Refugee Rights Action Network WA
The Curtin University Centre for Human Rights Education and the Refugee Rights Action Network invite you to an evening with awarded author Robin de Crespigny.
When: Thursday, 28 Feb, 2013
Time: 5:45pm for a 6pm start
Where: Tim Winton Lecture Theatre, Curtin University
RSVP by Monday, 25 February 2013 to g.galardi@curtin.edu.au or (08) 9266 7169
With an introduction by Dr Caroline Fleay (Curtin University) and Marcus Hampson (RRAN), Robin will present her award winning book, The People Smuggler, and will talk about the researching and writing of this extraordinary story.
There will be opportunities for people to ask questions, meet the author and have a copy of the book signed by her. Books will be available for purchase on the night.
Robin de Crespigny is a Sydney film-maker, producer, director, writer and a former Directing Lecturer at the Australian Film, Television & Radio School.
The People Smuggler tells the true story of Ali Al Jenabi who, after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers, is forced to leave his family behind in Iraq. What follows is an incredible international odyssey through the shadow world of fake passports, crowded camps and illegal border crossings, living every day with excruciating uncertainty about what the next will bring.
Robin won the 25th Human Rights Award for Literature in 2012 and The People Smuggler has also won the Queensland Literary Award and was one of three finalists for the Walkley Book Award. It has also been short-listed for the Waverly Library Award for Best Literature.
For more information, see the Facebook event page; flyer here.
Refugee Rights Action Network organised a successful action in the Murray Street Mall on December 9 to mark Human Rights Day (December 10).
Participants and passers by were invited to dip their hand in red ink to make their mark for refugee rights on a banner. The new RRAN postcards were also available for signing.
By Pamela Curr, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
Immigration raids and re-detentions have begun across Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide this weekend. Immigration cars are watching houses where people are living lawfully on community detention conditions and bridging visas. There is fear among community based asylum seekers as those called to appointments are then seized and taken back to detention centres. These are men who have been detained in isolated detention centres already for more than two years which compounds their terror of being taken again.
When one person in a house goes to a DIAC (Immigration) and then does not return it sends fear into those left behind. In some instances they then have gone to stay elsewhere because they are unable to bear the waiting for their turn to come when they too will be taken. One man tried to return to get his papers on the weekend but saw the DIAC cars waiting for him so he spent the night in a park in fear. Other men who have cases filed in the court so cannot by law be deported and who would not normally be detained, have been told that they will be locked up no matter what. Their house has been raided three times since Friday.
The ordinary rules have changed. DIAC orders are now to raid, capture and detain those on community detention. In addition there are a large number of Hazaras whose bridging visas cease on the 29th November and who are being told to go to DIAC offices with an airline ticket and passport for return to Afghanistan.
Currently there are three legal cases on foot which may affect these men’s status. It would seem that DIAC are acting before this can happen.
The two groups at risk are the Tamil and Hazara asylum seekers. The common factors in their cases are that they have not had a fair go. These cases were judged under the IMR system which has been discontinued and discredited. Some of the reviewers have been named in Court as showing “bias” and criticised for the decisions they handed down. There was no redress for those whose cases did not get to the court but who were refused by the same reviewer on the same spurious grounds. An unofficial, un-documented PRE-process which was put together to quietly fix the terrible decisions only operated from BOAT 175 onwards. This has left a pool of people who fell outside both the faulty system and the faulty system fix. The difficulty in finding a lawyer and get to court because they were detained in far off WEIPA or Curtin detention centres has further cruelled any chance for a fair go.
These men also missed out on the Complementary protection provision which was introduced in March this year. This means that their cases were not examined against the torture convention or other international human rights conventions leaving them further at risk. Political edict saw the acceptance rates of Hazaras go from 99% in 2009/2010 to 30% in 2010/2011 be ministerial decree as the boat numbers grew. We have seen the same cases detailing persecution on grounds of ethnicity, religion and political belief dismissed because of political considerations when if they had arrived six months earlier they would have been accepted. The statistical evidence screams politics rather than fair assessment in the treatment of these men.
What is most egregious about the kangaroo court injustice they have received is revealed in reading their cases. We see case after case where the reviewer says that they accept that the asylum seeker is a “credible witness”, that the reviewer accepts that Family members were killed by the Taliban, that brothers and fathers disappeared at the hands of the Taliban, that the letters threatening them are genuine but still they refuse them on the grounds that they can “relocate” elsewhere or on the grounds of the DFAT cable which claims that Hazaras are experiencing a “golden age”. It is unbelievable that such bare faced political concoctions can be used to dismiss refugee applications but this is the reality.
NO SPIN OR GLOSS CAN HIDE THE FACT that people are about to be sent home to die for Australian political purposes.
P.S. Enablers in DIAC and the Government have got around the fact that the Afghan Ambassador, a decent man, has not obliged by providing travel documents to return Hazaras to Kabul. Enablers have found someone in Kabul the capital of corruption who is obliging! The Australian government’s cosy relationship with the Sri Lankan embassy and lashings of cash to the SL government for boats and surveillance equipment has been rewarded with compliance.
RRAN activist Alex Bainbridge conducted this interview with a refugee on Nauru late on November 12 – the twelfth day of the mass hunger strike.
On November 13, most refugees chose to end the hunger strike after news that Amnesty International would visit the camp. Six refugees, including one man who had not eaten for 33 days, are continuing to refuse food.
* * *
This is our twelfth day of hunger strike and 10 to 13 guys collapsed. The guys are feeling very weak. They have dizzy heads. They are laying the whole day on their backs. Until now we didn’t get any response to our hunger strike.
Omid, one of the Iranian guys who [has been] on hunger strike [for] the last 31 days, today I talked with him.
I requested to him to please stop, please stop the hunger strike. He said no, it is better to die instead of living here. And also the doctor advised him that soon your brain and your heart would stop working and we will shift you to the hospital.
[The doctor said] you should give us one guy who, when you go into a coma, he will give us permission to give you treatment.
So he is weak. All the day he is laying on the bed.
Newcomers just arrived today. They were very worried, what we’ve seen on their faces. And some of the guys have also joined the hunger strike.
One thing [that] happened today [was that] one of the guys who was feeling pain in his tooth for the last week. So he was asking for treatment. The doctor told him first you have to eat, then we will give you some treatment.
So today what happened is he naked himself [stripped nakes]. He removed all of his clothes to protest. And the head of security there called police to make him afraid or to make him fear. But he didn’t stop. He was still naked.
One time, the other asylum seekers requested him to wear clothes so at last he wore the clothes.
Four or five asylum seekers made four or five graves like a cemetery. So this is because they have lost their mental control. So that is why they are doing this kind of thing.
To the Australian people I just want to say: Please, we need the help of the Australian people just to raise [your] voices for our rights and to put pressure on the government to just take us back from Nauru.
We are not criminals. We did not commit any sin. So we just want to say stop punishing us and take us back to Australia.
Nauru Hunger Strike 3 Nov 2012 by Clint Deidenang
TO WHOM IT MAY COMERN
The government and people of Australia.
Today on 12/11/2012 is our 12th day of hunger strike.
25 more asylum seekers have been brought to the Nauru Hell from Darwin by force and fraud when they saw the worst condition of the detention centre they have also joined the hunger strike.
One another asylum seeker is suffering from the severe pain of tooth, from one week, instead of giving him treatment by the doctor; they called Nauru police, now he is out of order means, he naked himself in the whole camp.
We have seen four asylum seekers they have made imaginary graves for themselves because of losing their mental health.
Purpose of hunger strike is not to give us facilities here in Nauru Hell, we want to be shifted from this Hell Hole to Australia and our cases should be started immediately.
In this modern period no body wana keep a domestic animal in tent at a temperature of 42 Celsius for a day but unfortunately human being are living in Nauru Hell is such worst conditions.
In short period we have seen asylum attempted suiciding, self-harming, mentally disturbed, stressed, naked themselves, protests and hunger strikes. So what will be result in the future?
We request to the government and people of Australia save our lives and future.
Regards
Asylum seeker in Nauru
