Keywords: Immigration Detention
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 02 June 2022
7 Comments
The case of the Murugappan family illustrates the punitive and puritanical approach of the previous government towards human beings arriving in Australia by boat and then seeking asylum. The tone of each message clearly reflects totally different attitudes towards the people affected, with special note of the fact that Minister Chalmers rang the family to tell them, and then rang people in Biloela to pass on the news.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 21 March 2022
12 Comments
While Australia has developed into a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan state based on immigration and humanitarian intakes, the country has never gotten away from the sense that some are simply more welcome than others. Be they migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, preferential treatment abounds.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 08 February 2022
12 Comments
It should be troubling for anyone, religious, secular or agnostic, to be told that a human being wields anything approximating to ‘God like’ powers. That very suggestion implies a power unreviewable, unaccountable and at odds with the earthly rule of law.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Kerry Murphy
- 28 October 2021
6 Comments
Mark Twain is reported to have said ‘history does not repeat, it rhymes.’ Watching a US helicopter evacuating people from the US Embassy in Kabul, that was rhyming. Many have seen this picture before, 30 April 1975, but then it was Saigon. The massive confusion, mixed messages, terrified people, lack of human rights protection happened in 1975, and still happens in 2021.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Hava Rezaie, Hayat Akbari, Zaki Haidari
- 28 September 2021
6 Comments
It has now been over a month since the Taliban seized Kabul. As attention inevitably shifts elsewhere, the painful question arises: What's next? Is this another 'back to the future' moment? The signs are grim. Over the last two weeks, the Taliban have issued a number of edicts which demonstrate that their attitudes to women have not changed.
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INTERNATIONAL
- 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.
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AUSTRALIA
- Paul Cutler
- 24 August 2021
21 Comments
I believe in the rule of law and I appreciate that the proper application of the law does not always produce a fair or popular result. I also believe that Australia's refugee policy is too harsh and deeply flawed. However, that policy is bipartisan and appears to be inexplicably popular. The same 'fortress Australia' mentality is evident in our efforts to contain Covid-19.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 24 June 2021
27 Comments
The Murugappan family have found themselves in the middle of this nasty tangle, their fates politicised and manipulated.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 24 June 2021
11 Comments
Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.
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FAITH DOING JUSTICE
- Vincent Long Van Nguyen
- 24 June 2021
15 Comments
With the average length of detention in Australia now at an historic high, it is timely to review how immigration detention is used. It should be a last resort that is used for the shortest practicable time so that people who pose little risk to the community are not unnecessarily deprived of their liberty, and that they are able to contribute to the community.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 11 May 2021
10 Comments
While the ban is unique in its severity, it is not divorced from a broader tendencies as to how citizenship has been appraised during pandemic times. Public health and safety have been prioritised over the standard liberties associated with citizenship.
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AUSTRALIA
- Nicola Heath
- 17 December 2020
6 Comments
Many refugees in Australia live in conditions that the rest of the population would find unacceptable. Most of the 192 refugees who were transferred to Australia under the Medevac legislation between February and December 2019 are currently held at hotels in Melbourne and Brisbane, known as ‘alternative places of detention’ (APOD), where they have had no access to the outdoors or fresh air for more than 12 months.
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