has the power to make laws regarding the detention of any other social group. It can be pointed at any Australian." "It is crucial for the Government to now work with other Parties to find a solution to this problem. No Australian would agree that keeping a person detained forever for administrative reasons is a humane outcome. If someone cannot be deported, we must find a solution to the problem that's better than locking them up and throwing away the key." "Our obligations to stateless people are made quite clear by the United Nations, which holds that Australia should 'facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of stateless persons'. "It's time for Australia to live up to all our human rights obligations under international conventions."
High court rulings show detention regime is wrong
Two High Court rulings today provided more evidence of why Australia's immigration detention regime is inhumane and should be overhauled, Greens Senator Bob Brown said.
HIGH COURT DELIVERS LANDMARK RULING ON ASYLUM SEEKERS
Efforts by 29-year-old Ahmed Al Kateb to return to the Palestinian territories have been rejected by Israel and no other country will accept him. His lawyer Claire O'Connor says it means he and two other Palestinians in similar circumstances could be held in detention forever. "Three judges said that would be unconstitutional - it would be invalid, to hold someone in detention until they can return must mean you can return them. But four judges have said this is not the business of the courts. This Act was designed to keep people who are not Australians locked up, it's the business of Parliament. Now the effect of this decision is that he will be locked up until a state of Palestine is created. Well it's taken 51 years so far - I'm not holding my breath".
Tracing the tragedy ... to Iraq and back
Four years ago, a tragedy at a suburban detention centre prompted two Melbourne filmmakers to look for answers. Their quest took them across four continents and resulted in a documentary [Anthem] since acclaimed by New York's Variety magazine as a "kind of Down Under Farenheit 9/11". [...] The filmmakers also tracked down Australia's most publicised "rejected" refugees - Ban and Mohammed Kadem and their six children, one Australian-born, and two Australian daughters-in law, Bea, 17 and and Haley, 20. The Kadems spent a traumatic four-and-a-half years in detention in Australia, during which time one son slashed his throat and other family members sewed shut their lips in protest at their treatment.
Minister Wont Deny Existence Of Punishment Compound
What is the Government afraid of us finding out? The Minister's comments indicate there is no transparency or accountability in the treatment of those held at Baxter," Senator Stott Despoja said. "The Democrats understand the new behaviour regime includes 20 hours of isolation per day and lasts up to 6 weeks. "We have spoken to people who claim they were locked up in the punishment compound for spitting on the ground near a nurse. "Others were apparently released on the morning of my visit weeks earlier than they were originally told they would be released."
Another 16 granted visas
An Iraqi mother who has gone blind while on Nauru will be resettled in Australia today along with 15 other asylum seekers. The woman, a school teacher with fluent English, her husband and two sons have been given three-year temporary humanitarian visas - but not refugee status - by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone after lobbying by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The visas will allow the woman to receive a cornea transplant.
Never a Last Resort for Children in Detention
The report [A last resort?] highlighted a fundamental breach of a child's right to be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest period of time. What was needed was not band aid remedies or detention in housing projects but a radical revisal of the detention regime to allow families into the community while their claims are being processed, similar to those who come by air with a visa and then seek asylum. A non-provocative, safe and humane environment would meet the best interests of children with their families. The Australian practice of mandatory detention is in the business of tearing the lives of children and family members apart. Robert Burns, if he were alive today, could well have altered his couplet to say, 'Man's inhumanity to children makes countless mothers mourn.'
Federal police to probe Port Hedland claims
The Immigration Department has called in federal police to investigate claims that guards and police used excessive force to deal with unrest at the Port Hedland detention centre. It has also referred the claims of brutality by centre guards and Western Australian police officers to the WA Corruption and Crime Commission and written "letters of regret" to some of the asylum seekers involved. Its action follows a complaint by Labor MP Carmen Lawrence to Commonwealth Ombudsman John McMillan after tear gas and batons were used to quell protests at the centre in December. Dr Lawrence told Professor McMillan she had been told that detainees, including women and children, had been beaten, kicked and punched.
Bitter legacy of the ferryman
The Federal Government was involved in the sinking of the SIEV X refugee boat in which 353 people died, claims retired diplomat Tony Kevin. "Living through the SIEV X inquiry process for two years has shaken my trust in the integrity of Australia's machinery of government."
Visit www.sievx.com for more information...
Visit the on-line memorial site...
Detention centre adopts the hard cell strategy
Two murals border a grassy patch in the fenced-in adult education compound of the Baxter immigration detention centre. Goldfish feature in one. The other, still being painted by detainees yesterday, is an abstract composition of nine blue eyes and brown faces. For the first time since the fires in 2002, journalists were allowed in the centre. An Iranian detainee, who said he had been in detention for about four years, waited until the Immigration Department official was out of earshot before he started whispering to the Herald. The mural of the eyes represented confusion, he explained. "People don't know what they're doing, they've lost their personality, they don't know what happens to them," he said. And the fish? "If you scream underwater, nobody hears your voice, if you're crying, nobody hears."
Their life behind the wire
Eight three-bedroom, cream-painted houses line the road on the outskirts of Port Augusta, 150km north of Adelaide. This, however, is Australia's only residential housing detention centre. When The Advertiser visited yesterday there were children playing, men chatting on the grassy street verge and women wandering between the houses. The visit was part of a media tour conducted by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs of the Baxter Detention Centre near Port Augusta. It was the first time members of the media were allowed into the detention centre - including its controversial management unit where detainees are held in individual cells under the watch of a security camera - as well as the residential project while detainees were there.
Prolonging the agony
Far from being compassionate, Vanstone's new visa arrangements for asylum seekers are cruel, writes Arnold Zable. [...] I have witnessed the anxiety of TPV holders as the date for their next interview draws closer, and I have seen how demoralising it is to receive yet another rejection. Health professionals have pointed out that if the new measures prolong uncertainty, the health consequences could be disastrous. Ominously, the new regime provides for a "return pending" visa that allows 18 months for those rejected to be deported to their home countries or elsewhere.
Read Minister Vanstone's response:
The myopia of refugee advocates, The Age, 31 July 2004.
Read responses to the Minister on the Letters page...
TV contestant breaks his silence on Baxter
The former TV contestant and Senator Natasha Stott Despoja visited Baxter Detention Centre last Monday to meet some of the detainees and protest the government's policy of mandatory detention in Australia. It was Senator Stott Despoja's first visit to Baxter, previously visiting Woomera Detention Centre before it closed its doors in April 2003. 'Many South Australians will join me today in calling for all children, including teenagers, to be released from detention,' Ms Stott Despoja said. Dismissing the Ellis Close residential housing project as a �mini- Baxter', Ms Stott Despoja said that separating families and putting people in detention was treating human beings �without compassion and without humanity.'
DIMIA Threatens To Return Asylum Seeker to 'Axis of Evil' Country
Earlier this week the Department of Immigration handed a deportation letter to at least one Iranian asylum seeker in Baxter detention centre stating that he should accept voluntary deportation or he will be forcibly deported. [...] There have been numerous cases where people returning to Iran who are known to have requested asylum are persecuted upon their return. Reports from COPAS (Coalition for the Prevention of deporting Asylum Seekers) state that one man was interrogated at the airport asking if he had converted to Christianity whilst in detention in Australia. Another never made it out of the Tehran Airport. His family believe he is being held in Evin Prison reserved for political prisoners. Organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have denounced the human rights abuses that occur in this prison.
DIMIA Threatens Baxter Asylum Seekers with Iranian Embassy
The Immigration Department (DIMIA) is threatening to notify the Iranian Embassy with the details of asylum seekers who refuse to sign for voluntary return and then to forcibly deport them to Iran.
Mouth tape protest boosts detainees
Big Brother evictee Merlin Luck says his silent protest about Australia's mandatory refugee detention policy has given new hope to detainees. [...] In Brisbane on Sunday, Luck said he was surprised by the ongoing response to his action. [...] "I know that when I visit a detention centre there's refugees who have been locked away for four or five years who embrace me with tears in their eyes". Luck was at a Brisbane suburban sports club with Democrat senators Andrew Bartlett and John Cherry for the presentation of a community sports award to Tigers 11, a soccer team comprised of teenage Afghan refugees. [...] "They've been through hardship that most people that have grown up in Australia can't even fathom or comprehend and they've come out the other side as really strong and beautiful people, so courageous and determined," Luck said. [...] "His brief and simple protest caused such a furore well beyond the realm of Big Brother watchers it shows how much it is an issue that still touches people," Senator Bartlett [of the Democrats] said.
The greatest show on Earth
A few weeks back, Vanstone said that releasing all children from detention centres would "send the wrong message to people smugglers". Then why not boast of the fact that there are 19 children still behind the wire in Nauru? Not to mention 11 on Christmas Island and 30 at Villawood. Howard's demonisation of asylum seekers involved as big a lie as the CIA's nonsense about Iraq's WMDs and Bush's suggestion that Saddam was responsible for September 11. But on this lie, Australia's own lie, Howard cannot pass the buck. Which is why I'm asking for your help once more. We have to force this issue back onto the political agenda, back into the public mind which, perhaps from shame and guilt, has chosen to forget it. Hence this appeal for donations to A Just Australia which, sadly, the government will not deem tax-deductible. But every cent will be spent on freeing the kids, and their parents, who escaped unimaginable horrors to find themselves treated more harshly than most murderers or rapists.
Govt to review Afghan detainees' refugee status
The Immigration Department says the 86 Afghani nationals in Australian detention centres will soon be reassessed to see if they are refugees.
New hope for 86 as Canberra eases hard line
The reprocessing follows a Government commitment last Christmas to reconsider the cases of Afghans after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees provided information showing changed circumstances in parts of Afghanistan.
Democrats Urge DIMIA to Reopen ALL Refugee Cases
"There is a young man in Baxter who arrived as an unaccompanied 15 year old. He's been there for three and a half years. He recently received a letter from his parents begging him not to return as it was still too unsafe. It's obvious he is in need of our protection," said Senator Bartlett who is speaking during a visit to South Australia today. "It is unfortunate that some of these men have spent nearly five years in detention and their claims may now be found to have been true all along. It's obvious that the determination process has failed these men, failed our legal system and failed the Australian people who have had to pay millions in taxes to detain refugees."
Reassessment of Afghani Nationals in Mainland Immigration Detention
Minister for Immigration, Senator Amanda Vanstone, today said the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) was about to commence reassessing asylum seeker claims by Afghani nationals in Australian mainland immigration detention.
Vanstone unmoved by UK Woomera case
Senator Vanstone says she is not embarrassed by the case. "The case you're referring to is ... in another jurisdiction with judges from another jurisdiction," she said. "I'm at a loss to see how that would impact on Australia's policy decisions but I don't want to comment on the case.
"Let that case be run without us interfering."
UK judge's disbelief over Woomera
Lord Chadwick, one of three Court of Appeal judges hearing Alamdar and Muntazar Bakhtiari's claim that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw breached the European Convention on Human Rights, shook his head in disbelief when he was told the Australian Government allowed human rights breaches to go ahead at the outback detention centre. The judges were referred to a media statement from February 2002 by Australia's Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski who found, after a visit to Woomera, that the Government was in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
UK JUDGE CRITICISES AUST OVER BAKHTIARI CASE
Mr Ozdowski had visited the Woomera immigration centre and said the Government was in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Lord Chadwick asked Lord Kingsland, who is representing the Bakhtiari boys, how the Australian government responded to this. Lord Kingsland told the court the Government continued its policy of unlimited detention.
Britain washes hands of Bakhtiari boys
Tim Eicke, representing British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, rejected the claim by Alamdar and Muntazar Bakhtiari that Straw breached their human rights when he turned them away from the British consulate in Melbourne on July 18, 2002. Eicke told the Court of Appeal in London the consulate was not a part of the United Kingdom territory and was therefore not subject to British law.
Life in Woomera was inhumane and degrading, British appeal court is told
The court has heard that Woomera was a "tiny pocket" of Australia where the human rights of detainees had been breached and standards had fallen well short of internationally acceptable levels. Lord Kingsland said it was "a great surprise" for him to discover the camp existed in a country with a reputation for respecting the rule of law.
Straw suit ripples through Europe
A lawsuit against British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw by two children of the Bakhtiyari family could set a precedent against detaining children throughout Europe. [...] The proceedings are brought under British law, which has adopted the European Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Straw aware of boys' plight - QC
The disturbing state of Australian detention centres was so well documented that when British officials sent two boys seeking asylum away from the consulate in Melbourne they were knowingly casting them into a place of mental and physical abuse, the court of appeal was told yesterday. It was then, after allowing the boys a safe house for eight hours, that the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and his officials breached the Human Rights Act, counsel for the children, Lord Kingsland QC, told the court. [...] Counsel for the British government have argued that the UK is not obliged to consider asylum applications from people who simply present themselves at consulates overseas.
Boys' Australia treatment 'inhumane'
"It was quite clear from Mr Mudie's evidence that he knew exactly who these boys were as soon as they arrived. "It is absolutely clear that the conditions in Woomera were giving rise to serious concern in the country long before July 18. "There isn't any doubt at all that Mr Mudie [vice-consul of the consulate] would have known about the difficulties there." Lord Kingsland said the actions by Mr Court and his staff in putting the boys into police custody amounted to an expulsion from the consulate and they had failed to follow the European convention.
BB's Merlin meets detainees
"The spirit of these people just shines through. "It's hard seeing this compound, seeing just how barbaric it is, but that's not impressioned on your mind nearly as strongly as the spirit of these people - they are not broken men, they are not broken women." Luck said he was struck by the isolation of the detention centre, on the outskirts of Port Augusta. "It's in the middle of nowhere and what is worse is the detainees, they can't look at a horizon without seeing barbed wire," he said. "A lot of the detainees, they can't see any landscape outside. They can't even have a free view of the countryside around them.
Senator & Merlin Luck Call For End To Detention
Senator Stott Despoja is today visiting Baxter with Merlin Luck, refugee advocate and one time Big Brother housemate. "Many families are still separated by the Governments heartless detention policies. I am meeting with detained people, assessing the conditions they face and hearing their concerns," Senator Stott Despoja said. "The Governments policy of locking up children and their families is reprehensible. The prolonged detention of children amounts to 'Government-sanctioned child abuse'.
Consulate failed duty to asylum seekers
Alamdar and Muntazar Bakhtiari entered the consulate in the belief they were being protected but by handing them to Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers, in the knowledge they would be returned to Woomera, the consulate staff had performed the equivalent of torture, the Court of Appeal was told.
Detention centre boys sue Straw
Two children who escaped from an Australian detention centre and sought asylum on the steps of the British consulate will today bring unprecedented legal action before the British court of appeal, accusing the foreign secretary of a breach of human rights.
Stott Despoja, Merlin tour detention centre
Senator Stott Despoja says some of the people she met have been in detention for six years. "Merlin Luck and I today renew the call for all children to be immediately released from all detention facilities around Australia, but beyond that it's time we ended mandatory detention of asylum seekers in this country," she said. "It is a soul-destroying experience even to spend a day in that detention facility, let alone six years as some people I met with today have done."
Merlin, Natasha slam detentions
"The government justifies its abuse of children by saying it deters people smugglers, but no policy that causes suffering to children is justified," [Stott Despoja] said. "Children and their mothers, even in residential housing detention, suffer trauma and live under stress."
[...] "It was very moving to go into the compound ... and see how empowering it was for detained people to feel they have a voice, that they had the opportunity to share their stories," Mr Luck said.
Beyond the wire
When Trish Worth, a federal Liberal MP, met Samira Al Mosawi, a Jordanian asylum seeker, for the first time in March at the insistence of one of her constituents, it was in Adelaide's Glenside psychiatric hospital. Al Mosawi, a mother of three who had been in detention for three years, didn't get off the bed, recalls Worth. "She had her head turned to the wall and was sobbing, and I tried to comfort her, and she couldn't be comforted," says Worth, who is a trained nurse. She thought "I have to do something about this." Worth went to see the staff of the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, and then stopped the Prime Minister after a party room meeting and told him Al Mosawi's story.
A reprieve for the nation's refugees
Released from detention, many refugees have shown themselves to be hardworking people of goodwill. Many have come to Australia from Iraq and Afghanistan and, as luck would have it, have ended up in electorates held by Coalition MPs. By earning the respect and compassion of the Australians they have worked alongside, the refugees have contributed to the change in their political fortunes. But what looks like a happy ending has come at a terrible cost. Hundreds of asylum seekers and their children have been traumatised by years of inhumane treatment. They have been demonised at the hands of a Government that has sought political advantage by doing so. The steps now being taken to repair this shameful episode in our history are welcome but do not go far enough. Seeking asylum is not a criminal act but a human right, and our Government's policies should reflect this.
Free at last, but friends left behind
The 15 young men who climbed wearily from taxis outside the Romero refugee support centre at Buranda in inner Brisbane yesterday afternoon were quiet. But their eyes told of the long, painful road they had travelled. And when they spoke, their happiness and relief to be finally free � after nearly three years in immigration detention on Nauru � was tempered with sorrow for the 121 men, women and children who remain detained on the remote Pacific island.
Families to be heard on detention move
The Immigration Department has agreed not to transfer a number of families between two detention centres until it has gauged their response to the move. Melbourne lawyers Eric Vadarlis and Julian Burnside launched a legal challenge to the department's plans to move 17 families from Sydney's Villawood detention centre to the Baxter facility in South Australia. [...] Justice Ron Merkel raised concerns that the rights of the 30 children involved were not being taken into account. Four of the families were moved on Wednesday but the department has now given an undertaking to the court not to transfer the remaining families without informing them of the plans and taking their responses into account.
Asylum seekers win appeal hearing
Outside the court, Eric Vadarlis, a lawyer acting for the detainees said: "The Commonwealth has now given an undertaking that the 13 families will not be moved without first consulting them and asking them what they wish to do, and taking all matters into account including the cost of transport and the like before moving them to Baxter." The court heard that the detainees were liable to pay their own transport costs. Mr Vadarlis described today's decision as a "good outcome". He said: "For the first time these refugees will have their cases heard by the department instead of being told 'you have 20 minutes notice, pack your bags your are leaving, you are going somewhere else away from your friends, and your support structure'."
Mothers in roof protest at Villawood
The two mothers, one Malaysian and one Tongan, held a banner which read "No, forget Baxter, we refuse to go, release the children." The Department of Immigration had made its move earlier yesterday when about 40 officers went into Villawood to speak to what protesters claimed were 10 families, four of whom were then taken from the centre. Frances Milne, of the Coalition for the Protection of Asylum Seekers, said the removals were not voluntary. She said: "The children were screaming and their parents were upset. They had all asked not to be removed." Fathers and sons older than 18 were taken to Baxter detention centre in South Australia while women and children under 18 were taken to Port Augusta, 10 minutes' drive away, in effect putting them under house arrest. Merlin Luck, the 24-year-old former Big Brother contestant, who staged his protest about confinement of children at the time of his expulsion from the show, said: "They are supposed to be moving voluntarily. But the administrators have found it necessary to bring in more security guards." Three reporters were escorted out of the Villawood complex by security guards.
Families take protest to detention centre rooftop
But a spokesman for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the four families moved voluntarily. He said those who did not want to move would not be forced to and there were no other transfers planned. ChilOut co-ordinator Alanna Sherry, a campaigner for the release of children from detention, said the families last week signed a letter saying they did not want to move. "We know they have been pressured." Meanwhile, Senator Vanstone has moved to quell scepticism that changes to temporary protection visas would not cover lower-skilled rural workers.
She said minor modifications would be made to visa criteria to help TPV holders who had settled in rural areas, did unskilled work and were sponsored by employers to gain permanent visas.
Detainees fight transfer in court
Julian Burnside QC, representing the detainees, told the court the move would disrupt children's schooling and lead to the separation of men from their wives and children, as the men would go the Baxter detention centre and the women and children would go to the Port Augusta Housing Project. The move would also cost detainees money as they were charged a daily rate for their detention, which was much higher in South Australia. Mr Burnside told the court the cost of detention in Villawood was $111 per adult per day while in Baxter it was $310 per day and at Port Augusta $590.
Claims families in detention forced to move
LIZ FOSCHIA: Litiola, a Tongan who's been in Villawood for seven months, says the officers came this morning and tried to persuade her to attend a briefing with representatives from the Immigration Department.
LITIOLA: That we've, we've been here long enough to mistrust this, with all their dealings with different detainees. So I just told the officers to tell them if they wanted to speak to us they had to come in not, um, have us go outside the fence.
LIZ FOSCHIA: What were you concerned would happen if you went to the briefing?
LITIOLA: Um, yeah I was concerned that they could bring a vehicle into there and just take us from there into the property area and um, and just, what they can do is they can just um�
(pauses, noise in background)
�yeah, sorry, every time there's a knock I think someone's at the door. Um, yeah and then they can send the officers to do our packing.
LIZ FOSCHIA: She says she doesn't want to go to Baxter because she fears being cut off from the support system she's established in Sydney and she's afraid that it will be easier to deport her and her two children from there.
LITIOLA: People that have cases pending, you know. We're just scared that, you know, this is it. This is our last fight here. You know, we're not going to be able to have a say over there.
Rooftop protest over relocations
Two mothers and their children today staged a rooftop protest at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre after several families at the facility were relocated to South Australia. Refugee action groups claim four Asian families who left the centre in a convoy of white vans today were forcibly removed to the Baxter Detention Centre at Port Augusta. But immigration officials said the group of Indonesian and Chinese detainees had agreed to the shift after consultations.Asylum seekers 'forcibly removed'
FIVE asylum seeker families had been forcibly removed from Sydney's Villawood detention centre, bound for a remote facility in rural South Australia, a refugee action group said today. Five white mini-vans loaded with people and baggage left the centre in convoy at 12.30pm (AEST). Alanna Sherry, co-ordinator of action group ChilOut, said two Indonesian and three Chinese families were en route to Sydney Airport, bound for SA's Baxter Detention Centre. A further 10 families were expected to leave shortly, she said, adding that a total of 31 children were involved in the transfer. "We are outraged and appalled that the government is resorting to these measures," Ms Sherry said. "Relocation was supposed to be on a voluntary basis, not forced." But immigration officials today denied the asylum seekers were being forced to move from Villawood to Baxter.
Asylum seekers 'forced out' of Villawood
Amir Mesrinejad, an Iranian asylum seeker who has been detained at Villawood for four years, said guard numbers at the centre had been increased today before they were later withdrawn. He said 12 officers usually patrolled the centre at any one time, but this morning there were more than 50 officers by 9am, focusing on areas housing family groups. "(Detainees) were crying, and lots of the parents were stressed and worried, they don't want to go, they don't know anyone down there, this is their home," Mr Mesrinejad told AAP by phone from inside the detention centre. One family in particular was very distressed because their two children had been born in detention and Villawood was all they knew, he said.
Govt denies forcing asylum seekers to relocate
The Immigration Department has denied it is forcing asylum seekers at Villawood in Sydney to move to new housing projects at South Australia's Baxter detention centre. The Federal Government wants to move families into new residential housing projects, saying Villawood is not designed for long-term detainees and conditions are not suitable for families. [...] Virginia, an asylum seeker from Villawood who did not want her full name revealed, says that is not the message the detainees were given this morning. "They have no choice," she said. "Some of the families, they're told they say, 'if you agree to go you come back, you pack your own stuff, otherwise, the guard will pack your stuff'."
No forced transfers: immigration
ASYLUM seekers held at the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney would not be forced to move to the Baxter facility in South Australia, immigration officials said today. However, some detainees had agreed to the shift after consultations, a spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration said.
Protest at detention centre
Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said a number of refugees were being removed for relocation [from Villawood] to the residential housing project at the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia. "We had a phone call this morning to say there were up to 60 extra guards actually in the detention facility and that one family already had been grabbed by the guards for removal to Baxter," Mr Rintoul told ABC radio.
Government Separates More Families
Families detained in Villawood yesterday received letters from the department saying they will be moved from Sydney to the Baxter facility in South Australia, a decision that will tear families apart, the Australian Democrats said today. "These families are compliance cases, not asylum seekers. Some of the children are Australian citizens and will not even be able to visit their mum anymore. I am aware of at least 2 cases where the mother is detained and has children living outside in the community. What does that tell us about this government's family values and sense of caring towards a child's welfare?" said Leader of the Democrats and spokesperson on immigration Senator Andrew Bartlett.
Howard defends changes to immigration rules
John Howard, speaking to ABC Local Radio's Jon Faine in Melbourne this morning, said Australia used to be seen as soft touch for people smugglers, and it's not anymore. And the Prime Minister denies that it's become Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone's job to nullify a political hot potato ahead of the federal election.
JOHN HOWARD: Can I just tell you, no.
The principal objective of our policy in relation to asylum seekers was to stop the boats coming. That was the objective and you know that, your listeners know that, the Australian public knows that. And we achieved that.
JON FAINE: Or was it to appeal to people to vote for you at the last election?
JOHN HOWARD: No, it was to stop the boats coming. I mean, you're entitled to make that as a comment � I don't agree with it but�
Announcement welcome but fails to address fundamental problems of TPVs
�We welcome this decision as one which will potentially benefit a large number of refugees, in particular unaccompanied minors who may be able to apply for close-ties visas establishing they have spent their formative years living in Australia,� said Mr. David Bitel, President of the Refugee Council. In a positive step, the Government is now acknowledging the remarkable contribution made by refugees, particularly in rural and regional areas and is also recognising the strong links refugees have made in our local communities. Appropriately, the Government is now exploring broader options to convert the temporary status of these refugees to one of permanency.
[...] However, today�s announcement detailed in Minister Vanstone�s press release fails to address the fundamental problems of the Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) regime to which the Refugee Council remains deeply opposed.
Visas Opportunities for TPV Holders in Regional Australia
Minor modifications would be made to the selected visa criteria to enable TPV holders, with skills acceptable to Australian employers, who have settled in regional and rural Australia to be approved if they are sponsored by their employers. For example, it is expected that changes will be made to the definitions of skill requirements for Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme applicants so that if a person has worked for the sponsor for 12 months they would meet the skill requirements. As I said yesterday, the regulations to give effect to the Government's intention are being drafted and I anticipate that they will be place by the end of next month.
A welcome change on visas, but the damage is done
Read letters in SMH and The Age on the TPV changes.
Vanstone shift gives refugees a chance
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the announcement showed the Government was "very firm" in its decision-making "but also prepared to be flexible and fair". Her announcement followed pressure from backbenchers - led by rural MPs who have many TPV holders living in their electorates - to soften the policy.
New measures for TPV holders
'In preparing regulations to enact the Government's decision, I will be asking my department to ensure they are framed to ensure the contribution of many TPV holders are making in regional areas is clearly recognised. [...] The Minister said that TPV holders still found to need protection will continue to receive it. Under existing arrangements, this will be a permanent visa in many cases.
Australia gives 9,500 temporary refugees chance to stay
"There are people who are temporary protection visa holders who have been out in the community, they've blended in well, some of them have got jobs in very much needed areas where some employers say they can't get Australians to work,'' Vanstone said. "We believe it's sensible to give these people an opportunity to apply for mainstream visas.'' She added, "This isn't a guarantee that they'll get them, but those people who've really gone out there and made the best of the temporary protection visa opportunities are looking pretty good for a fair chance at it.''
Australia eases hardline immigration laws
The decision follows a string of immigration policy reversals, including a decision to allow 146 Afghans detained on Nauru for more than two years to come to Australia in a winding back of Canberra's so-called "Pacific Solution". The back flips follow an unrelenting campaign by human rights groups, refugee activists, some journalists and even government MPs for a softening of the tough policy which helped Prime Minister John Howard win the 2001 election.
Australia Offers Permanent Home to Thousands of Asylum Seekers
Under the old rules, holders of temporary protection visas had to prove that they continued to need asylum, or they would face deportation. That process now ends, giving thousands of refugees the opportunity to apply to stay permanently.
Australia eases hardline refugee policy in run up to the polls
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the 9,500 asylum seekers holding temporary protection visas would be able to apply for mainstream immigration visas without having to leave the country to lodge applications. [...] Vanstone also announced a new return-pending visa for those who failed in their applications for permanent residency and who would be allowed 18 months in which to make their own arrangements to return home.
Aust relax rules for asylum seekers
"I think the overwhelming majority of the Australian people warmly appreciate the tough line we took on border protection and stopped the boats coming," said Howard, who will seek a fourth term at an election widely forecast to be held in October. A total of 865 asylum seekers remain in detention centres. Howard Glenn, national director of refugee lobby group "A Just Australia", welcomed the move on temporary protection visas, but labelled it a government "backdown" on its hardline stance.
Australia eases residency rules
In a radical policy reversal, Australia is to offer thousands of asylum seekers the chance to apply for permanent residency. The move follows lobbying from government backbenchers seeking a more compassionate approach to immigration.
Australia Eases Residency Rules For Asylum-Seekers
One government MP, John Forrest, said it was time to adopt a more compassionate approach. Several thousand TVP holders are living in towns and cities across the country. The immigration minister has acknowledged the positive contribution they've been making.
Australia eases hardline refugee policy in run up to the polls
Australia said on Tuesday thousands of refugees on temporary visas will be granted permanent residence as the government moves to ease its hardline immigration controls ahead of this year�s election.
Three years locked up, waiting for a visa
It's the waiting and uncertainty that make living on a temporary protection visa so hard, Iranian refugee Rozita Shahbazifar said today. [...] Afghani refugees in particular, most of whom are granted refugee status and permanent protection, have waited too long, Chilout (Children out of Detention) coordinator Alanna Sherry said. [...] She welcomed today's decision, but said asylum seekers on bridging visas also needed help. [...] Asylum seekers on bridging visas cannot work, collect social security benefits, or access Medicare and most end up in the care of church groups, she said.
Refugee change just 'ballot box compassion': Brown
Senator Brown said he welcomed today's announcement that 9500 temporary protection visa (TPV) holders would be allowed to apply to stay in Australia permanently, but it did not go far enough. He said the Greens had long advocated the abolition of TPVs.
Refugee supporters question visa changes
Refugee advocates welcomed government plans to allow temporary protection visa (TPV) holders to apply for permanent residency but questioned the timing of the decision ahead of the federal election. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone announced that the government would allow 9,500 TPV holders to apply for permanent residency in Australia. She said the decision recognised that many TPV holders were making a significant contribution to the Australian community, particularly in regional areas.
Australia announces changes to temporary protection visa system
Senator Vanstone denies it is a softening of the government's border protection policy. "I think I can say this, that is, if we hadn't brought border security under control, if we still had a problem with people smugglers, we wouldn't be making this change," she said. "But things have changed and so the government is responsive to that change."
TPV HOLDERS CAN STAY: VANSTONE
Federal Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird says the change will make a huge difference to the lives of refugees in his area. "You can't not be touched by many of the stories of people who have been subject to great oppression and the great difficulties that they've lived under and how they've hoped for a better life in Australia. And they're going to be absolutely thrilled."
Border protection policy stolen, Latham says
University of South Australia associate professor Nicholas Procter says many refugees have suffered extraordinary mental trauma because of uncertainty over their immediate future. Dr Procter says the Federal Government's change of policy will give them new hope. While he says it is just another step in the process, refugees can at least plan for a future in Australia.
Refugee visas to change: PM
Mr Howard refused to directly confirm the report, but said Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone would make an announcement on changes to the visa scheme. "We did have a long discussion and there are going to be some sensible adjustments made," he told Sydney radio station 2GB.
Australia throws 9000 refugees a lifeline
It is understood the Government will announce as early as today that most of the 9000 temporary protection visa holders, many of whom have been living in the community for more than three years, will be able to apply for permanent residency. The dramatic softening of the temporary protection rules comes after intense lobbying from the backbench and from within cabinet.
Refugees get high-profile friends
A new group that includes some high-profile figures has been formed to campaign on refugee issues during the next federal election. Members of the group, The Justice Project Inc, include the former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser, academic Robert Manne, barrister Julian Burnside, QC, and Hugh Evans, Young Australian of the Year. [...] The group will call for an end to indefinite detention, offshore detention and children in detention. It recognised there was "a strong case" for keeping asylum seekers detained, but only long enough for health and security checks.
Kobia issues two challenges to Australian Christians
Just before he left Australia on 11 July, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia [general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC)] issued two challenges to Australian Christians. In a final interview shortly before catching a flight to Fiji, he appealed to Christians to visit detention centres like Baxter Detention Facility, see the conditions for themselves, and be like good Samaritans to the detainees held there; and to support Aboriginal people who feel their self-determination is being threatened by government moves to abolish the elected ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) and replace it with an appointed advisory council.
A familiar miracle
Mr Saad had to fight for life in his trek from Iraq via Iran and Indonesia. [...] Mr Saad won his next fight, to be accepted as a refugee. Then the next, to have his family brought from Nauru. In a success story that echoes earlier stages in Australia's immigration history, when Italians and Greeks and later Eastern Europeans and Vietnamese worked long and hard to make secure homes for their offspring, Mr Saad picked fruit as he found his feet. Now he has a business that contracts labor for orchards and vineyards, generating a level of prosperity he had no idea he could achieve in such a short time. The older children do well at school, the younger ones confound their parents with their Australian slang.
Family to lose dad in visa battle
Each afternoon, Mele Fusi and her three children pass through the gates of the Villawood Detention Centre to visit her husband Aisaki. It was a routine born of love and desperation, but the daily journey will now cease. Mr Fusi will be deported to Tonga -- without his wife and children, who are Australian citizens -- after he lost his court battle yesterday to stay in
Sydney with his family. The 26-year-old carpenter was arrested by immigration officials last October after he overstayed his short visit visa. His Australian-born wife and their three children are all citizens while Mr Fusi is a Tongan national. Mrs Fusi, 23, yesterday pleaded that he be let in on compassionate grounds. "I know he broke the law by overstaying but at least give him a chance to stay in Australia for our kids.''
Letting the children go
Only a month ago, the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, declared that releasing all children from immigration detention centres would send the wrong message to people smugglers. The tough rhetoric was in response to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report which detailed how Australia, in one of its more shameful episodes, subjected children in detention to "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment". Now, Senator Vanstone has announced all children have been freed from mainland centres except for a baby whose mother did not want to be separated from her husband.
Villawood detainees fear agenda will split families
The parents of 17 families being held at Villawood - most of them from South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands who have overstay their visas - told the Herald in a letter yesterday that they feared being forcibly separated from each other and their support groups in Sydney after being visited by department officials on Wednesday. The officials handed out brochures advertising the virtues of the Government's "residential housing project" at Port Augusta, which houses mothers and children but not fathers, who have to live at the nearby Baxter detention centre.
Refugee group seeks independent Baxter probe
The Justice for Refugees group has stepped up calls for an independent probe into the Baxter Detention Centre after more allegations of abuse emerged.
Senior cleric damns Baxter as 'disgraceful'
The head of the World Council of Churches, Sam Kobia spent three hours inspecting the centre where 256 people are being held and came out upset by what he saw, calling it un-Christian. "I think it's wrong, it's disgraceful and this is something that should stop," Dr Kobia said.
World Council of Churches head shocked by Baxter detention centre
After visiting South Australia's Baxter Detention Centre yesterday, World Council of Churches (WCC) General-Secretary Rev Dr Sam Kobia vowed to confront the Federal Government with the view that "there is a problem with the policy" of asylum-seeker detention.
Asylum seekers return to Baxter in protest
A mother and her four children have voluntarily returned to the Baxter immigration detention centre in a protest against the Federal Government. The Syrian family, who returned this week, are angered by claims that only one child asylum seeker is in mainland detention.
A mother's sacrifice
He has spent his 10-week life in the detention centre since days after his birth in Port Augusta Hospital. [...] Senator Vanstone said the mother could choose to make that move any time she wished but it would mean the father would see his son for just four hours twice a week. A friend of the young couple yesterday said they had made the tough decision for all to remain in detention because of "the obvious love" they had for their child.
Bakhtiari boys take on Straw
Mr Machover [The Bakhtiari boys' London-based lawyer] said at worst he hoped the case would result in the British government seeking assurances from the Australian government that the Bakhtiari children would not be returned to the Baxter detention centre in South Australia.
Bakhtiyaris take on UK foreign secretary
Machover said ultimately he wanted a practical outcome which would help the Bakhtiyari boys.
Iraqi asylum seeker goes blind on Nauru
The Iraqis, who watch... the situation in their own country on television, some of them are just living a total nightmare and it is showing," said migration agent and lawyer Marion Le, who represents Afghan and Iraqi detainees on Nauru. [...] Mrs Le said the Iraqi woman who went blind is a school teacher with fluent English, a mother of two sons, whose husband is in a Melbourne hospital after he suffered a heart attack.
And then there was one . . .
There was almost a note of pride in the media release from Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone. "As of c.o.b. (close of business) today", it noted, "only one child, whose parents were unauthorised boat arrivals, is in a mainland detention centre." This news is, of course, welcome. That the last children were released into alternative accommodation more than a month after the deadline set by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission was glossed over. The real point, however, is that no child should ever have been placed in a detention centre in the first place. It is one still seemingly lost on the Federal Government. In fact, 95 children remain in detention on mainland Australia and on Christmas Island and Nauru.
Health fear for freed asylum kids
Dr Ozdowski said children in the Port Augusta residential housing project, Villawood, Maribyrnong, Christmas Island and Nauru faced increasing risks of mental health problems the longer they stayed in detention. He said the immigration detention system needed to be changed to comply with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that children should be detained only as a last resort for the shortest possible time. "The presumption against detaining children for long periods of time needs to be enshrined in legislation," he said.
PM gives nod to get kids out of detention
"We are endeavouring - as far as possible and consistent with the maintenance of a strong policy and consistent with deterring people from resuming the illegal boat trade - to get children out of detention," Mr Howard told Brisbane radio yesterday.
The no worries society
Australian racists hate to be told they are racists. When an Australian recommends the forced eviction of Aborigines from their own land, it is presented as social welfare. When an Australian advocates imprisoning Iraqi and Afghan refugees in secretive detention camps, it is presented as border control.
DETENTION FIGURES ONLY PAINT HALF A PICTURE
"We are pleased the Government has shown common sense and released most asylum seeker children from detention. However, many children who have been refused visas remain locked up in detention while appeals are heard or arrangements are made for them to return home," Rev. Drayton said. [...]
"The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Report into Children in Detention painted a terrible picture of life for children who are held in Australia's detention centres. "Now, the Government has virtually admitted it's wrong to detain children by allowing them into alternative arrangements, but it refuses to apply these rules across the board. "Detention centres are horrendous places, where children suffer physical and mental abuse. No child, no matter what their circumstance, should be subjected to this. Governments do not have the right to make an arbitrary decision that discriminates between children in such a way," Rev Poulos said.
Howard defends detention stance
Mr Howard said he understood the concerns about detaining children."But if you are to run an immigration policy that is effective, then if people seek to come here illegally and they bring their children with them, or if they overstay their legal entitlement to be here and children are in their family, sometimes it is unavoidable," Mr Howard said on Brisbane radio 4BC.
Howard reconsiders child detention
"Overall, the policy has been a great success. I am delighted that, consistent with maintaining that policy, we have been able to bring children out of detention." Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett said children in detention centres on Nauru and Christmas Island, as well as those in residential housing, deserved Australian protection.
PM defends immigration stance
Australian detention centres almost emptied of children
The Australian government says only one child from parents of unauthorised boat people remains in an Australian detention centre. [...] [Minister vanstone] said: "There are of course 11 Vietnamese children on Christmas Island who came a year or so ago with their families.
Aus: No more child prisoners
The incarceration of children has been the most controversial aspect of the government's crackdown on asylum seekers who arrive in Australia illegally, sparking criticism from human rights groups and numerous court challenges to secure their release.
More Afghan refugees arrive in Australia
The Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, says 35 refugees - 15 children, 13 men and seven women - will be resettled in Sydney, Melbourne, elsewhere in Victoria, Adelaide and the ACT.
Not one child should remain in detention, says Human Rights Commissioner
"Senator Vanstone's announcement is an important acknowledgement of the plight of the children who were the subject of the Commission's recent National Inquiry," said Dr Ozdowski. "It is also recognition of the mental health damage inflicted on these children by long periods in detention. I am glad that the Government has continued to remove children from detention and I am looking forward to the day when no child will be in any form of detention in Australia." However, Dr Ozdowski said there were still children in the Port Augusta Housing Project, Villawood, Maribyrnong, Christmas Island and Nauru who face increasing risks of mental health consequences the longer they remain in detention. "The Vietnamese children on Christmas Island have been there for more than a year and the children on Nauru have been there for more than two and half years."
Cartoon reproduced with kind permission from Alan Moir whose work is published in the SMH.
Unauthorised Boat Arrivals: One Child in a Detention Centre
Vanstone hails cut in child detention numbers
Only one child associated with the influx of boat people three years ago remains in mainland immigration detention, with the recent spate of families being granted visas. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone made the announcement yesterday after two more families were released from the Baxter centre, nearly a month after a deadline set by the Human Rights Commissioner for the release of all children from detention. But the latest release of families still leaves at least 95 children in some form of detention, according to the estimates of ChilOut, a group campaigning for the release of all children.
Newborn now only asylum child in mainland detention
Since dismissing a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity report which detailed the serious mental health issues faced by detained children, Senator Vanstone has released around 100 children, or ordered that cases be reassessed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Detained children freed in policy flip
Labor's immigration spokesman, Stephen Smith, said Senator Vanstone "should be open and honest with the Australian people and acknowledge that the Howard Government's immigration detention policy of children and administration has been a mistake".
Vanstone's detention releases are electioneering
'Queue-jumpers' win against odds
An Immigration Department spokeswoman said about 310 TPV holders had gained permanent protection, and most were Afghans. [..] [Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre co-ordinator David Manne] said the reality was that decision-makers re-assessing the claims of TPV holders found there was no effective protection to be gained in the countries they travelled through. Also, those driven to use people smugglers did not have the freedom of movement to claim protection.
Families leave detention
Two families - one detained for nearly four years - were released from immigration detention yesterday as the Federal Government continued to ensure it had no children behind razor wire before the election.
A Lie to say all kids are out of detention
"It is dishonest to not count Residential Housing projects even though the residents are behind fences, cannot come and go, and are watched by guards and cameras," said Senator Bartlett.
A half-baked refugee policy
When historians look back on the way Australia treated asylum seekers around the start of the 21st century, they will find it hard not to conclude that we were diminished as a people. Those seeking refuge, legitimately or otherwise, at least deserve to be treated with decency and humanity. That has not been the case these past few years. As the nation prepares to go to the polls again, there is no Tampa looming on the horizon and no images of children overboard to be manipulated. Instead, the Federal Government is allowing a trickle of those held in detention for the past three years to finally land on Australian soil. In the intervening years, the Howard Government has done its best to ensure the virtual absence of "personalising or humanising images". It has succeeded up to a point. But for many Australians the images of children behind razor wire and the nonsense of a solitary inmate locked up on Manus Island have given them pause for thought about what kind of nation Australia has become.
New life begins with heater and donations
For Nabi Baqiri and his family, freedom is cold. After being detained on the stifling equatorial island of Nauru since late 2001, it was a novelty to need to warm up. They did this with a radiator in an empty room of their new home in Dandenong South.
ANXIOUS BUT HOPEFUL: NAURU AFGHANIS
Thirty-five Afghan refugees, who had been detained at the Australian immigration centre on Nauru, have arrived in Australia after their cases for asylum were reviewed.
Merlin Luck speaks up, again
Luck told the audience that Australia's detention policy was inhumane and in years to come Australians would look back, as they do now over the Stolen Generations, "and think, how did we ever justify this?"
Victory for the refugee-rights movement
Afghan refugee and Free the Refugees Campaign activist Riz Wakil spoke to a 3000-strong rally in Sydney on June 20, World Refugee Day.
"This year, the refugee-rights movement in this country has had an important victory. It has forced a change in the Coalition government�s treatment of one group of asylum seekers and refugees. Over the last couple of months, around 80% of Afghan refugees � who have been trying to survive on the inhumane temporary protection visas (TPV), living with constant insecurity and deprived of many basic rights � have been granted permanent residency. I am one of those lucky ones.
This would not have happened if it was not for the uncompromising commitment and active campaigning � the public meetings, the many rallies and marches, the organising in schools and communities � of the refugee-rights movement. "
Lives Being Saved by the Internet Downunder
With the help of Australia's most influencial broadcaster John Laws, Honey the cat has left Manus Island and her journey towards being reunited with Aladdin. And those who refused to support Aladdin Sisalem and thought a cat was unimportant or frivolous should read through the news items which have appeared recently all over the world. And Merlin Luck an evictee the Australian Big Brother caused a far greater commotion. left the house and with his mouth covered by a strip of black gaffer-tape, carrying a banner which read 'Free th(e) Refugees' walked silently into a storm of publicity and changed the course of 'reality' television.
Fitzgerald berates both sides of politics
"In our own country, many live in poverty, children are hungry and homeless, and other severely traumatised children are in detention in flagrant breach of the convention on the rights of the child, simply because they were brought here by their parents seeking a better life."
The corruption of democracy
Tony Fitzgerald: Howard a "radical"
Fitzgerald accused of 'invective and error'
Mr Fitzgerald said detainees were given a number by which they were known and called. He also alleged that parents were not allowed to photograph their children in detention centres. But Senator Vanstone said while detainees were required to wear an ID card with a number, most were referred to by name. There were also generally no problems with parents photographing their families.
Misleading, Mr Fitzgerald? Not this Government
Democracy and dissent are alive and well in this country, writes Amanda Vanstone.
Nauru detainees arrive in Australia
Thirty-five Afghani refugees, more than half of them children, flew into Brisbane tonight after years being detained on the Pacific Island of Nauru. The refugees - 11 men, five women and 19 children - will be resettled in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Tasmania - after being granted visas. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the arrival of the first group of refugees followed the government's commitment late last year to reassess the Afghani caseload on Nauru.
Nauru hunger strike ends
Nauru government spokeswoman Helen Bogdan said the seven ended the hunger strike at the weekend, but maintained their protest against their detention.
Pride comes before flags
I had the good fortune this week to share in two events which demonstrated why it's possible to be proud of this country without waving flags.
The first was at a World Refugee Day rally in Hyde Park, when children from Holroyd High School, who had fled their homelands to learn new ways of life and a new language, spoke. Maryam Alzubaidi, 15, from Iraq, said she was lucky now to be an Australian citizen, adding: "And I want to contribute to making Australia a better country." Azeena Nuhumaan, 17, who came from Sri Lanka and who is Auburn Council's Young Citizen of 2004, represents Australia next week at a human rights conference in Thailand and plans to attend a United Nations conference in New York next year, asked: "Why are we still saying 'No' to asylum seekers? They have been through so much in their homeland and we lock them up. These children are our future doctors, teachers, our future leaders."
Joy for a family reunited
The long sadness ended yesterday in tears of joy when Shima and her children, Samir, Hashim and Sonia, were reunited with Mr Rezaee at Melbourne Airport. The family was one of 14 separated for more than four years after the husbands escaped from the Taliban, came by boat to Australia and were granted temporary protection visas after spending time in mainland detention centres and being found to be genuine refugees.
Home sweet home
Saeed's wife Leila admits that her husband has found it hard to cope since she moved out of Baxter three months ago to live in the Residential Housing Project (RHP) [...] "I hate the housing project, but I had to go there for my baby. She was very tiny, very small for her age and at Baxter every day the food was the same. Now I can give her the formula she needs and I can cook for her. But the housing project is worse than any detention centre I have been in, including Curtin. We cannot go out into the community, there are cameras everywhere. All the windows and doors have alarms. After 11o'clock at night we are locked in, you cannot open any window. If you do, the alarm goes off and they come running."
A rolled-gold alternative
The minister says the housing project has tight restrictions and security measures because it is "another form of detention" and was never intended to be an open facility where detainees could mix with the community. [...] As for the security restrictions placed on children, the minister says there is no preconceived notion that kids want to escape or that they are "bad people".
Bakhtiari children drop legal case to be freed
[Th children's lawyer Jeremy Moore] said the action was dropped because the children felt they had achieved as much as they could in their case. "I acted on instructions from the family, who basically decided they have got a commitment on the public record from the minister that they would not be deported while their father's (legal) proceedings are current," Mr Moore said. "The mother has moved into the house with the kids and they decided on that basis there was no point in continuing (the legal action to be freed). "They had something that was as good as they were going to get from the government without a huge fight."
The Detention Industry
Immigration detention is now a billion-dollar business. It�s closely linked to the private prison industry, otherwise known as the �corrections-industrial complex�. In Australia, Europe and the United States, a small number of multinational corporations are competing for government contracts to lock up asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. And some of the biggest banks and investment funds are lining up for a slice of the action.
The Auditor-General Audit Report No.54 2003�04 Performance Audit
A young refugee's plea for a better future
Children are our future and they are precious. They should be out of detention centres and be in schools, colleges, TAFEs and universities. Imprisoning them is not protecting Australia; this is disgracing Australia.
We're here, get used to it: students give refugees younger voice
Merlin Luck, the contestant on television's Big Brother program, took his protest yesterday to the World Refugee Day rally in Hyde Park - where many people thought he could not compete with schoolchildren from Holroyd High.
Campaigners march in Melbourne for World Refugee Day
A campaign coordinator with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says the marchers are sending politicians a message that Australians not happy with a cruel refugee policy.[...]
"They don't want to be known as the country that locks up children behind razor wire."
Human Rights Commissioner marks World Refugee Day
The Federal Human Rights Commissioner is urging people to stop and consider the plight of refugees today, World Refugee Day. Dr Sev Ozdowski says it marks the misery experienced by thousands of oppressed people who are desperately seeking a better life.
Read Dr. Ozdowski's speech at Canberra Rally
"Although Australia has a quota of 13,000 humanitarian visas, we are not too kind to those people who come to Australia's shores by boat. In particular we have not been kind to the 2,184 children who have arrived in Australia since 1999. 93 percent of these children have been found to be refugees."
Refugees, and the political policies regarding them, have been among the most volatile...
Time for Australia to make a fresh start on World Refugee Day
Critics of the Federal Government contend that the Howard declaration that the government will control who enters this country, and his tough policies on people seeking asylum, amount to a form of discrimination.
Activists refused landing at Nauru
Gay activist and skipper Lance Gowland told Sydney Star Observer via satellite phone the protest was a success, despite being unable to deliver the gifts.
Seven Iraqis now on hunger strike
World Refugee Day - a day of shame for Australia
"The recent HREOC report of its National Inquiry into Children in Detention, slams the government and its policy of mandatory detention, particularly in locking up children, and is a clear indication that the government's demonising attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers. The government must drastically change its policy to bring it into line with Australia's international obligations."
Nauru hunger strikers taken to hospital
Correction: headline was wrong
Ms Wroblewski complained to the council about the headline on the Herald's website, smh.com.au - "Illegal immigrant children may not be sent home" - which appeared on April 30, 2004, on an article about the High Court's overruling of a previous Family Court decision to release children from the Baxter detention centre. [...] In this instance, the paper acknowledged that "illegal immigrants" was an incorrect description of the asylum seekers and conceded that it should have used its preferred term "asylum seekers".
Refugee Advocates Successful in Media Challenge
A formal complaint against the Sydney Morning Herald for its use of the terms "illegal immigrants" and "illegal entrants" to describe asylum-seekers has been upheld by the Australian Press Council.
Reporting Refugees
Interview with Julian Burnside and Paul Sheehan on Radio National.
Critics of the Federal Government contend that the Howard declaration that the government will control who enters this country, and his tough policies on people seeking asylum, amount to a form of discrimination. The government counters that the policy makes Australia more secure, protects our sovereignty and allows for the development of an orderly immigration policy. In the middle stand the voters, trying to weigh up the loaded terminology and the conflicting claims. So how well has the media helped clarify those concerns? How has the focus, thoroughness and language of the media disentangled the refugee debate? To canvass this issue we�ve invited two people who�ve contributed to the public debate: barrister Julian Burnside QC, and the writer and journalist, Paul Sheehan. Sheehan wrote a critical assessment of the media�s investigation of specific refugee stories in his book �The Electronic Whorehouse�.
All Saints bell tolls for children in detention
Port Augusta's All Saints church bell sounded at the extraordinary time of noon last Thursday. But the historic bell wasn't calling people to church as it usually is when it rings out across the city. It was ringing in solidarity with people all over Australia on the National Day of Shame for Children in Detention.
All-clear for Nauru detention
Nauru's Supreme Court has found the country's detention of asylum seekers is not illegal or punitive and may in fact be humanitarian. Chief Justice Barry Connell made the finding yesterday in dismissing a challenge to the legality of Nauru detaining asylum seekers. Chief Justice Connell found that asylum seekers' "acquiescence" in their detention meant it was not punitive, and "they could if they wished, leave Nauru".
Three asylum seekers in Nauru hunger strike
The minister's office says all 56 Iraqis detained on Nauru have been assessed by the Immigration Department and are not regarded as "refugees". The three are apparently demanding to be released from detention.
Taxpayers fork out $750,000 for Bakhtiyari detention
A freedom of information request by the ABC has revealed that the cost of keeping Mrs Bakhtiyari in the motel was about $80,000 a month. Labor's Immigration Spokesman Stephen Smith says it is an extraordinary waste of money. "It is at significant cost to the taxpayer and there's nothing I'm aware of that couldn't have seen her in community care eight to nine months ago with her children," he said.
Temporary visa holders celebrate support
When Iraqi-born medical student Alaa al-Alawy applied for a job with a pathology company, he was rejected. He was told that as the holder of a temporary protection visa, the company could not be sure that he would still be around in two years. The 29-year-old recounts the episode as an example of how holding a temporary protection visa can prove "a headache" in finding jobs or access to study. [..] He has found that some people go out of their way to be helpful, "especially professionals - they feel shame that people have been kept in detention a long time and have been treated in that way".
Luck apologises to Killeen
"The reason I did it was because I feel so passionately for the cause," he said.
"Children who are in detention centres now and who have lived in detention centres all their life ... the pain and suffering that those children are going through, and I hope that justifies the actions I took last night."
Read all the Merlin news items... [There are so many, they have their own page now. Ed]
Asylum seekers attempt suicide
"The simple reason is that they are depressed," the detainee told The Daily Telegraph. "They have been in there so long that they can't see light at the end of the tunnel."
Children should be out of immigration detention says Australian Medical Association
Australian Medical Association (AMA) President, Dr Bill Glasson, said today that all children should be released from immigration detention in Australian facilities in keeping with the deadline set by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) when it released its National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention report in May. [...]�The AMA urges the Government to meet the HREOC deadline and look at better ways to look after the health of all asylum seeker detainees, children and adults,� Dr Glasson said.
Toowoomba joins child detention protest
Mark Copland, from the Social Justice Commission, says more locals are starting to speak out.
"I think there's a growing response, that in years to come children and our grandchildren [will] ask us 'what were you doing?'" he said. "That we'll be able to say that we took a stand and these kids weren't in detention in our name."
Green pushes human rights
"The Government is shamefully refusing to respect the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's call to release all children from detention by June 10," [ Greens Senate candidate, Dr John Kaye] said and congratulated the local branch of Rural Australians for Refugees for continuing to campaign against the Howard Government's refugee policies. [...] "Australians are no longer prepared to accept the Howard Government's disgraceful conduct of its detention centres.
Watchdog pleads for detainees
Four weeks ago, at the release of a landmark report, Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski called for all children to be freed from detention within a month. But since the release of "A Last Resort?" on May 13, the number of children in detention has fallen by just four to 76.
Government committed to detention regime
Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, reaffirmed the Government's commitment to mandatory detention, as part of its strategy to control unauthorised immigration into Australia.
'To release all children from detention in Australia would be to send a message to people smugglers that if they carry children on dangerous boats, parents and children will be released into the community very quickly,' Senator Vanstone said.
Govt stands firm on child detention
The federal government has reaffirmed its commitment to mandatory detention of child asylum seekers despite a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) deadline for their release expiring. [...]
"My report, I think, puts beyond any doubt that long-term detention creates mental health problems, so I would have thought by now that the children would have been out of detention," [Dr. Ozdowski] said.
It's time to free child detainees, Howard told
Protesters at a rally in Sydney this afternoon have called on the Federal Government to release all children being held in Australia's immigration detention centres.
Church Bells toll for child detainees
"There's a principle at stake here which is that we should not punish innocent people to try and get political outcomes or any sort of policy outcomes at all. It's not the right thing to do, and we shouldn't expect that in this day and age in a democratic country like Australia that we have innocent people locked up to try and achieve policy outcomes for the government." [Alex Bhathal]
Government fails to meet deadline on children
"We know who they are, we know that they do not constitute any threat to Australia, we know their health status, and my report I think put beyond any doubt that long-term detention creates health problems, so I would have thought that by now the children would be out of detention." [HREOC Commissioner, Sev Ozdowski]
Fed Gov passes HREOC deadline for release of children in detention
SARAH CLARKE: Where can the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission go from here then?
SEV OZDOWSKI: Well, we can't do much more, because our responsibility was to report to the Parliament where the Act and practices of the Department of Immigration comply with International Convention on the Rights of the Child. And we report what we found. Now it's up to Federal Parliament to take the action. We recommended what we believe is reasonable, and I still do hope that changes will follow.
Deadline up but children still not free
THE deadline for the Howard Government to free all children from immigration detention will pass today - ignored. But the deadline, imposed by the Government's own human rights agency, will be met with a chorus of protest from the nation's churches. At least 162 children are expected to stand at Sydney Town Hall to symbolise those reportedly held in mainland and offshore detention centres, while pairs of children's shoes will be left outside Immigration Department headquarters in Melbourne. [...] "Some children who are still in detention have been there for three years or more," said Alannah Sherry of Chil-out, which organised today's event. "We are saying this policy has to go and from now on, we will get louder and louder and louder."
Deadline up but children remain
Deadline for releasing child detainees passes
"What I'm asking the Government is 'let them go'," Dr Ozdowski said. "They are not a threat to society, they will not escape because there is no evidence that they would be absconding. "Allow them to wait in the community for the decisions regarding the immigration status."
Detention kids 'secretly moved'
Opposition immigration spokesman Stephen Smith said the government had removed seven children from immigration detention centres since the HREOC report was released. Mr Smith said Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone should now publicly admit that holding children in immigration detention was wrong.
Govt removing detained kids: ALP
City bells to toll for detained children
Church bells will ring throughout Melbourne this afternoon, tolling for the 162 asylum seeker children who remain in mandatory detention. Churches throughout Melbourne will ring their bells for 10 minutes from 5.15pm, according to the director of the Melbourne Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office, Brenda Hubber. "We want to ring in change," Mrs Hubber said. Both the Catholic and Anglican cathedrals will be involved, plus St Francis in Lonsdale Street and the Collins Street Uniting Church. In Sydney, both cathedrals will participate.
All Saints bell tolls for children in detention
Port Augusta's All Saints church bell sounded at the extraordinary time of noon last Thursday. But the historic bell wasn't calling people to church as it usually is when it rings out across the city. It was ringing in solidarity with people all over Australia on the National Day of Shame for Children in Detention. A national initiative of Chill Out - Children Out of Detention - the Port Augusta bell tolled along with other bells around the nation. Clck here to have your say
Bombala Times - Anglican news and notes
When I was a kid, detention meant staying in after school - not staying in jail for three or four years. There are still 162 kids in Australian detention camps, imprisoned since 2000 and 2001; that's 162 too many, and 1000 days too long.
Tomorrow, 10th June, is the HREOC deadline for their release. At 5 pm that day I'll be joining churches throughout the land by ringing the church bell, and spending some time in prayer for them. I'll be glad of company.
Bakhtiyari children reunited with mother
Call for inquiry over immigration detention abuses
A lobby group for asylum seekers is calling on the federal government to hold an independent inquiry into claims detainees at the Baxter immigration detention centre have been mentally and physically abused.
Dr Louise Newmann talks on children in detention
Quite simply, [the HREOC] report says that arbitrary detention of child asylum seekers under the policy of mandatory detention is wrong. It is wrong and it must stop. To continue detention of children erodes core human values and diminishes us all. [...] This is no use of detention as a last resort, or for brief periods, nor for purposes of administration. It is systematic, arbitrary and inhumane abuse of children and, alarmingly, the Commonwealth attempts a justification of this as a necessary, if distasteful, process that sacrifices children for a �greater good� � of so-called border protection.
Legislative Council challenged to condemn Federal Govt
The Australian Democrats have given notice of a motion in State Parliament to be debated later this month condemning the Federal Government over breaches of the �Convention of the Rights of the Child�. Democrats SA Refugee spokesperson Kate Reynolds MLC said she had issued the challenge to State MPs to put their personal views about the detention of children on the record.
Baxter kids take to Aussie rules
The kids are great; they have such wonderful manners and they are so appreciative of us teaching them how to play." The boys are allowed to attend training two nights a week and a weekend game, however they are only allowed to be at the game until 1pm, when they have to return to Baxter. [...] "We would like for the kids to be able to come back to the clubrooms after the game for the award presentations because that is just as much what footy is about in Australia," Mr Digance said. "We're talking about kids, their parents have brought them here to benefit them and we'd do the same for our kids. "They're just kids, it's heartbreaking."
School kits on refugees branded propaganda
Detention centre shame
For the past 10 months, [Ms Thompson] has been an official visitor at the [Christmas Islan] detention centre, where 45 Vietnamese men, women and children are held. Ms Thompson said it was hard to continue to be positive while detainees rode a roller-coaster of hope and rejection in applying for temporary protection visas. "It's jail, and it's distressing to find children in jail," she said. "I can't deal with it emotionally unless I rationalise it as madness."
Govt warned of mental illness legacy
The Human Rights Commissioner says the Federal Government must quickly get children out of immigration detention centres to avoid a legacy of mental health problems.
Suddenly sensitive: Howard's new heart
[...] suddenly, after months of stonewalling and inaction � at the cost of millions of dollars to the Australian taxpayer � lone refugee Aladdin Sisalem has been allowed to leave his solitary confinement in a detention centre on Manus Island and be accepted into Australia. Now, please Prime Minister, can you show some more election-eve enlightenment and compassion? Will you now let the children out of the immigration detention camps? You and your Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone say the harshness of locking up kids for years on end plays on your minds, and it's not something you want to do. But you still do it.
Bakhtiyari case
`The Australian Government confirmed today that an offer would be made to enable the Bakhtiyari children to be reunited with their mother in alternative detention arrangements in Adelaide. Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, said this followed yesterday's Federal Court decision not to grant an interlocutory injunction releasing the children from their current alternative detention arrangements, pending hearing of their application.
Bakhtiari children to live with mother
Bakhtiari children stay in detention
The mother of the five Bakhtiari children may soon be allowed to live with them, in a surprising upside to a Federal Court order today that the children remain in detention.
Lawyer Jeremy Moore said negotiations were taking place with the Immigration Department to allow Roqia Bakhtiari to live with the children at an Adelaide residence where the children are being held in community detention. Mrs Bakhtiari and her nine-month old baby are currently being detained in an Adelaide motel.
Offers pour in to end cat's detention
A stray cat was Aladdin Sisalem's only companion during the 10 months he was held alone in the detention centre. He called her Honey. When arrangements were made to fly Mr Sisalem to Australia on Monday after he was granted a protection visa, he said he didn't want to leave the cat behind.
John Laws talks about Aladdin Sisalem and his cat Honey
Last Manus Island asylum seeker looks forward to new life
The 25-year-old Kuwait-born Palestinian refugee said: "I feel that I am on a mission to do something good in my life to thank all the people in Australia who helped me and saved my life from a situation in which I had no choice." [...] He said he had told his parents in Kuwait "the great news and they wanted to thank everybody".