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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 on which Australia’s record is troubled: Australia’s treatment of indigenous Australians and asylum seekers. “In my discussions with Aboriginal people, I could sense the deep hurt and pain that they have suffered because of government policies that are imposed on them. I also saw Aboriginal people making great efforts to improve their communities, but noted that their efforts are often stifled by inappropriate and inflexible policies that fail to empower the most effective, local solutions. I would urge a fundamental rethink of the measures being…
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Why Global Citizenship?
1. Introduction Plutarch said: … nature has given us no country as it has given us no house or field. … Socrates expressed it … when he said, he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world (just as a man calls himself a citizen of Rhodes or Corinth).[1] Plutarch urged his audience to become conscious of a wider reality and to exercise their imagination to overcome a narrow, localised conception of their identity. That is the role of my global citizenship claim too. Plutarch and Socrates did not conceive of the world as a globe,[2] as I do: I have travelled across the world;…
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Latest Deaths in Detention: Mohammed Asif Atay and Meqdad Hussein
Mohammed Asif Atay and Meqdad Hussein are the latest asylum seekers to die in Australian migration detention centres. Both were young men. Mohammed was aged 19. Meqdad was aged 20. Both were Hazara asylum seekers from Afghanistan. Both committed suicide. Mohammed had been detained for 10 months in the Curtin detention centre in South Australia. He had developed depression in the lead up to taking his own life. His death was reported on 29 March 2011. Meqdad was detained at the Scherger detention centre in North Queensland. Meqdad had recognised as a genuine refugee two or three months before his death. He lost hope when the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation issued an adverse security…
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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 of the bodies of those who died will never be recovered. In protests by asylum seekers that followed, children held in detention are seen holding up placards asking: “The children died. Why?” [1] Yet the children and adults that died on 15 December are (horrifically) only a small fraction of deaths associated with “border security”. Sometime in 2010, the known number of deaths associated with Australia’s border controls passed 1000. This number in turn is only a small fraction of the known global toll associated with similar border security policies which are playing out on borders…
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Sólo agua en las lágrimas de un extraño
‘Es sólo agua en las lágrimas de extraño” .” Empiezo con esta línea en parte porque siempre voy a estar en una referencia musical si puedo (que es una letra de la canción No One of Us “, de Peter Gabriel), sino también porque resume para mí lo que la definición de “el otro” (el extranjero) parece ser todo sobre:. negar la humanidad de un grupo particular de personas, y tal vez nada define nuestra humanidad tanto como nuestras lágrimas, ya sea de tristeza, angustia, miedo, o incluso la felicidad. Derramar lágrimas por emoción, es es parte de la experiencia humana, que nos abruma. Lloramos con simpatía, también, y no…
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Villawood Protests
What is a “protest”? In the context of democracy we think of them as citizen action – citizens speaking to their government – expressing their dissatisfaction with a policy or state of affairs. What then are we to make of the actions of a few non-citizens protesting on the roof of the Villawood detention centre in Sydney Australia? The protest started with the leap to his death of Josevata Rauluni 36 from the same roof on 20 September 2010 – who did not wish to be deported. A needless tragedy – for what harm could have come to Australia to extend to this man the hand of welcome? On our…
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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 seekers in a ‘regional processing centre’ in East Timor. The new Australian policy reflects a general hardening of policies towards asylum seekers in the lead up to national elections. ABC news report ex-Amnesty International chief as saying that this policy will not work. The policy also reflects increasing practice engaged in by European nations of engaging third countries to prevent arrivals of asylum seekers and irregular migrants. A notable example is the detention in Libya of migrants seeking to reach Europe. The Global Detention Project…
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Remote Control Borders: Violating Freedom of Movement
Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right to leave any country. Increasingly countries are cooperating to violate this human rights by preventing aslyum seekers and others from leaving a country to seek refuge in another country. Some examples are: Egypt: which prevents Africans from leaving Egypt in attempting to enter Israel. On 11 June Reuters reported the killing of migrants on the Egyptian border, who were attempting to leave Egypt. 18 people have been killed this year so far, as compared to 19 for the whole of last year. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE65A0CZ.htm Indonesia: which cooperates with Australia to prevent asylum seekers leaving Indonesia to…
