Refugee rights activists representing groups and individuals from Darwin, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, Wollongong, Sydney, and the Blue Mountains met on December 3 to plan campaign activities for this year.
It was the first national gathering of refugee rights campaigners since federal Labor's 2007 election, and fittingly occurred on the same weekend as the ALP's national conference. Labor further entrenched its anti-refugee policies, in particular offshore processing.
Asylum seekers & refugees
About two dozen protesters rallied outside immigration minister Chris Bowen's office in the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield on January 10.
Petty politicking over whether refugees should be illegally deported to Malaysia or to Nauru forced the Australian government to abandon its policy of 鈥渙ffshore processing鈥 of refugees on October 13.
Since the 鈥淭ampa election鈥 in 2001, competition between the two main parties over who can most mistreat the small number of refugees arriving in Australia by boat has been at the centre of Australian electoral politics.
Socialist Alliance statement
The horrific boatwreck and deaths of more than 30 asylum seekers on December 15 on the rocks of Christmas Island reveals the inhumanity of the Gillard Labor government鈥檚 asylum seeker policy.
This tragedy should be the trigger for the complete junking of the government鈥檚 current racist refugee policy.
"We need a refugee policy based on human solidarity not one that encourages racism and xenophobia", said Sue Bolton a refugee rights activist and a member of the Socialist Alliance national executive.
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) released a report on the Christmas Island detention centre on October 29, and again called for an end to mandatory detention and offshore processing.
The 75-page report detailed the hostile conditions faced by asylum seekers, including the island鈥檚 remote location and limited access to essential services such as legal help, health care, torture and trauma counselling and religious support.
The report said Australia鈥檚 detention system breaches fundamental human rights.
An Essential Research poll released October 25, asked the question, 鈥淒o you approve or disapprove of the federal government鈥檚 decision to move children and their families out of immigration detention centres and allow them to live in the community while their cases are being processed?鈥
Alarmingly, only 33% approved while 53% disapproved and 13% said they didn't know. Furthermore, 29% strongly disapproved, while only 11% strongly approved.
One hundred people gathered in Brisbane鈥檚 King George Square on October 22 to commemorate the tragedy of the SIEV X, an Indonesian fishing boat bound for Australia, which sank on October 19, 2001, drowning 353 asylum seekers 鈥 146 of them children.
The Pacific Solution
By Susan Metcalfe
Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2010
Review by Julian Gormly
This year is the 15th anniversary of the Nargar Kovil school massacre in Tamil Eelam, the Tamil area of Sri Lanka. On September 22, 1995, the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) bombed Nargar Kovil Maha Vidyalayam schoolyard, which was crammed with 750 children on their lunch break. Reports of the number of children killed vary from 26 to 70. Twelve of the children killed were six or seven years old. One hundred and fifty were injured, including 40 seriously. Twenty-two children had their limbs amputated. Ten of the amputees were under 12.
On August 23, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) reported that a 30-year-old man found unconscious in the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in Western Australia had died.
After his collapse on August 21, the man was taken to Derby hospital, 40 kilometres away. That night, he was transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, more than 2000km south of Derby. He died the next day.
DIAC would not tell 麻豆传媒 Weekly the man鈥檚 name, but said it didn鈥檛 believe there were suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. A Coronial inquiry
Immigration officials accept about 99% of claims for refugee status by people who have arrived by boats in Australia. But this hasn鈥檛 stopped mainstream politicians from punishing those seeking asylum in this way.
In April, the government announced it would temporarily freeze visa applications from newly arrived Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers. In June, about 70% of Afghan (mostly Hazara) claims were rejected, according to the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC). Such rejection figures have never been seen before.
Abdul Ramahi is a Palestinian-Australian who lives in Melbourne. A member of the Socialist Alliance, he is active in campaigns to raise awareness on the plight of the Palestinian people.
His own story, which he told 麻豆传媒 Weekly, illustrates how the lives of Palestinians in the global diaspora are shaped by the ongoing injustice and resistance in their homeland.
Born in 1938, in a village called Muzeira, five kilometres from present-day Tel Aviv, he had a happy childhood. His father was a justice of the peace and owned a large amount of land 鈥 close to 100 hectares.
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