Full Version: "There are no refugees in Australian detention centres"
- ... thanks God for the people of conscience and voices of dissent
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Detention Policy Fails the Test of Humanity
By: Judi Moylan*
Two women - Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez - have finally convinced a bitterly divided Australia that reform of the mandatory detention system is needed.
But can MPs elected by the Australian people to represent them help Australians reach consensus on the way forward? I believe we can. After years working within the Liberal Party for reform with minimal success, it's time to debate the issue.
The action plan presented to the Liberal Party by Petro Georgiou, member for Kooyong, is designed to do just that. It involves two bills.
The first is to ensure that children and their families are released while their applications are considered. Pending and unsuccessful asylum-seekers in detention for more than a year would be released until their status was determined by a judicial assessor. Refugees on temporary protection visas would get permanent residency, as would asylum-seekers who cannot be removed from Australia three years after the final determination of their applications for protection.
The second bill would reform the mandatory detention system to ensure that asylum-seekers are not kept in detention for more than 90 days without good cause. All cases would be assessed by a judge on an application by the Department of Immigration, which would have to prove that release would result in a threat to public safety or that the asylum-seeker was likely to abscond. This would ensure that the administration of the law was transparent, accountable and fair.
For the majority of Australians who support some form of mandatory detention as part of strong border control, reform of that system is imperative to prevent its destruction.
The founding father of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies, led opposition to Labor's wartime refugee removal bill. In February 1949 he warned that refugee policy "must be applied by a sensible administration, neither rigid nor peremptory but wise, exercising judgment on individual cases, always remembering the basic principle but always understanding that harsh administration never yet improved any law but only impaired it, and that notoriously harsh administration raises up to any law hostilities that may some day destroy it".
Those of us who believe reform is necessary are not radicals. I think it is fair to say that we are Liberals in the Menzian tradition. Menzies displayed compassion and for the most part a strong desire to ensure that policy united rather than divided the Australian people: "As a party and as a country we have fought hard to preserve human life and human dignity, fighting two major wars to uphold these principles."
The Liberal Party has a strong commitment to allowing members to vote according to their conscience. Respect for the dictates of the Liberal politician's conscience is one of the great differences between Labor and Liberal parties. Protection of citizens' rights against abuse of state power and the use of political power to promote equality of opportunity for all are fundamental to liberalism.
Today we preside over a policy and an administration that has seen an incapacitated citizen deported, a mentally ill Australian incarcerated as an illegal for nearly a year, and the indefinite detention of men, women and children without any charges being laid against them.
Self-harm, suicide and mental health problems are well documented. The reports have highlighted the harm done to children. This is why what may once have been a policy debate now has an ethical dimension that should see the policy openly debated in the House of Representatives, with each MP voting on our plan or an amended version according to their consciences.
I have been proud to participate in parliamentary debates on matters that go to the heart of preserving human life and dignity. These debates were conducted in a mature manner with the parties allowing a conscience vote.
Responding to a recent proposal to bring on a private member's bill on abortion for debate, the Prime Minister said he would allow a debate in the people's house: "This is Australia. It's a democracy. And people can raise anything they like."
To me it seems no less important, for reasons of conscience, to engage in a debate on asylum-seeker policy, a policy that fails the foundation test of upholding human life and human dignity.
It is for this reason that we need to openly debate this issue within the party, the parliament and the community. There is a way forward that can maintain the integrity of the border protection policy, ensure a humane policy and bridge the divide this issue has created within our communities.
*Judi Moylan is the Liberal member for Pearce.
Source
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Why We Need a New Policy on Refugees
It's time for compassion and accountability in handling asylum seekers, writes Petro Georgiou*.
For many years I have been concerned about difficulties experienced by some refugees and asylum seekers, which result from policies implemented at a time of widespread anxiety that we might be engulfed by a flood of bogus asylum seekers. That fear has not been realised. It's time to review the policy framework established under different circumstances and adopt a more compassionate, transparent and accountable approach while maintaining the integrity of our immigration and refugee system.
Unauthorised boat arrivals have all but ceased and the great majority of asylum seekers who came by boat were found to be genuine refugees. Regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq has seen the halt of major flows of people from two main source countries of unauthorised arrivals to Australia.
Within the region,the activities of people smugglers have been curtailed.
In recent years, the Government has acknowledged the need for flexibility in asylum and refugee policies. Nonetheless, while the perceived crisis has long since passed, asylum seekers continue to be detained for lengthy and even indefinite periods. They include women and children.
Asylum seekers continue to be detained for periods longer than prison sentences imposed on violent criminals, and may be detained indefinitely. More than 300 people have been in immigration detention for more than a year, and about 80 of them have been held for more than four years. Many of those who have been detained for such long periods have subsequently been found to be bona fide refugees.
There is no independent scrutiny of whether it is necessary to keep people detained for lengthy or indefinite periods to protect the community or to prevent them absconding.
The harmful effects of long-term detention on detainees' mental and physical health have been documented by health experts, and the Federal Court recently found that the Government failed in its duty of care to provide adequate services to psychiatrically ill long-term detainees at the Baxter detention centre.
People on temporary protection visas have been welcomed and integrated by Australian communities, and are making significant contributions. Many holders of temporary protection visas continue to live in anxiety and fear of being returned to places of great insecurity.
It is clear that additional measures are necessary to ensure that the system is compassionate, fair, accountable and subject to independent scrutiny. I am proposing two private member's bills to achieve these aims, while maintaining the integrity of Australia's immigration and refugee system.
The first bill contains compassionate measures to alleviate the plight of individuals who are suffering under the current system. The main elements are:
· Asylum seekers who have been detained for more than a year will be released until their status is resolved, unless a judge who has examined their case decides that they should continue to be detained because they are dangerous or are likely to abscond.
· Children under 18 and their immediate families will be released from detention immediately pending determination of their applications unless a judicial officer finds that they pose a danger to the public or are likely to abscond.
· People who have been found to be bona fide refugees but have been granted only temporary protection visas will be permitted to remain in Australia permanently.
The second bill proposes a model of reform so that the problems that have arisen under the current system do not recur. Its features include:
· Asylum seekers who don't have a visa will be able to be detained only if it is necessary to detain them on specified grounds, for example, to verify identity and to protect public safety. Detention decisions will be subject to Federal Court judicial scrutiny. Departmental officers will be able to detain people initially for up to 90 days and then must show cause to the Federal Court as to why further detention is required. The Federal Court may order continued detention for recurring periods of 90 days.
· Everyone who is found to be a refugee will be granted permanent residency.
In recent months, many Australians have told me that they supported the framework of stringent measures in the context in which they were introduced. But they now believe that reform is necessary and can be achieved without compromising the security of our borders and our community. I agree.
They are disturbed that children, women and men are imprisoned for lengthy periods simply because they came without prior authority, without any independent assessment of whether they pose a risk to our community. They believe that fundamental Australian values of fairness and decency demand a new approach. I share those feelings.
The measures I am proposing constitute a carefully designed package and in no way undermine our capacity to protect our borders and prevent abuse. One of the enduring strengths of this nation is our commitment to justice, tolerance and compassion for others. Our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers who have arrived uninvited must surely reflect those deeply held values.
*Petro Georgiou is the federal Liberal MP for Kooyong.
Source
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Labor Missing In Action
By: Mike Steketee
What does it tell us when it takes Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou and a few colleagues to defy the Prime Minister and make the running on relaxing the Government's brutal policy of mandatory detention?
That once again, the Labor Party is out of touch and has been left behind. The Opposition could have taken the opportunity offered by the divisions in Government ranks that have been evident for many months. It could have taken the initiative on an issue in which humanity has long demanded a different approach and on which, in any case, community opinion has swung away from a lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach.
But then Labor would not have had its heart in it, not judging by the attitude of its spokesman on immigration, Laurie Ferguson. When it comes to refugees and mandatory detention, Ferguson is a hardliner, whose real views are closer to former immigration minister Philip Ruddock than to many people in the ALP -- certainly those on the Left of the party to which he nominally belongs.
That may not always be clear from his public comments. But it is from his private correspondence. A Sydney refugee activist, Stephen Langford, recently wrote to Ferguson arguing for Labor to show some leadership in this area and asking him to take up the case of an Iranian who has been in Villawood detention centre in Sydney for almost three years.
In his reply, Ferguson launched into a tirade. "I am afraid to reveal a major secret -- the self-styled refugee advocates do not have a monopoly on morality and automatically following their prescriptions is not necessarily the only 'leadership' position," he wrote.
Ferguson went on to complain about his "thankless" decision to agree to look at individual cases and then concluded by sharing a few more of his true thoughts. "Finally, as for moral righteousness, I would raise that the pass rate on TPVs [temporary protection visas which grant refugee status but only for two years] is over 90 per cent. This is absolutely incredibly at variance with the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], European and North American processing and Australia's offshore outcomes. Think about this and tell me the people in the camps and slums of Peshawar, Nairobi, Ankara etc are getting a good deal, as opposed to the people smugglers and their clients."
Oppositions usually try to work with interest groups that agitate against Government policy. Ferguson has succeeded in getting them offside.
Nor was he backing off yesterday. Langford, he said, was "a well-meaning guy" who had sent him "a very pompous, self-important, self-righteous letter. I get a bit sick of these people lecturing me."
Ferguson's letter makes it clear that he thinks that many of the asylum-seekers we have let in are not really refugees and, presumably, should be shipped back to Iraq and Afghanistan. He would not quite admit that yesterday but he came close.
He said he believed the high rate of approvals had been influenced by Government thinking that US firepower would quickly restore peace to Afghanistan and Iraq, meaning that refugees on TPVs could be returned. "I don't know why it should be higher onshore in Australia than where people are in camps for a decade or two, and I would like someone to objectively tell me."
Ferguson has a point about refugees in camps, as did Ruddock, who also argued they should be given priority. Let's expand our refugee program to take more of them, by all means. But that does not make people who flee by boat in fear of their life unworthy. That is like saying that we should not pick up someone we find in the gutter because people may be even worse off overseas.
Whatever happens in next week's debate in the Government partyroom, Georgiou's supporters say he is intent on exercising his right as an MP to move two private members bills in parliament to change the policy.
So will Labor support the bills? If it does and the Government allows the debate to proceed, the legislation could become law if 12 other MPs supported Georgiou. So far, three Liberal MPs have backed him -- Judi Moylan, Bruce Baird and Russell Broadbent. Independent Peter Andren said yesterday he fully agreed with the legislation. Other Liberals feel strongly on the issue but whether they are prepared to stand up and be counted remains to be seen.
Many of Georgiou's proposals, such as time limits on detention, the release of children and their parents and allowing TPV holders to stay permanently are identical or close to Labor policy. "We would be reasonably happy with a lot of it," says Ferguson.
"We have to move towards a position where more people are released while cases are pending." But he immediately qualified this by saying that Labor would have to be satisfied that those let out into the community were not likely to abscond. "Overseas experience is not encouraging: if you let everyone with a claim out, they will not co-operate with the system."
Refugee groups deny that, based on overseas experience, the danger of people absconding is serious. In any case, Georgiou's legislation aims at screening out such people so that they are not released.
Ferguson is Labor's worst enemy when it comes to projecting a more humane policy on detention. He was appointed to the job by Mark Latham, a fellow hardliner on refugee policy. Latham has moved on and so should Ferguson. Kim Beazley would do the refugee cause a favour by shifting him to an area where he does less damage, or even better, cleaning out his frontbench with a spill of positions.
Source
==========================
ALSO SEE
Immigration Dept Knew of Solon in 2003, Inquiry Told, Interview with Amanda Vanstone
Libs Block Immigration Blunder Debate
Immigration Dept Apologises For Bungles
Palmer Inquiry Cost Nears Half-Million
Dennis Shanahan: Pressure on For a Change to the Menu
Palmer to Resign After Rau Report: Judical Inquiry Needed Into DIMIA Scandals
LATELINE Exclusive: Palmer to Step Down From Immigration Probe
AUST Greens: DIMIA Answers Beggar Belief: Continued Inaction on HREOC Report
Aust Democrats: PM's Conscience Vote Ban Unconscionable
Beazley Rules Out Conscience Vote on Detention Bill
Vanstone Defends Detention of kids
- When Getting Punished Means Getting A Promotion
More than two years ago, in the wake of the "children overboard" deception, the then Public Service commissioner, Andrew Podger, took politicised bureaucrats politely to task over the issue.
In his annual state-of-the-service report, he suggested the affair provided a "timely reminder of the relevance of the APS [Australian Public Service] values" such as being apolitical, impartial, accountable and devoted to promotion on merit.
The Herald later asked Podger to elaborate on his criticisms, in the light of revelations that the Government's people smuggling taskforce, which co-ordinated the whole charade, had kept few records, had taken instruction directly from ministerial staffers and had given flawed but politically advantageous advice to the Government.
"I think," Podger said, "some of the key players before subsequent parliamentary committees have said there are some lessons to be taken from the exercise. Jane Halton [the head of the taskforce] herself said one of them was about record-keeping. She accepts it was not as good as it should have been."
But Halton, we pointed out, like almost everyone else bureaucratically associated with the affair, was immediately promoted, in her case to become secretary of the Health Department. What signal did that send to the rest of the bureaucracy?
Podger declined to answer.
Which brings us to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and her response to the revelation that officers of her department had known in August 2003 that an Australian citizen, Vivian Alvarez Solon, had been improperly deported to the Philippines.
Amazingly, departmental officers had not only been aware of this but had written about it to the Queensland police and to a TV missing persons program. But they had not, apparently, made any effort to rectify it or passed the information up the departmental chain.
Vanstone, on the ABC's Lateline
on Wednesday night, was asked how this could have happened.
She began her answer by saying: "With respect, I'm not seeking to apportion any blame".
She went on to identify the ranks of those who knew as "APS, I think, 5 or 6 level and one might have been at an APS 6 or EL 1 at the time - at the time."
To translate: they were mid-ranking bureaucrats, although her use of "at the time" suggests the possibility of subsequent promotion.
Host Tony Jones asked: "Were any supervisors in that department or in that section made aware of what had happened?"
Vanstone: "We've accessed the paper records, and the paper records do not indicate that anything was passed up …"
Why are we not surprised?
Source
RELATED: The Skull Beneath DIMIA's Skin
===========================
ALSO SEE
PM Won't Step Up Detainee Inquiry
Australia Below-par On Human Rights
- Asylum Seeker Drinks Bleach
THE longest-serving detainee at Villawood Detention Centre has attempted suicide by drinking a bottle of bleach.
Palestinian asylum seeker Mohammed Mahmoud was rushed to Liverpool Hospital on Wednesday night after trying to kill himself.
Friends said the 35-year-old had been "severely depressed" about his chances of being released.
To date he has served almost five years in detention in NSW and WA.
Mr Mahmoud reportedly fled his native Syria in 2000 after suffering political persecution.
After arriving in Australia from Indonesia, he spent a year in detention in Port Hedland before being moved to Villawood in 2001.
Friend Jamal Daoud said the long wait for a resolution to his case had taken its toll on Mr Mahmoud, who was last night recovering in hospital.
"He's not asking for much, but he needs some relief. He has to be freed," Mr Daoud said. "He needs to get out of detention while his application for a visa is determined."
Prime Minister John Howard was again forced to stand by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone yesterday, refusing the Labor Party's calls to sack her.
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley tried to censure Mr Howard in Parliament for "failing to sack" Senator Vanstone after she referred 201 cases of possible wrongful detention to the Department of Immigration.
Mr Beazley also called for a royal commission into the Howard Government's "scandalous mismanagement" of the immigration system.
"It is the Prime Minister who should have [Senator Vanstone's] head on his table, that is what should have happened," he said.
Mr Howard resisted, saying: "I do not intend to relieve Senator Vanstone of her responsibilities."
Former Australian Federal Police chief Mick Palmer, who is heading the closed-door inquiry into the wrongful detention of Australian woman Cornelia Rau and the wrongful deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez, will now look at the additional 200 cases.
Mr Howard said he would consider taking further action, such as setting up a judicial inquiry, but only after Mr Palmer had submitted his recommendations.
He also defended the immigration department, saying "nothing critical" could be said of the way the department was doing its job.
The 201 cases of possible wrongful detention accounted for just 0.2 per cent of the 88,000 suspected illegal immigrants detained in Australia between July 2000 and April 2005, he said.
"What [Senator Vanstone] did was to instruct the department to go back over the available records, to find the 201 cases where people have been released and, in order to find out whether that 201 included any Rau or Alvarez-type cases, refer all of them to the Palmer Inquiry.
"That is not the behaviour of a minister who is trying to cover something up," Mr Howard said.
Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Peter McGauran said a royal commission into the immigration department would "take years" and cost up to $50 million of taxpayers money.
Source
Subhanallah 
... how heartless is this government.
... how heartless is this government.
- ... and unashamedly hypocrite!!!
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Vanstone Sorry For Corby Distress
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says she feels sorry for Schapelle Corby and her family after the Australian's conviction on drug smuggling charges in Indonesia.
Senator Vanstone would not comment on Corby's 20-year sentence handed down by a Bali court. But she said it was a distressing time.
"It's obviously a very distressing matter for her and her family but it's not something I'd choose to comment on," Senator Vanstone told a press conference on indigenous affairs in Canberra.
"I'm very sorry about what's happened but that's for other people to comment on."
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer would be giving the Government's response.
"I've got no comment to make at this stage," he said at the same press conference.
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ok, I give up: so, just keep worrying about how the mouse suffers in the trap, without asking, what was the mouse's intention, when it went into the place marked: beware of traps! Mean while, back in reality, most Australians feel pretty well put off by anybody who gatecrashes a party, or who tries to get into a show, without a ticket, or who think themselves far too worthy to wait their proper turn; especially when others have been waiting long before they arrived on the scene. Australia was not their first port of call, and they were not exactly being persecuted, or the like, in Indonesia; so. let them enjoy what they have earned. I simply have no sympathy for self-inlicted injuries, nor for those who do seem to condone it. Like it or lump it, that is the truth, and no amount of Sophistry can escape it. Please, try to think as Moslems: not as dumb yuppies! A<udhu bilLahi min ash-shaytani n-nirajim.
QUOTE
Please, try to think as Moslems: not as dumb yuppies!
With Moslem sympathiser(s) like that, who really needs zealous intellectual Hansonites?!
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Religious Leaders Unite In Support of Bill
In a rare expression of political unity, religious leaders have thrown their weight behind the private member's bills aimed at releasing children and their families from detention.
The influential Sydney Anglican diocese was the latest to condemn immigration detention as flawed. The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, and his bishops have called for more compassionate measures as well as greater transparency and accountability and an independent review process outside the department.
The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said the immigration system portrayed Australia as an uncaring society.
The private member's bill would not diminish the Government's ability to select who entered Australia but would protect the Government from allegations of abuse and satisfy most of the concerns of national and international human rights monitors, its president, Dr Ameer Ali, said.
The Uniting Church's president, Reverend Dr Dean Drayton, is leading a letter-writing campaign to lobby Coalition MPs for a "magnanimous gesture to people whose lives have been devastated by situations we are fortunate enough to barely comprehend".
"It is our firm conviction that the Government policies of temporary protection and indefinite and unreviewable mandatory detention are harmful to people's well-being, unnecessarily punitive and a breach of our international human rights obligations," Dr Drayton wrote.
A separate letter has gone to Labor MPs.
The Sisters of St Joseph, one of the largest congregations of Catholic sisters, issued a rare statement yesterday, saying many Australians were unwilling to "pay for 'the integrity of our borders' by inflicting suffering on children, the mentally ill and those who have a legal right as refugees to seek asylum".
Sister Joan Healy of the Congregational Leadership Team said policies that denied "human dignity" had consequences not only for the individuals concerned but for policy administrators and Australia as a whole.
Source
===========================
SEE ALSO
Call For Hard Heads, Soft Heart
Gutless Labor Runs Dead On Georgiou Bills
Tim Costello :Politicians Must Unite to End Child Detention
Inside the Coalition's Fractured Conscience
Liberals of Conscience, An Endangered Species
The Meaning of Liberalism: Judi Moylan Speech to the Liberal Party Room
Heretics Rattle the High Priests of Howard's Broad Church
Detainees Languish In Prisons
HUNDREDS of immigration detainees have been held without trial in the nation's toughest prisons to live alongside hardened criminals, some for years at a time.
The Immigration Department was unable to provide an estimate yesterday of how many cases have passed through the nation's maximum security prisons, but confirmed there were 14 detainees in state-run jails.
The Australian understands the practice has been routine for at least five years. The revelations come as John Howard agreed to consider plans raised by rebel backbenchers to deliver the "speedier" release of long-term detainees and children in Australia's immigration detention centres.
Despite ruling out an end to mandatory detention, the Prime Minister is considering the release of all women and children while freeing long-term detainees after one year.
But as the political spotlight focuses on those detainees, others have been left languishing in jails. Three detainees are now in prison in Queensland -- the same state in which it was revealed Cornelia Rau spent three months in the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre. Two are in Brisbane, and one is in a north Queensland jail.
Queensland has no detention centre. However, the little-known practice of sending detainees straight to jail has occurred at Sydney's Silverwater and Long Bay jails, Perth's Roeburn prison, Broome Regional Prison, as well as an Adelaide prison.
State prisons hold detainees on behalf of the commonwealth through memoranda of understanding, based on the Migration Act, which overrides state law.
Last year, Victorian barrister Julian Burnside QC challenged the legality of the practice of holding detainees in prisons on constitutional grounds, but lost the case. Mr Burnside slammed the practice yesterday.
"To be held for months as Cornelia Rau was is outrageous," Mr Burnside said.
"This really amounts to throwing people into the rubbish bin."
Detainees were taken to prison by immigration officials, based on evidence gathered within detention centres, and transferred without legal argument to the prison system. Some were on remand for months facing charges such as assault and rioting, with the charges eventually dismissed by courts.
One detainee, West Papuan asylum-seeker George Dimara, told The Australian it was not uncommon for the Brisbane jail in which he was held to contain 30 immigration cases at one time.
Mr Dimara was released from Arthur Gorrie prison in February this year. Speaking from Port Hedland centre, Mr Dimara said some fellow Arthur Gorrie detainees had been held there for more than two years.
"Sometimes we were locked up in our cell for three days inside the jail," Mr Dimara said.
"It happened about two times or three times a month. When we got out from the room, sometimes I was sick and coughing."
Premier Peter Beattie has refused a request from bureaucrat Mick Palmer to provide evidence to the federal government inquiry into Rau's detention. Mr Beattie argued evidence should only be provided to an inquiry with judicial powers.
Cornelia Rau's sister, Christine, said detainees in jail would be at serious risk of harm from other prisoners.
"The thing that struck me was how alien an environment it would have been for her and how vulnerable Cornelia was," Christine Rau said.
"A lot of the other women in there didn't like her at all and were angry with her sometimes, so during her time in Queensland she was probably at greater risk from her fellow inmates than she was during her time at Baxter."
That fear was resoundingly proven by evidence from detainees.
Five years ago, the Commonwealth Ombudsman investigated the housing of detainees in state prisons.
A 2001 report recommended the practice be abolished -- but it was not until the Cornelia Rau affair erupted that Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone responded.
In February, Senator Vanstone imposed a 28-day limit -- in all but exceptional circumstances -- on the time people could be held in prison, a watch-house or similar state corrections facility.
But the department will still allow detainees to stay in prison if "exceptional circumstances" exist.
==============
ALSO SEE
Group of 15 Found to Be Refugees
Anger @ Vanstone 'Rdeness'
- TV Watch:
HOT DOCS - FOREIGNERS OUT!
" In Austria's general election in the year 2000, Jörg Haider's extreme right Freedom Party (FPÖ) had met with widespread approval. And for the first time since World War II, a party of the extreme right joined the government. Never slow to react, infamous German director and performance artist Christoph Schlingensief soon retaliated with an extraordinary form of protest. As a tangible satire on xenophobia, Big Brother madness and new nationalism, Schlingensief decided to stage an interactive concentration camp, right at the heart of Vienna's picturesque tourist centre, in front of the Viennese Opera House. Schlingensief interned twelve actual refugee applicants in a large shipping container and streamed their life over the web for a week. As in any ‘reality TV' show like Big Brother, the audience was allowed to vote their least favourite player out of the compound and, in this case, out of the country! Crowned with a banner proclaiming the phrase ‘Ausländer Raus!' (‘Foreigners Out!'), the container became a national flashpoint. Austrians converged on the square and others logged on to the website to cast their ballots. As people of every stripe shed their demure exteriors and let fly their inner prejudices, it soon became the most contentious place in Austria, with knife attacks, punch-ups and riots all taking place before a world-wide audience over the web. This documentary follows this extraordinary sequence of events. (From Germany, in Germany, English subtitles) "
==> Tuesday 14 June, 2005 SBS TV 10:00pm (AEST)
==============================================
SEE ALSO
“FOREIGNERS OUT”: The Rise of Extreme Right Party Support in Europe
SMH Review: Foreigners Out!
[quote=Mowlana Vector,Jun 1 2005, 09:23 PM]
[list]
With Moslem sympathiser(s) like that, who really needs zealous intellectual Hansonites?!
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[quote]
Well, if you want to get all embroiled in Australian POLITICS, why not find another site? I, personally, would rather be one of what the New Age Fascists refer derogatorily as a "Hansonite", than as a repeat-after-me-or-I-will-kill-you-because my-opinion-is the-only-right-one neofascist braindead yuppie, all too ready to follow in the footsteps of both, Stalin & Goebbels! PS I have asked for a fatwa on this topic, should a reply be forthcoming, I would post it here< In sha'allah.
pps Go, project refugee assist!
[list]
With Moslem sympathiser(s) like that, who really needs zealous intellectual Hansonites?!
===============================
[quote]
Well, if you want to get all embroiled in Australian POLITICS, why not find another site? I, personally, would rather be one of what the New Age Fascists refer derogatorily as a "Hansonite", than as a repeat-after-me-or-I-will-kill-you-because my-opinion-is the-only-right-one neofascist braindead yuppie, all too ready to follow in the footsteps of both, Stalin & Goebbels! PS I have asked for a fatwa on this topic, should a reply be forthcoming, I would post it here< In sha'allah.
pps Go, project refugee assist!
- AA
I thought, we're supposed to think as Moslems not as dumb yuppies and STOP fanaticising about some final solution
Idriys, what all due respect; Do u honestly realise, how your misinformed, panic-ridden, pontificating replies and (insulting) posts are becoming painfully ironic, antagonistic and funny ...
QUOTE(idriys @ Jun 23 2005, 02:38 PM)
PS I have asked for a fatwa on this topic, should a reply be forthcoming, I would post it here ...
[right][snapback]181981[/snapback][/right]
[right][snapback]181981[/snapback][/right]
I wonder, what is in store this time?
Oh well ... to your utter disgust, sorry, here is a newsflash for U: it looks like that the Australian Parliament's "New Age Fascists" were right and winning
May Allah(swt) grant us the wisdom to indiscriminately open our minds and hearts
W'salaam
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Last Family on Nauru Granted Humanitarian Visas
The last family detained on Nauru have finally won their freedom, with the Department of Immigration granting them visas on humanitarian grounds - 3½ years after they sought entry to Australia as refugees.
The Rehmati family - Mohammed Ali Rehmati, 39, his wife Alieya, 34, their daughters Ilham, 14, and Zahra, 7, and sons Mohammed Basit, 15, and Abbas, 9, were yesterday told they could leave the island tomorrow.
Members of their extended family who have been freed include Mr Rehmati's youngest brother, Abbas Ali, 21, as well as two other nephews Hussain Ali, 19, and Hassain Ali, 21.
Throughout their detention, the family, who are expected to arrive in Australia on Saturday, insisted they were genuine refugees from Afghanistan but for years their claims were rejected.
Last month nine other Afghanis were granted humanitarian visas, leaving the Rehmatis as the last family on the tiny island. Shortly after 2pm yesterday, the family were given forms and asked to sign them.
Unsure of what to do, they contacted Marion Le, their migration agent. "The 21-year-old called me, and he was in a state of disbelief, I think, and said, 'Do we sign this or not?' and I said, 'Sign it. Sign it'," Mrs Le told The Herald.
The Immigration Department confirmed yesterday the family had been granted three-year temporary protection visas.
The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, exercised her discretion to grant the visas, but said the decision did not have implications for the 38 remaining detainees on Nauru.
The visas give the family access to all services and Medicare, and means they can work and study. Near the expiry of the three-year visas, they will be able to apply for further protection.
Mrs Le, who is the only legal representative who has been allowed on Nauru, has repeatedly appealed to the Immigration Minister to allow those accepted as refugees to be given permanent protection.
"With information I was able to put to the department after my visit in January, along with the visit last week from the Afghan embassy and Afghan officials, it seems the concerns by the department as to the country of nationality seem to be resolved at the moment," she said. "It would be very, very difficult for a family like this to go back to so much lawlessness in the provinces. Things are not right in Afghanistan yet - there's the will, but really not the practical effect on the ground yet."
Fourteen-year-old Ilham Rehmati was the only teenage girl held in the centre. In her letters to a friend in Australia, obtained by The Herald, Ilham revealed how traumatic her time in isolation had been.
"In Nauru it is very bad. I always sit in my room," she wrote. "I can't walk. I can't run. Can't play. Can't talk loudly and can't sit anywhere."
Source
===================================
ALSO SEE
More Asylum Seekers to Be Freed
A Symbol of How the Politics Have Changed
Detention Retreat the First Step
Behind the PM's Petro Concessions?
Why We Need a New Policy on Refugees
Dissent Flares Over Detention Policy
Not Just "a few" But 33 Unlawfully Detained, Senate Records Show
Bordering on the Fake: Australia's Treatment of Asylum Seekers
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commision's Reports: Asylum Seekers
Debunking the Myths about Asylum Seekers
Nauru Wire: Latest News
News Archive: Australian Immigration Detention
(Cartoon courtesy GLW June 2005)
- ... and who said that "there are no refugees in Australian detention centres ..."?
=======================================
Free to Live As a Family
By: Sharon Mathieson
The Daily Telegraph ( 30 June 2005)
Together again . . . best friends Fahima Baqir
, 12, and Ilham Rahmati, 14, are reunited at
Canberra airport yesterday
Their first taste of freedom in nearly four years was almost too much for the Rahmatis yesterday.
The raw emotion, relief and joy at finally being free to live in Australia after being locked in immigration detention on the Pacific island of Nauru since December 2001, overwhelmed the family at Canberra airport.
The tears flowed and the relief proved too much for the head of the extended family, Mohammed Ali Rahmati, 39, who broke down in the arms of a friend waiting to welcome them to Australia.
The nine members of the family, from Afghanistan, were the last family detained on Nauru under the Federal Government's Pacific solution of processing asylum seekers offshore.
They were met by a large group of friends, mostly former asylum seekers also held on Nauru, as well as refugee advocates, when they arrived to begin their new life.
"Freedom, at last. I've got my freedom," said 14-year-old Ilham.
She had been the last single female Muslim detained on Nauru, where she struggled to cope in an isolated environment in which men drank every night.
"It was so hard, my only freedom was in the room," she said through tears, as the painful memories returned.
However, it was mostly tears of joy for Ilham, who was reunited with her best friend Fahima Baqir, 12, whose family was released almost a year ago.
Their joy at their reunion shone through the media scrum.
"I missed you so much," Ilham told her friend.
To reporters she said: "You cannot imagine how much I miss her, she's my best friend.
"I just saw my friend through the cameras and I just hugged her."
Ilham's sister, 7-year-old Zahra, was also reunited with her best friend Zahra Hussaini, who was released three weeks ago.
The two Zahras were inseparable on Nauru and will now start school together in Canberra.
Mohammed Ali Rahmati, his wife Alieya, 34, their daughters Ilham and Zahra and sons Mohammad Basit, 15, and Abbas, 9, as well as Mr Rahmati's brother Abbas Ali, 21, and nephews Hussain Ali, 19, and Hassain Ali, 22, were granted temporary humanitarian visas last week when Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone intervened in their cases.
"Many times we gave up hope," Hassain Ali said of his time on Nauru.
"It was not good. We just suffered and suffered."
Mrs Rahmati summed up her emotion with the words: "I feel human again. I'm just so happy to have a normal life, a simple, normal life."
Mr Rahmati spoke of his joy at the fact that his children could now live a good life and urged the Government to release the remaining 34 detainees on Nauru.
============================
Refugee Family Free @ Last
The Rahmati family arriving at Canberra Airport. (Photo: Penny Bradfield)
Mohammed Ali Rahmati, his wife Alieya, 34, their daughters Ilham and Zahra and sons Mohammad Basit, 15, and Abbas, 9, as well as Mr Rahmati's brother Abbas Ali, 21, and nephews Hussain Ali, 19, and Hassain Ali, 22, were granted temporary humanitarian visas last week when Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone intervened in their cases.
"Many times we gave up hope," Hassain Ali said of his time on Nauru.
"It was not good. We just suffered and suffered.
"But because of our friends and our supporters and (Australian Democrats) Senator Andrew Bartlett, they kept giving us hope."
Mrs Rahmati summed her emotion with the words: "I feel human again."
"I'm just so happy to have a normal life, a simple, normal life," she said.
A grateful Mr Rahmati spoke of his joy at the fact his children could now live a good life.
But he urged the government to release the remaining 34 detainees on Nauru.
More ...
Govt 'Embarrassed' By Immigration Dept
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott says the inquiry into the wrongful detention of Australian resident Cornelia Rau has "embarrassed" the Government.
The sister of Ms Rau says a draft Palmer Inquiry report shows the Immigration Department needs major reforms.
Draft excerpts of former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer's report were tabled on Tuesday in the Queensland Parliament by Premier Peter Beattie.
The draft says the department breached its own guidelines in the treatment of Ms Rau, and had the mentally ill woman received proper care during her 10 months in detention, she would have been admitted to hospital.
Instead Ms Rau, an Australian resident, was kept at South Australia's Baxter detention centre where Mr Palmer says the standard of mental health care was inadequate by any standard.
Mr Abbott says the Government will look closely at the report when it is released and take appropriate action.
"This has been a very unhappy episode from start to almost finish. I don't think any government or any institution can be anything other than embarrassed about what's happened to this poor woman," he said.
"As far as the Federal Government is concerned, we will carefully study the report, we will learn the right lessons and we will act upon them.
Labor's immigration spokesman Tony Burke says it adds to the case for a royal commission.
"[The] Palmer Inquiry has been given minimal powers and yet scratching the surface is enough to find the department is an absolute shambles, in a mess," he said.
A spokesman for the Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says she will not comment on the issue until she has the final report.
The final report is expected to be handed to Ms Vanstone next week.
Rau reaction
Ms Rau's sister, Chris Rau, says she is very happy with the strength of the findings contained in the draft report.
She says Mr Palmer sums up the problems in a nutshell when he says that Government policy must be carefully managed to make sure non-citizens are not non-persons.
She says it confirms her opinion that the Immigration Department is not doing its job.
"It shows a department that's lazy, it's fixated in its thinking and it's incompetent, and what comes out of it is a culture of basic disregard for people's rights or feelings," she said.
Chris Rau says her family is not looking for a particular person to blame or for someone to say sorry.
"We've always said that we never were looking for individual scapegoats and we were never looking for peripheral outcomes like a simple apology," she said.
"I think cases like this, and also cases like Vivian Solon's, show that we need fundamental reform, that just minor cosmetic changes aren't sufficient, that we need fundamental cultural reform but also legislative reform."
The release of the official Palmer inquiry report is at least a week away but leaks of the draft could be seen as lessening its' impact.
Contacted by The World Today, both the South Australian and New South Wales governments said they had no plans to follow Peter Beattie actions and table sections of the report relating to their jurisdiction.
Source
========================
SEE ALSO
Immigration Dept Has 'Cowboy Culture'
Palmer Draft Report Details Immigration Failures
The Abuse of One Exposes What We're Doing to Them
The Palmer report's findings are no surprise to refugee advocates, writes Julian Burnside*
The Palmer report on the case of Cornelia Rau gives an unsettling insight into the Immigration Department. Although we have yet to see the full report, it is clear that the case is not an isolated instance of errors that might occur in any large bureaucracy: it is symptomatic of a department that is terminally dysfunctional.
The department often deals with people who are vulnerable or traumatised, people who need special protection; people who need ready access to medical and legal help to ensure that their health and their rights are not ignored or overlooked. The Palmer report shows that concern is not abstract or theoretical: it is all too real.
While she was held illegally by the Immigration Department, Cornelia Rau was in solitary confinement for months. Solitary confinement is the harshest punishment legally permitted in Australia. Although asylum seekers have committed no offence, they are regularly subjected to periods of solitary confinement for weeks or months at a time. Rau's experience was not much different from that of other people in immigration detention.
Part of the problem is that the use of solitary confinement as a management technique is wholly within the discretion of the department and its private contractor GSL.
Despite the obvious suffering and harm that prolonged solitary confinement causes, the department insists that detention - including solitary confinement - is administrative, not punitive. Ask Cornelia Rau.
The department exercises awesome power. It can detain people indefinitely without the intervention of a court. It can effectively isolate detainees from proper medical or legal help. It can deport people from Australia without judicial supervision. Its exercise of these powers is often misguided, wilful or capricious.
Part of the scandal of the Cornelia Rau affair is that refugee advocates drew the department's attention to her case months before she was released. Starting late in 2004, Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre contacted the department regularly over seven weeks, telling it of "Anna" who was being held in Baxter. She told them that Anna was not a German citizen, and should not be in immigration detention. This was ignored. She told the department that Anna clearly needed psychiatric care. This was ignored. She asked for Anna to be given psychiatric and medical help. This was refused.
As the blundering of the department continues to be revealed, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says that relentless criticism from refugee advocates and journalists had produced a defensive mind-set in the department. That candid observation reveals something of deep concern. It suggests that, when criticised, members of the department either ignore the criticism or react against it.
Those who deal regularly with refugee cases recognise the widespread belief that, if an individual case gets publicity, the department will single out that case for adverse treatment. If there is any substance to that belief - and it is certainly consistent with Vanstone's comments - then we have the unhappy spectacle of a department with vast powers that is behaving like a petulant teenager given to making terrible mistakes, unwilling to admit error and unable to learn from its mistakes.
A department with such great powers, a department that daily makes life and death decisions, should be dedicated to error-free performance; it should have a culture that is responsive to the human reality of its functions. It is time for an open, public inquiry into the department before it inflicts more harm.
There is one important question that the Palmer report could not tackle: Why did it take Cornelia Rau's case to provoke widespread public concern about immigration detention?
The treatment received by Rau is commonplace in Australia's detention centres. The only novel feature of the Rau case is that she is uncomfortably like us. She looks like a typical Aussie girl. We are shocked at her treatment, but she received the same careless, cruel indifference that most asylum seekers receive. Why is it acceptable to treat asylum seekers this way, but shocking when it is done to one of us?
The answer to that question lies at the heart of the moral problems surrounding Australia's treatment of asylum seekers. It is an alarming possibility that the careless indifference of the department is simply a reflection of a society that is also indifferent to the fate of those who are not like us.
*Julian Burnside, QC, is a Melbourne barrister.
Source
==============================================
FURTHER READING
Cornelia Rau to Seek Compensation
No Excuses to Delay Rau Apology: Labor
Policy of `Shoot First' on Migration
Two Psychiatric Nurses Appointed at Baxter
Ombudsman Office Shows Howard's "Soft Detention Adjustments" Cannot Be Trusted
DIMA Debacles
- Promotion, Howard-style
QUOTE
Immigration Head Rewarded with Plum Job
Immigration head Bill Farmer has been made the scapegoat for a host of monumental departmental blunders but rewarded with the high-profile job of Australian ambassador to Indonesia.
Mr Farmer has stepped down as secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) after overseeing the wrongful detention of Australian woman Cornelia Rau and wrongful deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez.
His departure comes days before the release of former federal police chief Mick Palmer's report into immigration bungles.
In his scathing draft report tabled in Queensland Parliament, Mr Palmer found a series of serious failures by the Immigration Department aggravated Ms Rau's mental illness and the department had breached its own guidelines.
The Prime Minister, John Howard, announced Mr Farmer's new appointment today, but denied he was taking the fall for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and her predecessor, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.
More ...
Immigration head Bill Farmer has been made the scapegoat for a host of monumental departmental blunders but rewarded with the high-profile job of Australian ambassador to Indonesia.
Mr Farmer has stepped down as secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) after overseeing the wrongful detention of Australian woman Cornelia Rau and wrongful deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez.
His departure comes days before the release of former federal police chief Mick Palmer's report into immigration bungles.
In his scathing draft report tabled in Queensland Parliament, Mr Palmer found a series of serious failures by the Immigration Department aggravated Ms Rau's mental illness and the department had breached its own guidelines.
The Prime Minister, John Howard, announced Mr Farmer's new appointment today, but denied he was taking the fall for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and her predecessor, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.
More ...
ALSO SEE
When Getting Punished Means Getting A Promotion
QUOTE
The Detention and Removal of Asylum Seekers
In this e-brief Janet Phillips and Adrienne Millbank summarise recent developments and key issues in the debate about mandatory detention in Australia. They provide links to web sites and material covering detention policy and practice in Australia, and detention and removal policies and practices in the UK and other comparable countries.
Read the Full Text here ...
In this e-brief Janet Phillips and Adrienne Millbank summarise recent developments and key issues in the debate about mandatory detention in Australia. They provide links to web sites and material covering detention policy and practice in Australia, and detention and removal policies and practices in the UK and other comparable countries.
Read the Full Text here ...
SEE ALSO
Government’s Policy Has Been Built on a Myth
QUOTE
Detention's $1m Damage Trail
The Federal Government admits it has paid almost $1 million in compensation to 11 people held in wrongful detention, including an Australian citizen. Figures released yesterday suggest the Government faces further payments of millions of dollars.
Since 1993 11 citizens from nine countries - Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, France, Malaysia, South Korea and Britain - have been paid compensation for wrongful detention.
That does not include Cornelia Rau, the Australian resident detained for months by immigration authorities, or Vivian Alvarez Solon, the Australian citizen wrongly deported to the Philippines in 2001. More ...
The Federal Government admits it has paid almost $1 million in compensation to 11 people held in wrongful detention, including an Australian citizen. Figures released yesterday suggest the Government faces further payments of millions of dollars.
Since 1993 11 citizens from nine countries - Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, France, Malaysia, South Korea and Britain - have been paid compensation for wrongful detention.
That does not include Cornelia Rau, the Australian resident detained for months by immigration authorities, or Vivian Alvarez Solon, the Australian citizen wrongly deported to the Philippines in 2001. More ...
QUOTE
Detainees Held Too Long: Vanstone
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has admitted some people held in immigration detention and later found to be legally in Australia could have been released more quickly.
A response to questions taken on notice during Senate budget estimates hearings in May has revealed more than a quarter of the 201 people referred to a government inquiry were wrongly held for at least three weeks.
Labor is calling for a more transparent investigation process following the revelations.
But Senator Vanstone says just because someone is found to be lawfully in Australia does not mean they were wrongly detained in the first place.
"Later found lawful doesn't mean wrongfully detained," she said.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has admitted some people held in immigration detention and later found to be legally in Australia could have been released more quickly.
A response to questions taken on notice during Senate budget estimates hearings in May has revealed more than a quarter of the 201 people referred to a government inquiry were wrongly held for at least three weeks.
Labor is calling for a more transparent investigation process following the revelations.
But Senator Vanstone says just because someone is found to be lawfully in Australia does not mean they were wrongly detained in the first place.
"Later found lawful doesn't mean wrongfully detained," she said.
Yes, Of course, Minister ... 
========================
Detentions Defended
Immigration officers could not expect to be 100 per cent correct each time they detained someone, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said yesterday.
She defended her officers for detaining in the past five years 201 people who were later found to be in Australia legally, but admitted some cases might not have been resolved fast enough.
The Government has revealed 56 people were detained for more than three weeks even though they were entitled to be in Australia, another 28 were detained for up to a week and 13 were held for one to two weeks before their status was resolved.
Senator Vanstone said it did not mean they were wrongfully detained.
The law requires immigration officers to detain people whom they reasonably suspect to be "unlawful non-citizens".
"You cannot expect that to be 100 per cent correct on every occasion," she told Parliament. "Otherwise you would change the power to detain to be used only when you were absolutely certain.
" … The question that I want looked at is whether, having formed that suspicion properly and lawfully detained people, the department subsequently did everything it should have, in the haste that it should have, to ascertain who those people were."
=========================
ALSO SEE
A Just Australia's Response to the Palmer Inquiry
QUOTE(Mowlana Vector @ Aug 18 2005, 05:22 PM)
she really needs to spend more time on the stair master!
Free, But Wanting to 'Return to Baxter'
DETAINEES are being released from detention centres with so little preparation for life outside that some have asked to be returned, according to two refugee workers.
This week an Iranian man, released three weeks ago after five years' detention at Baxter detention centre, returned to Baxter and asked to be readmitted, said lawyer Kon Karapanagiotidis, director of the Melbourne-based Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
"He was told he can't be readmitted," Mr Karapanagiotidis said.
Another centre co-ordinator, Pamela Curr, said the man had been "dossing down" wherever he could find space and had not been able to afford to rent a place.
An Immigration Department spokeswoman confirmed that the department could not take back former detainees.
Another recently released Iranian man, in his late 20s, wanted to return to Baxter last week, but advocates had talked him out of it, she said.
The man was "wound up" after he was unable to meet $220 weekly payments on a flat he took with another detainee. When the other man was required to take a country job, the agent told him he was "blacklisted".
"A couple of others have said 'I feel like I want to be back in Baxter. At least I know what will happen there'," she said.
"All these people have seen for up to five years is four walls and a stretch of sky and they are coming out geographically isolated and mentally ill.
"They get lost easily and it destroys their sense of self."
Mr Karapanagiotidis said: "We're seeing this huge crisis where most of the people we've seen over the last three or four months — people who have been in detention four or five years — are coming out so institutionalised and so damaged."
He said detainees are often released with just two hours' notice, given a bus ticket and $200 to last two weeks.
"They have been released, often at the point of being suicidal, severely distressed and suffering post-traumatic distress. We've finding people turning up at the (asylum) centre who are homeless, they have no access to Medicare or Centrelink even though they are entitled, because they have no idea of how to access those services."
Mr Karapanagiotidis said the Government was failing in its duty of care and was discriminating by denying services to temporary visa holders.
In contrast, families and children released last month were given access to a Red Cross resettlement case worker with a pre-release assessment of their needs, and transitional housing.
Those with permanent visas are assigned a settlement worker who provides support.
Ms Curr said the asylum centre was urgently seeking a large residence to run as a half-way house for former detainees.
The department spokeswoman said detainees have access to TV and papers, and officials can advise them of entitlements.
============================
ALSO SEE
Refugees on Temporary Visas Suffer More Stress: Study
QUOTE(Ziver @ Jun 24 2004, 03:31 PM)
Dear idriys,
I must disagree with you that a German Australian should have a lesser right to a point of view or an opinion than (say) an English Australian. After all, apart from proper Australians (aka Australian Aboriginals) who sadly don't get much say at all - yet, everyone else is ipso facto a "a something or other" Australian. A Lebanese Australian, Italian Australian, Chinese Australian etc. These are not my labels, but those perpetuated by the media and adopted mainly by Anglo Australians - except of course the term "English Australians" which is not used by English Australians!!
As for refugees and how and why they came from where and for what reason, it is important to differentiate between illegal immigrants and refugees. Most of the people in Australian detention centres are in fact illegal immigrants who tried to sneak into the country or overstayed their visas. As I understand it, there are only a few hundred refugees held in these razorwire encampments.
A refugee seeks refuge, for whatever reason, from his/her country of origin. And of course a refugee will go where they can, however they can to seek refuge.
Article 14 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:
1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Notice the caveat in item 2. Sadly, Australia is the only so called "civilised" (Europeanised) nation where people (men, women and children) who seek refuge are detained with diminished rights against their will for no wrongdoing whatsoever other than fleeing from persecution.
This is an internationally embarrassing problem that the current or future government must address - if for no other reason than to bring Australia back into compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ziver
PS. What sort of security are you involved in? Anything to do with refugees?
PPS. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
[right][snapback]53442[/snapback][/right]
I must disagree with you that a German Australian should have a lesser right to a point of view or an opinion than (say) an English Australian. After all, apart from proper Australians (aka Australian Aboriginals) who sadly don't get much say at all - yet, everyone else is ipso facto a "a something or other" Australian. A Lebanese Australian, Italian Australian, Chinese Australian etc. These are not my labels, but those perpetuated by the media and adopted mainly by Anglo Australians - except of course the term "English Australians" which is not used by English Australians!!
As for refugees and how and why they came from where and for what reason, it is important to differentiate between illegal immigrants and refugees. Most of the people in Australian detention centres are in fact illegal immigrants who tried to sneak into the country or overstayed their visas. As I understand it, there are only a few hundred refugees held in these razorwire encampments.
A refugee seeks refuge, for whatever reason, from his/her country of origin. And of course a refugee will go where they can, however they can to seek refuge.
Article 14 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:
1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Notice the caveat in item 2. Sadly, Australia is the only so called "civilised" (Europeanised) nation where people (men, women and children) who seek refuge are detained with diminished rights against their will for no wrongdoing whatsoever other than fleeing from persecution.
This is an internationally embarrassing problem that the current or future government must address - if for no other reason than to bring Australia back into compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ziver
PS. What sort of security are you involved in? Anything to do with refugees?
PPS. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
[right][snapback]53442[/snapback][/right]
The full quote is given below: where does it say that one may seek safety in one country, then another, rather than applying for asylum from that safe refuge?
Furthemore, does not 14.2 infer that the Government has a right to lock up those who contravene its rights? Does not 12 infer that Ziver is a bit too full of his own self-importance?
Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14
1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
But, but .... I clearly heard Amanda Vanstone say "There are no refugees in Australian detention centres" months ago. And so I thought that it was over.
Hmmm. Maybe she has to sing first?
Ziver
Hmmm. Maybe she has to sing first?
Ziver
QUOTE
Immigration Reform Reaches A Dead End: Despite the scandals, plans are afoot to further reduce migrants' legal rights, More ...
ALSO SEE
Felon Fights Deportation to Sweden
Bakhtiyari Boys Say Sorry Over Bitter Battle
Why I Quit the Department
The organisational culture within Australia's Department of Immigration appears to have little regard for human rights, but an ex-insider says it didn't have to be that way ...
The organisational culture within Australia's Department of Immigration appears to have little regard for human rights, but an ex-insider says it didn't have to be that way ...
- SIEV X Mourners Remember the Nameless Dead
Anger and grief: Bahja Hassan lost seven family members in the SIEV
X disaster.(Photo: Nicole Emanuel)
FOUR years ago Bahja Hassan lost an uncle, his wife and their five children, aged four to 11, when the SIEV X sank.
Ms Hassan, who was born in Iraq and now lives in Whittlesea, is in no doubt over who is to blame for her loss.
"I blame the Australian Navy and the Indonesian smugglers for their deaths," she said yesterday, at the commemoration of a memorial for the 353 asylum seekers who lost their lives when the boat sank.
Only 45 people survived the tragedy, rescued 20 hours later by Indonesian fishing vessels.
A Melbourne Islamic leader yesterday challenged the Australian Navy to explain why it didn't go to the rescue of the SIEV X as the vessel, overloaded with people, started taking water.
Sheikh Issa, from the Islamic Council of Victoria, said he understood the vessel sank close to Australian waters where the Australian Navy was operating.
"So if there was a willingness to save them, that could have been done.
"We remember how there was a ship called Tampa. That ship saved a lot of people," he said, referring to the Norwegian ship that rescued 433 asylum seekers a month earlier.
"Why was the Tampa path not emulated by the Australian Navy?"
The tragedy should be highlighted in international forums, he said. "The refugees have every right to be taken care of."
He said nearly all the victims were Muslims, mainly from "wrecked countries" such as Iraq. "The community is very disappointed at this tragedy and the lack of response from the Government. They did not show any sympathy."
At a simple ceremony in the Flagstaff Gardens, he read from the Koran and said "in Islamic literature, we call such people martyrs because they were coming for noble ideas … to have a better life for their families."
Sheikh Issa also called on the Australian Federal Police to relent on their refusal to release the names of the dead. "People say there is this number 353 but why are they kept nameless?" he said.
He proposed their names be recorded on a memorial for relatives to see.
A spokesman for Defence Minister Robert Hill referred to the Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident report, which found extensive maritime surveillance on Australia's northern approaches was under way at the time.
On October 19, 2001, the helicopter from HMAS Arunta was assigned to searching an area where the SIEV X survivors were waiting for help, but turned back after running low on fuel.
Source
================
ALSO SEE
SIEV X
SIEV X: Joining the Dots
Alleged SIEV-X People Smuggler To Be Extradited From Sweden
- Research Report:
Women In Immigration Detention: More Questions than Answers (pdf)
QUOTE
A New Way to Fill Some of Those Job Vacancies
If asylum seekers are allowed to live in Australia, they deserve the right to work here ...
If asylum seekers are allowed to live in Australia, they deserve the right to work here ...
- 140 Plane Seats Booked to Deport One Man
The federal government paid for only five of the 140 seats it booked on a commercial flight from Sydney to Istanbul to deport a Turkish Kurd, the Immigration Department said today.
The remainder were provided on goodwill.
The Immigration Department had booked the seats on a commercial airline from Sydney to Istanbul to deport 45-year-old Ali Beyazkilinc today.
Mr Beyazkilinc was to be accompanied by three police officers and a psychiatric nurse.
But a Federal Court judge last night ruled that Mr Beyazkilinc was not mentally fit to be deported.
The department had previously received medical advice that Mr Beyazkilinc suffered depression, anxiety and probably post traumatic stress disorder. He had also made suicide attempts.
An immigration department spokesman today said the 140 seats were booked for Mr Beyazkilinc, the three police officers and the psychiatric nurse to provide a buffer zone to protect him and other passengers.
"The comment that was made by the judge ... on the arrangement put in place for Mr Beyazkilinc's physical safety and the safety of others was entirely proper," he said.
But he said the federal government did not pay for the 140 seats, only the five needed for Mr Beyazkilinc and his escorts.
"The blocking of the seats didn't cost us anything," he said.
"It was an offer of goodwill by the airline."
The spokesman would not say which airline the seats were booked with.
"I would assume that flights to Istanbul are not heavily booked at this time of year," he said.
=====================
SEE ALSO
Asylum Seekers May Be Removed
- Sinking to new lows ...
=====================
They Sank the Boat, Howard Says
JOHN Howard says the refugees he falsely accused of throwing their children in the sea deserve no personal apology because they did the next worst thing - "they irresponsibly sank the damn boat, which put their children in the water".
The "children overboard" affair became the most controversial focus of the 2001 federal election campaign, with the Prime Minister accused of cynically exploiting voters' fears of a wave of illegal immigrants by demonising asylum-seekers.
Mr Howard and senior ministers claimed on the eve of the election that children onboard one vessel had been thrown in the water to guarantee their rescue by the Australian navy.
The boat sank, and the crew of HMAS Adelaide saved all 219 asylum-seekers. The then defence minister, Peter Reith, released photos of the rescue at sea as evidence that children had been thrown in the water.
The Government only corrected the record after the election, which critics claim was won on Mr Howard's tough stance on asylum-seekers, although The Australian broke the true story two days before polling day.
Asked in an interview for a new book to mark his 10th anniversary in power if the issue gives his critics an easy line of attack, Mr Howard says: "The most powerful reply to that is that they irresponsibly sank the damn boat, which put their children in the water.
"I'm sorry, if I had have been told definitively, if I had been told that that story was completely wrong, I would have said so, but I wasn't," he says in the book The Howard Factor, which is published by Melbourne University Publishing today.
"And my last act before the election was to put that video in the public domain so that I wasn't accused of concealing it, because it was ambiguous.
"Watching that video, you couldn't tell whether people were being thrown in the water or not, it was just impossible. But after all, they did sink the boat."
Mr Howard said the refugees "don't carry any visible signs of being demonised".
And figures from the Department of Immigration of the 219 mainly Iraqi asylum-seekers reveals they wound up with the highest success rate for all refugee claims made under the so-called Pacific solution.
The official data supplied to The Australian shows that 96.5 per cent of the Iraqis who passed through Papua New Guinea's Manus Island were awarded humanitarian protection, though most settled in New Zealand, not Australia.
Between late August and December 2001, the navy confronted 14 asylum-seeker boats carrying more than 2000 people.
Mr Howard says: "(This issue) figured far less prominently in the public's mind before the (2001) election than it did afterwards, because it became the great excuse why Labor lost the election.
"But if it had never arisen, I don't think there would have been any difference in the result, I don't think a vote would have shifted.
"People voted for our tough border protection policy. They didn't vote for us because of children overboard."
During the interview, conducted in December, Mr Howard also expressed his concerns about the "fragment" of the Muslim Australian community that had been "raving on about jihad".
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FACT CHECKING
In Defense of My Howardite Mate
How the `Children Overboard' Lie Developed
Truth Overboard: The Evidences
disgusting, shocking, but... not surprising?
let's just blame the non-whites for everything
brother MV, are you by any chance participating in the villawood convergence?
let's just blame the non-whites for everything
brother MV, are you by any chance participating in the villawood convergence?
- Immigration 'Stressed' Dying Woman
The immigration department's repeated failure to take heed of an elderly woman's medical condition had caused her unnecessary stress before she died, an investigation has found.
A report by Commonwealth Ombudsman John McMillan found deficiencies in the way the department handled the case last year were systemic.
Aziza Agha, visiting from Lebanon, died in August 2005 after suffering a heart attack.
She was forced by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) to make a 30-minute trip to the Melbourne CBD to visit official doctors.
Mrs Agha died two days later.
Her GP at the time accused the department of contributing to her death through harassment and by ignoring warnings she was not fit to travel.
Professor McMillan said he found no evidence departmental officers had "harassed" Mrs Agha.
But he did point to a "repeated failure to identify or give adequate consideration to Mrs Agha's circumstances and, in particular, the urgency attaching to her situation".
Prof McMillan also identified a "repeated failure to adhere to policy and procedural directions laid down for the handling of cases such as Mrs Agha's".
"The cumulative effect of these errors and deficiencies amounted to an unnecessarily stressful situation for Mrs Agha and her family," Prof McMillan said.
"The evidence suggests that many of these deficiencies are not confined to Mrs Agha's case and are systemic in nature," he said.
Prof McMillan said DIMA should review health assessments for people travelling to Australia, record-keeping, procedures for prioritising cases, processes for granting bridging visas, guidance and training of DIMA staff, and clarify its health assessments of visitors in Australia.
DIMA welcomed the ombudsman's finding it had not harassed Mrs Agha.
The department said many of the recommendations were already being addressed.
Those relating to bridging visas had been referred to an internal review due to wind up later this year, it said.
Mrs Agha had been seeking to extend her visa on medical grounds.
AAP
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ALSO SEE
UN Warns Australia on Asylum Policy
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