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Keywords: Villawood

  • AUSTRALIA

    40 Days: Unbounded love

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 March 2024

    Love is a much-used word, and, like domestic cutlery, it tends to lose its shine. Its boundaries then shrink to the average rather than to the inspiring. For that reason we need stories that stretch the ceiling of love beyond anything we could imagine. Not because we think that we could reach such far places, but because it enlarges the horizon of our lives.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stateless refugee facing indefinite detention

    • Shira Sebban
    • 22 February 2019
    5 Comments

    A Faili Kurd, who fled Iran by boat aged 16 with his mother, Shalikhan has been detained since arriving on Christmas Island in August 2013. Suffering from a developmental disorder and mental health issues exacerbated by his father's death in Iran, he has in the past attempted suicide and displayed volatile behaviour.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    History repeating for oppressed Cambodians

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 August 2018
    2 Comments

    Hopefully Australia will take stronger measures against what is effectively a one party state that ruthlessly crushes opposition at home and seeks to intimidate and threaten critics abroad. It is not surprising that after 25 years, I am again seeing Cambodian asylum seekers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't fall for Humpty Dumpty politics

    • Justin Glyn
    • 11 April 2016
    10 Comments

    We got a lesson in the art of language from the Minister of Immigration, Peter Dutton, whose redefinition of the word 'detention' was reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty's remark in Alice Through the Looking Glass: 'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' We are social creatures who make real decisions based on the representations of others. Once we know we cannot expect the truth from each other, especially those who govern, society can no longer function.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Border Force Keystone Cops no laughing matter

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 04 September 2015
    18 Comments

    While we can shake our heads and laugh at last week's farce in Melbourne, we should be more concerned about the many ways this government is punishing refugees in the law, using language to demonise people and and setting up systems geared to rejecting applications. We don't need black uniforms and guns, or any form of militarisation and politicisation of Immigration.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Morrison's law of intended consequences

    • Tony Kevin
    • 21 February 2014
    36 Comments

    Manus is not subject to Australian law and public accountability safeguards, or only very imperfectly. Cover-up of atrocity is a lot easier in Manus than it would be in an Australian detention centre. And this of course is what was intended. Manus is part of the asylum-seeker deterrent system. The fear of death at sea, and the fear of death by security force brutalisation at Manus, are intended to deter asylum-seeker voyages. To stop the boats.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A tale of two unsuccessful asylum seekers

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 19 June 2013
    6 Comments

    Comparison of these two cases is illuminating. One is the recruit to the Australia A cricket team, Pakistani born Fawad Ahmed. The other is, in Tony Abbott's words, the 'convicted Jihadist terrorist', Egyptian born Sayed Ahmed Abullatif. Ahmed will be the second Pakistani born cricketer in an Australian side that desperately needs a good leg-spinner. Abdullatif has possibly a more difficult road ahead.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Family drama reveals detention contortions

    • Fatima Measham
    • 16 January 2013
    15 Comments

    Ranjini turned up for a routine catch-up with her caseworker only to be told she was deemed a security risk and that she and her young sons would be detained indefinitely. Days later she found out she was pregnant. Last night, she gave birth to that child, a son who will be an Australian citizen.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal solidarity with refugees

    • John Falzon
    • 18 June 2012
    8 Comments

    The words spoken by the people forced to the edges of Australian society are born from a strong and positive vision for Australia. They speak with authority and their message emerges from their collective wisdom and experience. None of us can learn what is right if we fail to listen to what is wrong. 

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  • RELIGION

    Easter manifesto

    • John Falzon
    • 06 April 2012
    10 Comments

    The Easter motif of suffering and resurrection comes alive in movements of social change, when people who have been treated as nothing proclaim by their collective dreaming we are everything. For those who hunger for justice it is a sin to be disorganised, when the misery we confront is well organised.

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  • MEDIA

    Media gag silences asylum seekers

    • Jo Coghlan
    • 27 June 2011
    19 Comments

    Officially, the ban on journalists interviewing or filming asylum seekers in detention is for the detainees' protection. But it also stops them from sharing their stories with the public. Surely asylum seekers are capable of determining who is and is not acting in their best interests.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rednecks, bogans and bad boat people

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 23 June 2011
    13 Comments

    The participants on SBS's Go Back Where You Came From seem like rejects from a bad reality TV show and are stereotypical in their views. Some reflect on the difference between 'good' and 'bad' refugees: this false dichotomy is a sticking point for many refugee advocates too.

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