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Keywords: Tamil

  • RELIGION

    Laughing at Islam

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 10 October 2013
    4 Comments

    Tax consultant turned satirist and comic Nazeem Hussain's SBS series Legally Brown does more than just poke fun. Perhaps the most effective and most difficult ways to tackle prejudice and fear is to laugh at it. Chris Kenny's objections in The Australian that Hussain's appearance on Q&A was 'highly disturbing and dangerous' and 'an apologia for terrorism' show that Hussain and his fans continue to have plenty to laugh about.

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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

    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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Refugees in the dark over security checks

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 25 May 2012
    5 Comments

    Hayder and Mariam were found to be refugees in mid 2009. This year they had their second child. They have patiently awaited their security clearance, but when they make inquiries they are merely told that Immigration is awaiting the security checks from 'outside agencies'. The long process is affecting them mentally.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Songs and stories of Sri Lanka's war

    • Martin Mulligan
    • 23 November 2011
    5 Comments

    After a meal cooked in the distinctive Jaffna way, the multi-talented Professor treated us to a repertoire of his own songs about his mother, victims of the 2004 tsunami, and those who had suffered during the war. Songs and stories of lived experience, translated into all the languages of Sri Lanka, might achieve more than the government's Reconciliation Commission.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aung San Suu Kyi, refugees and bikies

    • Michael Mullins
    • 15 November 2010
    7 Comments

    The release on Saturday of Burma's democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi, and last week's Australian high court decisions regarding refugees and bikies, each contain salutary lessons for governments that attempt to rule by popular fear.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Asylum seeker decision tests Government sportsmanship

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 12 November 2010
    6 Comments

    A litmus test for the health of a democracy is what a Government does when it loses cases in the highest court in the land. The first consequence of yesterday's High Court decision regarding the cases of two Tamil asylum seekers is that many cases will need to be reconsidered.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Tales from the kingdom of force

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 16 August 2010
    2 Comments

    Flicking the frisbee with a well practised arm, Jimmy told me about his former home in Sri Lanka. 'Last time I was there, I was carrying bodies to their graves in my arms, even the bodies of friends.' Homer's Iliad is a poem of force in which, at all times, the human spirit is shown modified by its relations with force.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    I am every asylum seeker

    • Greg Foyster
    • 21 July 2010
    42 Comments

    I am not here to get rich, to receive charity, steal your job, or cheat the system. I am not a 'queue jumper'. I am not an 'illegal arrival'. I am not a 'political issue'. I am an asylum seeker, and this is my story.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Not the Pacific Solution

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 July 2010
    27 Comments

    Julia Gillard insists that the centre in East Timor centre would be properly 'run, auspiced and structured'. For the Australian Government to ensure that such a centre respects the human dignity of asylum seekers will be difficult. Similar arrangements with Indonesia were not satisfactory.

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  • RELIGION

    Australians aspire to lift their climate game

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 January 2010
    10 Comments

    For a while we were leading the world on climate change. But once Copenhagen collapsed Rudd assured us 'Australia will do no more and no less than the rest of the world'. The lowest common denominator is not usually the solution to the great moral challenges.

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