Border Farce Refugee Lottery

Asylum seekers who flee their homes face the worst sort of lottery. Surviving their initial escape from danger, surviving the boat journey, getting a Temporary Protection Visa or being exiled to Manus or Nauru. It’s all a matter of chance, with little to do with justice or fairness. We give here a number of these outcomes that have been meted by Australia.

Asylum Seekers Communication Link: You can help

RRAN communicates daily with dozens of asylum seekers trapped in Australia’s detention centres both onshore and offshore. These men and women reach out to keep us informed about what abuses and transgressions are occurring. Often they do this in secret and at great risk to themselves. We need your help to keep the communication channels open.

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.

Flowers for Salim: Stop Deaths by Policy #EvacuateNow

By RRAN On 30 May 2018

On Tuesday 22 May, a Rohingya refugee and father of three, named Salim was killed on Manus Island. He is the 7th death in Australian custody on the island since 2014.

Salim was a man who had suffered from epilepsy for a prolonged period. He was transferred between Manus and Australia for medical treatment on multiple occasions however in recent years pleas for medical attention went unheeded. Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist and prisoner exiled to Manus and then Lorengau provided the following analysis, reported in the Guardian, “Salim and many others were driven to death by the application of systematic torture. The death of Salim is the outcome of organised tactics of violence that involve a chain of command and administrative procedures. These are deaths ordered by political actors and a government that knows what it is doing; strategic manoeuvres designed to eliminate people incarcerated on Manus in the most violent way.”

During the October protests on Manus last year, Salim could often be seen bearing flowers. One of Salim’s friends once asked him about why he protested with flowers and he responded simply “They give me pain but I will give them flowers until they are ashamed.”

Today a group of people occupied the Perth Immigration Department Office for two hours, making paper flowers to peacefully protest the ongoing state sanctioned violence against refugees. Flower bearers called for an end to the intentional killing of refugees offshore in the name of ‘deterrence’ and ask that Manus and Nauru be evacuated immediately and people brought to safety in Australia while permanent resettlement options are finalised and facilitated.

Following Salim’s death, Mohammad Imran, a fellow Rohingya refugee, writer and human rights defender held in Lorengau wrote, “I recall telling the security guards on hundreds of occasions that he would die here if he did not receive the proper treatment for his epilepsy. He had been through hell for five years and all we could do was watch him suffer and call the security guards to take him to the hospital in the hope he would receive effective treatment.

I wonder if the authorities are feeling triumphant tonight, knowing there is one less innocent to be concerned about, although as they have not shown any compassion in all these years, I doubt they will even acknowledge his death.”

Today in Perth, we channel and remember Salim’s peaceful resistance against violence and deliver flowers to DIBP in his name. Flower bearers stand in solidarity with the human rights defenders on Manus. We reinforce the point raised by several men held on the island that more deaths should be expected if the government does not take urgent action. We ask ‘how many more deaths will the Australian government and people accept?’ We call for an end to deaths by policy.

#FlowersForSalim #SOSManus #StopDeathsByPolicy #SanctionAustralia