A refugee journey out of endless war
The anonymous words below come from the reflections of a young person who arrived in Australia as a refugee. She was when she wrote in …
asylum seekers
Three reasons for Abandoning Mandatory Detention
A paper delivered at a roundtable on alternatives to detention held in Canberra, June 9 – 10, 2011 By Penelope Mathew Freilich Foundation Professor The …
Do Foreigners Have the Same Human Rights as the Rest of Us?
At the core of human rights is the axiomatic truth that human beings have inherent rights: that all human beings are equal and possessed of …
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Australia
As, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, today acknowledged there are a lot of human rights positives for Australia, but there were two issues …
More than one thousand deaths since 2000
On 15 December 2010, 50 people are believed to have drowned when their asylum seeker boat was smashed, only metres from safety, on the shores of Christmas Island. Some …
Government should take lesson from Christmas Islanders
It appears from all reporting that what makes the tragedy that occurred on the morning of Wednesday 15 December, 2010 on the shoreline of Christmas …
Ahmad Al Akabi: Another asylum seeker death in Villawood
Ahmad Al-Akabi, aged 41, had a wife and was a father of three girls aged two, four and seven. He had come to Australia and had hoped …
Only Water in a Stranger’s Tears
‘It’s only water in a stranger’s tears.’ I start with this line partly because I’ll always get in a musical reference if I can (it’s …
Australia seeks to process asylum seekers in East Timor
In a policy announcement echoing the discredited ‘Pacific solution’ of the previous Liberal Government, the new Australian government has decided to seek to detain asylum …