Editorial Board, New York Times 3 September 2015 It is inexcusable that some find themselves today in situations that are more hopeless and degrading than the ones that prompted them to flee. Some European officials may be tempted to adopt…
Category: International law
Wilson Security Guards handcuffed an asylum seeker boy as a joke:
(or when is a flexicuff not a cable tie?) Ben Doherty and Helen Davidson 29 August 2015 Four Wilson Security guards used a “cable tie” to handcuff an eight-year-old asylum seeker boy on Nauru as “a joke”, an apparent contradiction…
Call It What It Is: A Global Migration Shift From Climate, Not a Migrant or Refugee Crisis
Jeff Biggers, Huffington Post 29 August 2015 Hundreds more died off the coast of Libya today, on the heels of 71 deaths of migrants trapped in the back of a truck near Vienna, Austria. At the same time, NASA officials…
Shining a light into our darkest policy corners
Lawyers Weekly 11 August No matter your view on asylum seekers and offshore detention, a prohibition on torture is something we can all support, writes Greens Senator Penny Wright, who will present a motion to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention…
Global Perspectives on Australia’s Asylum Seeker Policy
Australian Leader Urged to Reveal What Happened to Vietnamese Refugee Boat Joanna Plucinska, 27 July 2015, Time Magazine Australian officials are being accused of breaking international law after 42 Vietnamese asylum seekers were allegedly sent back to Vietnam after arriving…
Julian Burnside Responds to Richard Marles and Bill Shorten
SPEECH TO LABOR NATIONAL CONFERENCE What I have to say to you today is not what I would have expected to say. I do not expect you to agree with me. Let me start by saying that in my view…
The pacific non-solution two years on
16 July 2015 More than 850 asylum seekers and 87 refugees are detained indefinitely in poor conditions on Manus Island two years after Australia announced it would process and resettle “boat people” in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Human Rights Watch…
Major Refugee Groups Slam Boat Turn-Backs As Labor Mulls Policy Shift
By Max Chalmers, New Matilda The Refugee Council says an activist who spoke out in favour of turn-backs does not represent the views of those who work with refugees. Max Chalmers reports. The national umbrella organisations for refugee and asylum…
Open letter on the Border Force Act: ‘We challenge the department to prosecute’
More than 40 current and former workers at Australia’s detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island challenge Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton to prosecute them under new secrecy laws for speaking out over human rights abuses Today the Border Force…
Melissa Parkes speaks up (from Hansard 24 June 2015)
Ms PARKE (Fremantle) (17:38): It would be an understatement to say I am uncomfortable with this bill. There have been so many steps on the way to getting to what is widely viewed as this debased point in the asylum…