Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time
Written & directed by Arash Kamali Sarvestani &
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Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time is a ground-breaking film that gives audiences a new window to look into Manus Island detention centre.
Christmas Island, Manus Island and Nauru detention centres
The federal government and its offshore detention contractors will pay more than $70 million in compensation to 1905 refugees and asylum seekers for illegally detaining them in dangerous and damaging conditions on Manus Island.
In what may be Australia's largest ever human rights-related settlement, on June 14 the government settled out of court before the class action, brought on behalf of the refugees and asylum seekers detained on the island, began.
Newcastle Students Against Detention (SAD) culture jammed the University of Newcastle鈥檚 rebranding launch on May 15, putting pressure on the administration to cut ties with Broadspectrum which runs Australia鈥檚 detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
The students were leaked the designs which they parodied to better reflect the University of Newcastle鈥檚 (UON) odious business ties, and stuck them over the official ones.
The rebranding focused on the word 鈥淣ew鈥, so SAD made posters stating: 鈥淣ew Abuses. New Human Rights Violations. Lose Your Ethics at UON.鈥
Immigration officials told asylum seekers and refugees in Manus Island detention centre on May 15 that the centre will be closing, beginning on May 28 and completely shut down by October 31. This comes after a PNG supreme court last year ruled the detention centre was unconstitutional and must be closed.
The Australian government has refused to bring any refugees to Australia and is widely reported to be pressuring them to accept deportation with threats and bribes.
Australia鈥檚 refugee policy over the past 25 years has resulted in a detention process best described as 鈥淗ell on Earth鈥.
Mandatory detention was first introduced in May 1992 by the Labor government with the support of the opposition and has been marked with increasing human rights abuses including deliberate medical negligence, sexual assault by guards, self-immolation and murder.
It suffocates people鈥檚 hope, as many people have been in detention for more than four years with no certainty of ever being released.
Two asylum seekers who had been detained in Australia's offshore detention camps spoke at a forum organised by Refugee Action Collective Victoria on April 22.
Ravi, a Tamil asylum seeker from Sri Lanka now living in Australia, told the forum how he spent two years on Nauru after surviving a 22-day boat journey. He said he had left one "hell", as a former political prisoner in Sri Lanka, only to be sent to another "hell" on Nauru.
It is often said that truth is the first casualty of war. It is also one of the first casualties of maintaining a detention system that seeks to demonise people fleeing persecution and cover up听human rights abuses.
Immigration minister Peter Dutton鈥檚 comments that refugees leading a five-year-old Papua New Guinean boy into the detention centre caused distress to locals and led to them firing into the air near the centre, is one of these lies.
In a live video on Twitter a man is speaking rapidly. He gives his name as 鈥淢aoud, my ID is GRL11鈥. Then he says: 鈥淭he local guys attacked the camp and they just used the guns, they just shoot the gun. I don鈥檛 know what to do鈥︹ A gunshot is heard and he appears to duck, before looking up and saying 鈥渢hey just shoot鈥. Then the video cuts out.
As immigration minister Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull boast in front of a wall of Australian flags about how they have stopped the boats and saved lives at sea, the Australian Navy is turning boats back to danger.
US immigration officials have admitted it is possible that no one from the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres will be resettled in the US. Meanwhile, Australian border force officers have been ramping up deportations on Manus Island.
Many people suffering in Manus Island and Nauru detention centres are struggling to find hope that their situation will change. One such person is Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist who fled Iran and has become well known for his writings about life in the Manus Island detention centre.
Manus Island protests
A year after the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ordered that the Manus Island detention centre be closed, people are still living in the same compounds and sleeping in the same beds.
In the latest protest, as tensions simmer inside the detention centre, guards hastily withdrew from Mike Compound on March 18 after a protest erupted in the mess area following Border Force renovations that made the serving area more like a prison.
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.听
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.
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