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We should feel deep regret when the bullets pierce the hearts of the Bali Bombers. Neither just nor useful, the death penalty is immoral. Prime Minister Rudd is well positioned to contribute to its abolition.
'For me, talk of the death penalty evoked the young, frightened faces of Scott and Emmanuel, as well as the laughing, haughty faces of Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.' Full text from Frank Brennan's session on 'Killing People for Killing People', Ubud Writers Festival, 17 October 2008.
Last week's changes to Australia's asylum policy remove the worst aspects of a cruel system. The real test is if the Rudd Government is willing to take on the causes of forced migration, rather than continuing to shift the burden elsewhere.
This week the Refugee Council of Australia marks Refugee Week and World Refugee Day. At Petchabun camp, 350 kilometres north of Bangkok, thousands of 'forgotten' Hmong refugees remain in limbo. Their future looks bleak.
The international community reacts rather than anticipates. It was only when hundreds of thousands of people were displaced after the Bolshevik revolution, that protection mechanisms such as the 1951 Refugee Convention began to be developed.
Australia's treatment of refugees has been out of the headlines for some months, perhaps due to changes in the Department after the Cornelia Rau scandal. But despite some improvements, Australian refugee policy remains destructive.
Even the skeptics are accepting that climate change is with us. Yet the impact of climate change on the movement of people around the world – usually the poorest – is almost entirely absent from public debate.
Tackling the problem of terrorism by the application of force is unlikely to succeed. Pouring blood on the Iraqi desert produced an upsurge of terrorism where none had been before: cruelty, genocide even, but not terrorism, let alone fundamentalist terrorism.
Georgina Pike on the plight of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers who have been sent to Christmas Island.
If you look closely at the laws in Ireland 200 years ago, you will see that they denied to Irish Catholics all the civil and political, economic, social and cultural rights we aim to protect under the proposed Australian Human Rights Act.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews justified his decision send the 83 Sri Lankan asylum seekers to Nauru, on the grounds that it was necessary to send a message to other would-be illegal immigrants. It is like a teacher beginning class by beating a couple of boys at random in order to discourage others from playing up.
The following is an edited text of an address given by Fr Frank Brennan sj ao, at the launch of his most recent book, Tampering with Asylum.
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