One year after European Union leaders signed a deal with the Turkish government to cut off the wave of desperate refugees seeking to reach Europe鈥檚 shores, the policy has caused even more death and suffering.
Asylum seekers & refugees
Veteran Canadian-based socialist and activist Ernie Tate has been writing to English group Left Unity on the struggles in Canada provoked by the rise of Donald Trump south of the border.
A lifelong revolutionary who migrated to Canada from Northern Ireland as a young man, Tate was one of the most important activists of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the 1960s and has recently produced a two volume memoir, Revolutionary Activism of the 1950s and 1960s.
Australians overwhelmingly believe keeping asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru indefinitely is cruel, but are evenly split on whether they should be resettled in Australia.聽
This was the result of a survey by Roy Morgan Research over February 18 to 19.
The poll found a majority of voters in Victoria (52%), NSW (51%) and Tasmania (58%) supported bringing those on Manus and Nauru to Australia.
A majority of voters in Queensland (53%), WA (57%) and SA (54%) opposed resettlement in Australia.
Refugee activists have been holding LetThemStay actions and protesting against refugee policies outside the office of Federal Labor MP Sharon Claydon every Thursday afternoon since February last year.
The group, which includes members of The Greens, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Quakers, Uniting Church, Catholics and Grandmother's Against Children in Detention, raise a chorus of supportive horns from passing traffic.
They say they will not stop until all refugees are free.
Condemning Donald Trump鈥檚 cruel bigotry is easy 鈥 well, OK, maybe not for the Australian government, but for actual human beings with functioning consciences.
Then again, our country is so screwed up, our government鈥檚 response to the rise of the most extreme racist authoritarian president in US history is to ask him if he鈥檚 still ok to take desperate asylum seekers we won鈥檛 help, coz we are sick of the expense of torturing them in isolated hellholes.
A sharing of culture, food and art that supports refugees and asylum seekers, including those in detention, is at the heart of the Food for Thought project.
Ravi, author of From Hell to Hell, a collection of poems and drawings from his time in Nauru detention centre, or 鈥渉uman dumping ground鈥 as he calls it, first started thinking about Food for Thought the day he got out of detention.
As the people on Manus Island prepared to see in the New Year, drunken immigration officials and police beat up asylum seekers who were then taken into police custody and denied food and medical treatment. PNG politician Ronny Knight responded by tweeting 鈥淭hey deserved what they got鈥.
Barely a week earlier Faysal Ishak Ahmed, a Somali asylum seeker in Manus Island detention centre, died on Christmas Eve after months of being denied adequate medical treatment.
In the wake of another death on Manus Island, vigils are being held around the country and more than 200 refugees on Manus Island have signed a letter calling for a Royal Commission to fully investigate IHMS (the Manus detention medical provider contracted to the Australian government) and its political control by Australia鈥檚 Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
On December 16, the Federal Court ruled that delays by the Department of Immigration and Border Security (DIBS) in making decisions on citizenship were 鈥渦nreasonable鈥, prompting hope for people with refugee backgrounds in a similar plight.聽
One litigant said: 鈥淭his may set an important precedent for individuals in similar circumstances.鈥
Acting CEO of Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) Tim O鈥機onnor said the decision was a 鈥渓andmark ruling鈥 which recognised the 鈥渋njustice鈥 citizenship delays had caused.聽
In a landmark decision on December 16, the Federal Court found the minister for immigration Peter Dutton unreasonably delayed making decisions on applications for citizenship by refugees.
The court also ruled that Dutton erred in rejecting the applications for citizenship of two Afghan refugees several weeks after they commenced legal proceedings. The pair had been permanent residents of Australia for more than four years.
This week, brave teachers from across the country will bring a message of hope to their class rooms. They will declare that they support refugees 鈥 and especially those on Manus Island and Nauru.
The simple act of wearing a T-shirt with the words 鈥 鈥淭eachers for refugees鈥 on the front and 鈥淐lose the camps, Bring them here鈥 on the back 鈥 is enough to reinforce to thousands of students that there is an alternative to cruelty.
The Refugee Action Collective organised a public meeting on November 7, addressed by Harry Wicks, who had worked as a carpenter at the Nauru detention centre and Bernard, a Malaysian who has done volunteer work at refugee camps in Malaysia.
Wicks said that Nauru, a small island with a population of 10,000 people, has a 90% unemployment rate.
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