As a mother and her baby fight to avoid the 鈥渞at-infested鈥 Nauru refugee camp, a Fairfax-Nielsen poll showed half of Australian voters disapprove of the Coalition government's refugee policy. The poll also showed Prime Minister Tony Abbott has come to the end of what has been described as the shortest 鈥渉oneymoon period鈥 of a PM in history. Abbott's popularity took an unprecedented dive 鈥 with a personal approval rating of 1%, believed to be fuelled by his attitude to the 鈥渄iplomatic stand-off鈥 with Indonesia over substantial spying allegations.
Asylum seekers & refugees
Multi-lingual multi-instrumentalist Pat Marks fronts the multi-faceted Melbourne band Pataphysics. As the "guerilla hip-hop" outfit prepare to launch their new EP, 麻豆传媒 Weekly's Mat Ward spoke to Marks about his multifarious pursuits, from refugee rights to juvenile justice.
On his latest EP, A Dose Of Reality, Adelaide-based emcee Eskatology raps about the refugees he works with. "I've worked with many refugees in my job as a youth worker," says the rapper, who is giving the 10-track EP away as a .
The two big parties have long considered refugees鈥 rights forfeit. This election year has been a time of unprecedented sacrifice of refugees, as each 鈥減olicy鈥 idea from Labor and the Liberals becomes more extreme than the last.
After signing up Papua New Guinea and Nauru to bogus resettlement deals, PM Kevin Rudd has most recently sent families to Nauru and continues to oversee legally dubious deportations.
Radical rapper Ben Iota stands out in Australian Hip-Hop like a refugee boat in an empty ocean. 麻豆传媒's Mat Ward spoke to him about his new EP "Born Free".
As asylum seekers face years of detention in the Nauru and Manus Island detention camps, where not a single claim has been assessed, the Australian government refuses to answer to scrutiny or calls for human rights oversight.
The ABC鈥檚 Four Corners and SBS鈥檚 Dateline have now tried to investigate the conditions inside each 鈥渞egional processing centre鈥. The camps are believed to be abysmal, inadequate and places of widespread physical and psychological breakdown among detainees.
It was almost a simple formality. Rejecting any attempt by the Greens to introduce rudimentary protections, the Australian Senate voted on May 16 to excise the entire country from the migration zone.
It will most likely be given approval by the lower house soon. If implemented, it will mean that for all asylum seekers who arrive by boat, Australia -- and by proxy the Refugee Convention -- will legally not exist.
The federal Labor government is desperate for you to believe that its 鈥渘o advantage鈥 refugee policy is working. And from offshore detention to impoverished 鈥渓iving in the community鈥, children and teenagers will be no exception to its increasingly cruel measures.
The released this statement on April 8.
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At 2am on April 8, 28 ASIO-negative refugees 鈥 24 Sri Lankan, two Iranian and two Rohingyas 鈥 began a hunger strike at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) detention centre. They have gathered on the playground inside the detention facility.
Over recent weeks, lawyers and campaigners have been racing to the courts to prevent immigration department plans to deport Afghan refugees back to Kabul.
Refugee advocates raised alarm bells on March 5 when four Afghan Hazara refugees who had been living in the community on bridging visas were re-detained after attending scheduled immigration meetings.
The federal Coalition has used the alleged sexual assault of a young woman on Macquarie University to call for increased monitoring of asylum seekers.
Police have , which allegedly took place when the man broke into the woman鈥檚 room and put a hand down her pyjama pants while she was asleep. He fled when she woke up and screamed.
The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released documents exposing the 鈥渁ppalling鈥 extent of child self-harm in a Darwin detention centre on February 18.
DASSAN obtained the documents via a Freedom of Information request, which took the department of immigration more than nine months to release. They detail 26 cases of self-harm by detained refugees aged 9 to 17 between August 2010 and November 2011.
Spokesperson Fernanda Dahlstrom said the documents 鈥渃oncern one detention centre over a relatively short period of time鈥.
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