The courts to the rescue again!

 |Court orders Peter Dutton to transfer ill family of three from Nauru 

“Every day we are witnessing the suffering of children who are hospitalised here – the children who became like a skeletons due to refusing to eat. How can they consider the unstoppable, restless screams of a child as a lie, as malingerer fakery?”
 In at least two cases it has emerged the Nauruan government has attempted to block transfers, by refusing to approve the landing of an air ambulance. The Nauruan authorities have reportedly taken exception to the suggestion the healthcare in its country is not adequate.  

If only we cared about refugees as much as strawberries!

https://www.smh.com.au/national/if-only-we-cared-about-refugees-as-much-as-strawberries-20180921-p50550.html

The call is growing

Many of you may already have seen this email from GetUp.  It looks as if the numbers of children on Nauru are shrinking, lets keep up the pressure!

Just a few days ago, Australia's peak medical body slammed the Government's treatment of the 95 children still detained on Nauru.¹

Our country's most prominent and respected doctors and medical professionals described the situation as "a humanitarian emergency"² and have demanded Scott Morrison immediately bring the children and their families to safety.

It's a doctors order that politicians won't want to hear and will go out of their way to ignore. But the tide is shifting – and they know it.

In just a few weeks, over 110,000 people have demanded politicians get #KidsOffNauru.

In a matter of hours, close to 3700 GetUp members chipped in to plaster Canberra and the country with the faces of the children detained on Nauru.

While Morrison tried to steer his fledgling Government through its first sitting period, a huge mobile billboard followed him around Canberra.

When politicians picked up their morning paper, they had to look George*, who was born in detention, in the eyes.

In their electorates, street posters have started rolling out. To make sure they can't escape the faces of the children in detention – who are called a number, not a name – when they return home.

Over the last few weeks, the Government has been forced by lawyers and the Federal Court to bring dozens of critically ill children and their families to safety.³

Religious leaders and celebrities like Hugh Jackman have stood up and called for action.

Momentum is building. Together, we're shattering the government lie and showing the public that there are still children detained on Nauru. But to force politicians to act, we're going to need to turn these calls for action into a deafening roar.

We'll need to hit the phones, the pavement and the airwaves to show our politicians how powerful our people-powered movement can be. And we're ready.

Thank you for all you've done so far – stay tuned.

Shen and Renaire for the GetUp team

References:
[1] 'AMA president calls for urgent transfer of refugee families from Nauru', The Guardian, 20 September 2018.
[2] 'AMA president calls for urgent transfer of refugee families from Nauru', The Guardian, 20 September 2018.
[3] 'Child Trauma on Nauru – The Facts', Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, 28 August 2018

Activities for this week and next

Don't forget!

This is to remind you of today's vigil, but also to inform you about the plans for the working bee to make signs about KidsOffNauru and more dolls.

We have planned to combine the working bee with the next Vigil in Reservoir as Jen Ginsberg has offered her home (and a cup of tea) on Wednesday 26th September, 2018 at 2.00, so if people are available for one or both, we shall have the working bee at 2.00 then go onto the vigil at 4.30.

  

In summary

Thursday 20th September, 2018, Vigil, 4.30 to 5.30, in Clifton Hill near McDonald's

Wednesday 26th September, 2018, Working bee, 2.00 to 4.00 at 181 Broadway, Reservoir then

Wednesday 26th September, 2018, Vigil, 4.30 to 5.30, in Reservoir at our usual spot o the corner of High Street and Cheddar.

Perhaps the doctors can have some impact

AMA president calls for urgent transfer of refugee families from Nauru

Tony Bartone writes to Scott Morrison saying situation is ‘a humanitarian emergency requiring urgent intervention’

Guardian 20th Sept 2018

Ducks for detainees!

Please come along to what looks like an interesting exhibition but also to join the Community Conversation on Sunday afternoon!

Details

Group exhibition Sunday to Sunday 9th to 16th September

FernArtz Studio - 23A Lorensen Ave, Coburg North 3058. Opening hours Noon to 6pm. The proceeds of sales going directly to off shore detainees.

To be opened by a refugee from our community on Sunday 9/9/2018 at 2pm- 4pm with light refreshments.

Community Conversation about processing people seeking asylum on Sunday 16/9/2018 at 2pm- 4pm.

Nauru: A man-made refugee crisis

This is a joint report published by the Refugee Council of Australia and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Executive summary

Six years after the Australian government began sending people seeking asylum to Nauru, there are still around 900 people left on the island, including an estimated 109 children. All of them will have been there for over four years. Almost 200 people lived in a processing centre, including 14 children, until they were cleared out along with tents and temporary accommodation they were living in for the Pacific Island Forum.

In 2013, Amnesty International reported that Australia’s policy of offshore processing was breaking people. Six years on, people are broken. Children as young as 7 and 12 are experiencing repeated incidents of suicide attempts, dousing themselves in petrol, and becoming catatonic. At least two people have killed themselves, and three others have died. Many more are trying to kill or harm themselves. People are losing their hope and their lives on this island. This is Australia’s man-made refugee crisis in the country it still treats as a colony, Nauru.

Experts are saying that the people transferred to Nauru by Australia are among the most traumatised they have seen, even more traumatised than those in war zones or in refugee camps around the world. Despite repeated calls by the United Nations, medical bodies, hundreds of charities and community groups, both major political parties in Australia continue to believe that it is politically necessary to punish a small number of highly vulnerable people at extraordinary cost. Those costs are borne not only by those people, but also by Australian taxpayers and to Australia’s democracy and sense of itself as a humane, decent country.

Despite unprecedented efforts at secrecy by both governments, Australians and the world cannot claim they do not know what is happening on Nauru. There have been many reports by the Australian Parliament, by civil society organisations and the UN documenting sexual and other forms of abuse, of seriously deficient medical treatment and appalling conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Many of those living there have spoken out and shared their suffering at great risk to themselves, as have brave whistleblowers who have worked there.

What is happening now on Nauru has gone well beyond our worst fears when this policy was resumed in 2012. Australia’s policy has traumatised children so much that they are giving up eating and trying to kill themselves. Australian courts are increasingly forced to step in so that people can get the medical treatment they urgently need, as the Australian Government repeatedly ignores doctors’ advice and does everything it can to avoid people being transferred to Australia, including sending them to Taiwan and Papua New Guinea. It has even tried to coerce a 63-year-old man dying of lung cancer to die in Taiwan, and to send a woman to Papua New Guinea to terminate her pregnancy, despite it being illegal there.

It has also separated around 35 people from their families, between Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Australia. There are fathers who have never held their babies, mothers who have had to leave behind their children on Nauru. By insisting that family members stay behind when others need medical treatment, the Australian Government puts people’s lives at risk. In one case, by the time the Australian Government agreed to let a young boy with traumatic withdrawal syndrome be transferred with his family, he was 36 kilograms and could not even stand. Every family member of every child (except for parent staying in hospital) has been detained on arrival.

For many there is no end in sight. While the Government of the United States of America has offered to resettle up to 1,250 refugees, only around 335 people have so far left, almost two years since the agreement. At least 121 refugees have already been refused resettlement, and many people are from countries subject to ‘extreme vetting’. Of the seven people who took up Cambodia’s offer of resettlement, only one is reported to still be there.

Australia still adamantly refuses to even accept the offer of the New Zealand government to resettle 150 people, even though it has conceded that there will be no other third countries coming forward to resettle those left. It continues to double down on its position that they will never come to Australia, even for the handful of people who have family in Australia or for those raped in Nauru.

There are many real and very complex refugee crises in the world. There are more refugees in the world than people in Australia at the moment. Yet there is a very simple solution to the man-made refugee crisis on Nauru – and six years on, it is clearer than ever that it is the only possible solution.: the suffering must end, and Australia must bring them all here now.

Download and read the full report here.

How long is this inhumane policy going to continue?

Kids off Nauru
How long is this inhumane policy going to continue?

The Monthly Today  by Paddy Manning
3 Sept 2018

It is immoral for Australia to punish kids to send a message to people smugglers … end of story. Today’s release of a joint report from the Refugee Council of Australia and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre outlines the impact of up to six years of being stranded indefinitely on Nauru on an estimated 109 children: it’s an indictment of an uncaring nation. The federal government is spending an absolute fortune to wreck the lives of asylum seekers, to somehow make an example of them.
“Children as young as 7 and 12 are experiencing repeated incidents of suicide attempts, dousing themselves in petrol and becoming catatonic,” the report reads. Instead of garnering sympathy or support, today’s report was greeted by more victim-blaming. The president of Nauru, Baron Waqa, was quoted in today’s Australian saying [$] that children were being encouraged to self-harm to improve their chances of resettlement. “We tend to think … these kids are pushed into doing something they’re not aware of, and the dangers of … It’s the way of working the system, probably short-circuiting it, just to get to Australia.” It’s like the children overboard saga all over again, and, with both major parties in apparent lock step on the issue, there is no hope in sight.
The report calls on Australia to resettle the children here without delay. The Refugee Council’s Joyce Chia this morning told RN Breakfast host Fran Kelly that while the US resettlement process was the best hope for those remaining on Nauru, there were fears among Iranian refugees that “extreme vetting” would leave them stranded. With every such rejection, the resettlement options dwindle and the crisis gets deeper and longer.
Prime minister and former immigration minister Scott Morrison has already insisted that there will be no softening of Australia’s tough border protection policies. Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, who will attend the Pacific Islands Forum on Nauru today, is reportedly not going to visit the regional processing centre that Australia maintains there. A Guardian investigation today looks at the high price of Australia’s support for Nauru, a nation in “democratic freefall”. As Laura Tingle observed on the ABC’s Insiders yesterday, and as Gary Nunn suggested on Saturday, this diabolical offshore detention policy is even complicating Australia’s ability to go into bat for documentary maker James Ricketson, charged with espionage in Cambodia.
We know where the Coalition stands; Labor is not offering much hope either. Shadow immigration minister Shane Neumann, who has been rightly vocal about Dutton’s au pair scandals, has not responded to the Refugee Council report today. Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese, also on RN Breakfast this morning, raised the plight of the children in detention on Nauru and lambasted Peter Dutton for a “complete lack of compassion”, but stopped short of the solution: bringing those kids to safety, here, right now. At least Neumann has written to Dutton urging the government to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 asylum seekers. One Iranian asylum seeker, told [$] The Australian she saw New Zealand as her family’s “last chance” to find a new home and appealed to prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
With every far-right outburst, here and overseas, comes increasing fear that an act of compassion would cause a racist backlash.
Yesterday we saw an attempted suicide and riots at the Yongah Hill immigration detention centre in Perth. Today, we hear reports of fears [$] for the health of a baby and her mother in detention in Melbourne. The system is cracking under the weight of its own cruelty. Even for the many people who support offshore detention, and turnbacks, as both major parties do, it is surely impossible to defend the continued harm to children. Is the Australian population so scared of a few refugee boats arriving, that we have to continue to destroy innocent lives? Is the government willing to risk harming these children for the sake of maintaining its tough-on-boats stance?

We thought we dodged a bullet with Scott Morrison for PM. He's as bad as Dutton!

Australia needs a moral revolution

Guardian Aug 31st 2018

 Behrouz Boochani

Five years ago, on a boiling hot day, Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison entered Manus Prison. A number of refugees who represented various groups were invited to meet with him. In that meeting, the refugee representatives found themselves being threatened – Morrison pointed his finger at them and yelled: “You have no chance of coming to Australia and you must return to your countries.” I depict this exact scene and its aftermath in my book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison.

It was a time when few people had heard of the prisons on Manus Island and Nauru. The refugees felt isolated and forgotten, the refugees felt extreme pressure. It was in this context that the refugees were confronted with that single threatening line by Morrison. That sentence conjured up a wave of hopelessness, so much so that a few people attempted suicide.
His despicable behaviour was also subject to serious criticism from the prison authorities. For days the situation was out of control. Actually, the circumstances created by this event eventually led to a riot in February 2014 – it led to the killing of Reza Barati. It also resulted in hundreds of refugees suffering serious injuries.

 In fact, Morrison has been accused of playing a crucial role in inciting this riot. Even the guards were critical of him in this respect. Then on the day that Reza Barati was killed Morrison appeared on TV and lied by saying that Reza was killed outside the prison. But after a few days he was forced to admit he was wrong. After Reza’s death Hamid Khazaei lost his life due to a very basic infection. Just one month ago the Queensland coroner found that Hamid’s death was totally preventable.
It is clear that Morrison – the man who is now prime minister of Australia – has been instrumental in establishing a system that is responsible for the deaths of 12 human beings. He is a merciless individual.
During a week of chaos in the political sphere which resulted in a change of prime minister, many Australians who did not have a good impression of Peter Dutton breathed a sigh of relief when Morrison was chosen as leader. The general perception is that Morrison has a more moderate approach compared to Dutton.

We can learn a lot from this fundamental error; this error may also impact the upcoming elections. Morrison is in no way a moderate figure. The biggest difference between him and Dutton is that the latter is an example of a new kind of western politician who has no fear of being seen as a bad person. However, Morrison is a demagogue who tries to present himself to society as a moderate politician.
During thepast five years the refugees incarcerated on Manus Island and Nauru have witnessed many shifts in Australian politics. We have experienced four prime ministers and two federal elections. But, ultimately, our situation has remained unchanged. We have hit a dreadful dead-end. What I mean is that both major political parties in Australia are in competition to see who will be successful in totally destroying us.
Replacing one individual will never transform our situation; it makes no difference whether the prime minister is Peter Dutton or Scott Morrison – or anyone else for that matter. What is clear is that we continue to be trapped on these two islands and Australia does not have the moral courage or political will to make the necessary changes to its policy of exiling refugees.
A deep analysis of the policy used to exile refugees reveals how Australian’s socio-political culture has led to the creation of these island detention centres. This pertains to every aspect of Australian political and social life; that is, the failures of its civil society. During these years many advocates in the media, politics, academia and Australian civil society have criticised the barbaric policies of the government – they have worked to combat the policy used to exile innocent refugees. However, history will remember the mainstream socio-political culture of Australia during this period as an embarrassing phase in Australia’s history that will plague generations to come. The point I wish to make here is that the prisons on Manus Island and Nauru are the logical consequence of Australia’s kyriarchal system.

These two prisons are an extension of Australia; they are an integral part of the state and this connection cannot be denied.


One must investigate the origins of Australian society and politics in order to realise the extent to which Manus Prison is the logical consequence and product of Australia’s education system, its cultural scene and political developments.

 Manus Prison is the creation of Australia; however, it has also impacted the nation by, in turn, recreating significant aspects of Australia. I refer to this critical analysis as the Manus Prison Theory. Perhaps Australian analysts do not pay sufficient attention to the situation on Manus Island and Nauru and do not consider it to be such a vital issue. But it is clear that the ideology that has given rise to the prison is profoundly rooted in Australia’s political system. Regardless of whether one accepts this or not, Manus Prison is having a destructive effect on Australia’s political culture.
No one can ignore the relevance of Manus Prison Theory. With the passing of time this theoretical approach will become increasingly more salient. Basically, how can a nation look to the future when its leaders cage little children for years, in a remote and forlorn prison? What future does a nation have when those same leaders take selfies with little children as part of their PR campaigns? Are these leaders not demagogues?

Australia needs a serious wake up call. Australia needs to instil humanitarian principles within its centres of power. Australia needs to think very seriously about the value of life and what constitutes a democratic and humane society. More than anything else, Australia needs a new ethical vision and love. Australia needs a moral revolution to escape this dead end.
Two thousand people have been incarcerated, but there are other things at stake here for Australia: human virtues, freedom, the sense of what it really means to be human … and love. These qualities have also been incarcerated. This is exactly what is absent today from Australia’s political culture. How can one expect a nation that has suppressed these qualities to promote educated, wise and respectable people to leadership positions?

In this morally bankrupt political climate people who aim for the highest qualities of humanity find themselves in situations where they have to choose from either bad or worse. What we have here is not only a political quandary resulting from a discredited and scandalous political system, we also witness a profound moral quagmire.
Australia has to ask itself the difficult question about where it is heading, and reflect on this stage in its political and cultural history. It needs to question why it has a leader who is toying with far right ideologies but who is interpreted by many as being a moderate politician.
What has happened to the nation? Why has it reached this point? Why must Australians feel that they have no choice but to choose between bad and worse? As someone who has been gazing over at the political landscape in Australia for more than five years from Manus Island, I ask myself sometimes: where is Australia heading?

• Behrouz Boohani is a journalist and an Iranian refugee currently held on Manus Island. Translation by Omid Tofighian, American University in Cairo/University of Sydney