Keywords: Minority Communities
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AUSTRALIA
- Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
- 20 August 2018
13 Comments
This remarkable policy of what Dr Eve Lester calls 'planned destitution' combines the most extreme instincts of neoliberal, nationalist and authoritarian thinking. Fundamentally, it derives from the Minister for Home Affairs' far reaching powers to determine the rights and entitlements of non-citizens such as people seeking asylum.
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INTERNATIONAL
The story has become the triumph of Mahathir Mohamad, himself part of the political elite as a former prime minister for two decades, and his opposition coalition. This is wrong. The real story is the mass-mobilisation of Malaysia's civil society in the face of anti-democratic moves at suppression.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Roanna Gonsalves
- 09 May 2018
4 Comments
A thread of male entitlement binds the American literary world to a shepherd's world in India's Kashmir valley. Days ago, the American author Junot Diaz left the Sydney Writers Festival amid allegations of sexual abuse. In India there is another, more sinister and tragic manifestation, woven with the use of rape as a weapon of war.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ann Deslandes
- 15 January 2018
6 Comments
Over 250 languages were spoken across Australia at the time that English arrived with British colonisation. Since then, English has been a strict marker of the contours of Australianness. Were it reframed as a lingua franca rather than the mandatory language, the linguistic diversity in this nation would have more room to breathe.
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RELIGION
- Irfan Yusuf
- 14 December 2017
4 Comments
Last year I spent Christmas at St Andrew's. There was incense, holy communion and a whole heap of stuff that would horrify many Sydney Anglicans. Which is their bad luck because this St Andrew's was the Cathedral Church of the Tokyo Diocese of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai. I doubt Henry VIII imagined a diocese with a name like that!
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AUSTRALIA
- Irfan Yusuf
- 17 November 2017
17 Comments
During the month of Muharram, the No message was being handed out at mosques and spoken from the pulpits. Yet many Muslims voted Yes not because we wanted to reinvent the Islamic idea of marriage, but because the scriptures teach that we should stand up for justice even if it goes against our families and ourselves.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 08 November 2017
'We need to recommit to work for all those who are able and willing. We need to recommit to social assistance for all those who are not able. We need to ensure that a life of frugal dignity is within the grasp of all citizens.' 2017 Rerum Novarum Oration by Fr Frank Brennan SJ
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INTERNATIONAL
- Erin Cook
- 19 October 2017
8 Comments
Australia's incoherent urge to 'lead' in the Asia Pacific while refusing to meaningfully reflect on the responsibilities this would require has left us floundering in the face of what the United Nations has called the 'ethnic cleansing' of Myanmar's minority Rohingya population.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Peta Fresco
- 19 September 2017
2 Comments
Much has been reported on the plight of the Rohingya in Rakhine state in Myanmar's west, where violence has seen more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh. Elsewhere in the country, local villagers continue to suffer the effects of a four cuts strategy, and are targeted if they are suspected of helping ethnic armies. In the country's north, aid has been slow to reach 20,000 Kachin villagers living in former gambling dens and warehouses along the China border.
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AUSTRALIA
The short answer is 'no'. There is no single Asian Australian culture, just as there is no single 'Australian culture'. As well as an unfortunate tendency to flatten differences, trying to talk about particular groups can serve a broader political and cultural project. I run a research network focused on Asian Australian Studies. The topics we cover strive to give depth and detail to otherwise stereotyped, shallow representations of Asians and Asian Australians that surround us.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 29 March 2017
29 Comments
The Tempest Tossed Church will invite some Catholics to ask how they should visualise and plan for the future of the church. The Catholic challenge will be to shape pockets in which religiously literate and radical communities are formed around the symbols of faith. Its contribution to a more humane society will be made by joining other small groups in keeping alive the sense of 'something more' and by passing on the craft of finding the words, symbols and silences that catch it.
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MEDIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 14 March 2017
10 Comments
Arguments for repealing 18C ignore the symbolic force of law in an imperfect society in which we live. In public life the One Nation Party, which is able to exert some influence on legislation in a fragmented parliament, regularly criticises Muslims. These views are also retailed by commentators in some mainstream media. They increase the anxiety of immigrants from Muslim nations. In such a context any weakening of 18C will be seen as the declaration of open season against such groups.
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