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.