Refugee Rights Action Network WA
Share this article
Deportation Watch: Join to help stop deportations
With the new and even more unfair ‘fast-track’ processing, the government is going to be attempting to deport more and more refugees back to situations where their lives and safety are at risk.With the policy of boat force-backs we know that they have no compunction about returning people to directly to countries they have fled from and indeed straight back into the arms of their persecutors. All without any semblance of assessing these people’s claims for asylum.
We know that our government does not blink in the face of the rape of women and children on Nauru, or when staff murder refugees in detention on Manus Island.
We can be sure that they will not hesitate to return people to circumstances where it’s likely that they are tortured or killed. Indeed this has happened in the past.
If you want to help resist this, sign up for our anti-deportation SMS alert list. You will occasionally receive SMS messages calling for anti-deportation action. This often takes the form of handing out flyers at the airport or conducting protests to highlight the plight of a person slated for deportation.
Pages
The Latest
-
Refugee Racism is a Health Risk: Defend the Right to Protest
An online event When: Monday 4 May, from 4:30pm Perth timeWhere: Online […]
More
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
From the launch of Tony Kevin’s new book, “Reluctant Rescuers”
In recent years, time-hallowed rescue-at-sea obligations have been constrained and corroded by an increasingly ruthless and cynical Australian maritime border security system. This system routinely collects large amount of human and signals intelligence on boats that may be on their way towards Australia’s territorial waters. But it sometimes declines to acknowledge and act on that intelligence when it indicates the possibility of a ‘suspected irregular entry vessel’ – a SIEV – in peril at sea.
In five major separate boat sinkings or disappearances since SIEV X in 2001, more than 400 asylum seekers bound for Australia have been lost at sea. In “Reluctant Rescuers,” Tony Kevin forensically examines what can be learned from exploring the public record on the four more recent tragedies in 2009-2011.
His main conclusion: that the Australian border security system has lost its moral compass. Safety of life at sea must now be reinstated as a declared core responsibility of the system.
This clip was filmed on the 30th of July 2012, at the Perth launch of Tony Kevin’s new book, “Reluctant Rescuers”, an exploration of the Australian border protection system’s safety record in detecting and intercepting asylum-seeker boats, 1998-2011. Also speaking was Kaye Bernard, former General Secretary of the Christmas Island Workers Union.
For more information about the book, see reluctantrescuers.com and rran.org