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Author: Nik Tan

  • INTERNATIONAL

    China’s asylum hypocrisy

    • Nik Tan
    • 28 February 2014
    1 Comment

    This week China criticised Australia's treatment of asylum seekers. The criticism, raised at a bilateral human rights dialogue, is good politics: China is using Australia's cruel and inhumane asylum policy as diplomatic leverage. Nevertheless, it is astounding hypocrisy from a country that returns refugees to danger, including to North Korea, a state infamous for its widespread violations of human rights.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Africa and US worry the frayed edges of international criminal justice

    • Nik Tan
    • 06 November 2013
    2 Comments

    The African Union has asked the United Nations Security Council to suspend the trials of sittings Kenyan heads of state. Meanwhile Amnesty International has claimed that any killing of civilians by United States' drones violates the laws of war. Both cases call into question whether the International Criminal Court can end impunity for the most serious international crimes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Visiting detention is a political act

    • Nik Tan
    • 12 June 2013
    12 Comments

    The toddlers are from Syria. The boys are Sri Lankan Tamils, nervous as they will soon be flown to a Tasmanian facility for unaccompanied minors — one asks me if it will be cold. Visiting a detention centre is a small act to say that the Australian Government's policy of detaining asylum seeker men, women and children is not in our name.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In the halls of Cambodia's Auschwitz

    • Nik Tan
    • 06 February 2013
    4 Comments

    You wouldn't find Tuol Sleng if you didn't know where to look. The genocide museum is embedded in the inner suburbs of Phnom Penh, an innocuous, decrepit school building. Each cell contains an iron bed with metal manacles still attached, and a grainy image of the last prisoner found rotting in each room.

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