Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Search And Rescue

  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2023: How Australia's asylum seeker policy has evolved over thirty years

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 04 January 2024

    Throughout recent decades of Australian history, the stance every government has taken on asylum seekers has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Three steps back and one step forward: Three decades of asylum seekers in Australia

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 28 July 2023

    How has Australia's asylum seeker policy changed over the past thirty years? The approach of every government has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    In times of crisis, strengthening Greek-Turkish connections

    • William Gourlay
    • 23 March 2023
    1 Comment

    The tragic train crash in Greece that claimed 57 lives has sparked an unexpected show of solidarity from Turkey. This is not the first time these two nations have come together in times of crisis, and despite a history of conflict and mistrust, recent events have brought the Greeks and Turks closer together, and intercommunality may be on the rise.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the shadow of SIEV-X

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 November 2021
    38 Comments

    Two decades ago, an Indonesian vessel given the name SIEV X sank with loss of life that should have caused a flood of tears and a surge of compassion. Instead of being seen in humanitarian terms, the deaths of 353 people became a form of rich political capital, placed in the bank of opportunism to be amortised at a federal election.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Tampa legacy 20 years on

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 September 2021
    23 Comments

    It took 438 desperate human beings upon the overladen wooden fishing boat, the KM Palapa, to present Australia’s Howard government in August 2001 with an electoral opportunity. At first, there was feigned ignorance from Canberra about any signs of desperation. The vessel, lacking power, lay some 100km off Christmas Island. Despite a coast guard plane noting men jumping up and down on the roof in a frenzy, nothing was initially done.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Borders we can traverse

    • Bree Alexander
    • 16 June 2020
    5 Comments

    I am now more than ever re-thinking borders and my relationship to them. The word seema in Hindi means border or limit. I learnt this as I often ask the meaning of someone’s name when I meet them. It is a way to start a perhaps unlikely conversation and learn language simultaneously; a way of challenging personal borders.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Death and drones in the Mediterranean

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 23 August 2019
    4 Comments

    Opting for surveillance of migrants instead of rescue operations will result in death by drowning, or torture and possible deaths in Libya. For both scenarios, the EU has cultivated its own brand of impunity. Looking away has become politically acceptable, and the bloc can focus on funding the Libyan Coast Guard to do its dirty work.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    EU's dirty dealings with Libya over refugees

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 12 February 2019
    4 Comments

    If refugees drown in the Mediterranean, scrutiny is directed towards Europe. If the deaths happen in Libya, the EU is able to manipulate human rights rhetoric alongside the bloc's concerns. Meanwhile, it remains committed to its deals with the Libyan coastguard, which is fuelling its fair share of human trafficking and exploitation.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The EU's refugee double standard

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 02 October 2018
    7 Comments

    The EU is facing the consequences of its own actions. It will not link political violence to migration, and wishes to maintain its humanitarian façade, so there is little opposition to what Salvini and his ilk are perpetrating against human rights. The web is now so tangled it is no longer a mere issue of racism.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Loveless in Russia

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 19 April 2018
    1 Comment

    A grim and gripping tragedy on this personal level, as a whole Loveless functions also as a metaphor for political life in contemporary Russia. The fatal fracturing of its relationship with its neighbour Ukraine provides a backdrop and, for the degeneration of Zhengya and Boris' marriage and the resultant alienation of their son, a touchstone.

    READ MORE
  • The politics of popular evil and untrendy truth

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2015
    1 Comment

    If you want to form government in Australia and if you want to lead the Australian people to be more generous, making more places available for refugees to resettle permanently in Australia, you first have to stop the boats. If you want to restore some equity to the means of choosing only some tens of thousands of refugees per annum for permanent residence in Australia from the tens of millions of people displaced in the world, you need to secure the borders. The untrendy truth is that not all asylum seekers have the right to enter Australia but that those who are in direct flight from persecution whether that be in Sri Lanka or Indonesia do, and that it is possible fairly readily (and even on the high seas) to draw a distinction between those in direct flight and those engaged in secondary movement understandably dissatisfied with the level of protection and the transparency of processing in transit countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The popular evil is that political

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Italian perspective on Australia's asylum seeker shame

    • Anna Martin
    • 12 June 2015
    31 Comments

    Over the last few months, I have been completing a Masters in International Criminal Law at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in Turin, Italy. Over the last two weeks, our classes revolved around human rights — always a bit of a cringeworthy topic when one comes from Australia. Certainly Italy's attitude and approach to asylum seekers puts Australia's to shame.

    READ MORE