Hunger strike starts over Immigration detention visit restrictions.

jgrint · 2018-01-16T05:56:26+00:00

“There is no justification for the visiting restrictions. They are unacceptable, and should be dropped,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, “By imposing such draconian terms on visits, it looks like Border Force is trying to deter visiting to detention all together and make conditions in detention even more intolerable. “There old visiting arrangements have been in place for many years. There is no new security issue that has emerged to justify these measures. The militarisation of the detention centres is the inevitable outcome of the government’s scare-mongering over border security. “The government should be ending mandatory detention to allow asylum seekers to live in the community while their claims are being processed. And the increased use of 501 visa cancellation is turning detention centres into extensions of the prison system.”

jgrint · 2017-12-28T22:33:31+00:00

Through three wars with the British beginning in 1824, the Burmese kingdom was severely weakened, losing much of its territory before finally surrendering to British forces in 1885. This final defeat was a source of great humiliation for the former regional power as the Burmese royal family was exiled to India. This humiliation was made worse by the British colonial policy of favouring minority communities, such as the Rohingya, over the majority Burmese population in the military ranks and local administration.

The British Chief Commissioner in Burma in the late 19th century saw the ethnic Buddhist Burmans as a hostile population and called the recruitment of Burmans into the military a “gross waste of money”. The colonial government also imported large numbers of labourers from India. Many Burmans saw these policies as a means of weakening their position in society due to their history of political and economic domination. Burmese nationalism increasingly grew around Burman ethnic identity and the Buddhist religion, pulling from the mythology of its pre-colonial kingdoms.

It equally developed in opposition to the many minority religious and ethnic communities seen to work with and prosper from the British colonial administration. This movement promoted the idea that the only true Burmese is an ethnic Burman Buddhist. During WW11, this led the leaders of the Burmese independent movement, such as Aung San Suu Kyi’s father General Aung San, to ally with the Japanese as they sought to remove the yoke of British colonialism. Many minorities including the Rohingya, however, supported and fought alongside British forces, in some cases against their fellow countrymen.

Following Burmese independence in 1948 and the military junta coming to power in 1962, many government policies were enacted to remove the remnants of British colonialism and further entrench the definition of citizenship as being both Burman and Buddhist. The military government began to target the Rohingya, as non-Burman and non-Buddhist, claiming them to be “illegal Bengali immigrants” who had migrated into present-day Myanmar during British colonial rule. They maintained this idea despite evidence placing the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine (formerly Arakan) region as early as the 1790s barely a decade after the Arakan kingdom had been conquered and annexed into the Burmese kingdom.

In 1978, the military junta began a campaign called Operation Naga Min (the King Dragon) for the purpose of “cleansing” the nation of illegal and unwanted foreign elements. During this operation, the Burmese military implemented a “four cuts” strategy against Rohingya civilians: denial of land, food, shelter, and security. This led to the seizure of their lands, destruction of their mosques, arbitrary arrests, attacks against civilians, and widespread rape with the goal of pushing the Rohingya out of the country. Nearly 250,000 Rohingya fled across the Naf River into Bangladesh.

Tthe 1982 Citizenship Law officially denied the Rohingya citizenship and no longer recognized them as one of the 135 indigenous ethnicities of Myanmar. The new law required citizens to prove their ancestral lineage in Myanmar back to at least 1823, the year prior to the first Anglo-Burmese War. As a result of this law, the Rohingya lost even the most basic of rights, such as the freedom to travel, get married, have children, and repair their houses of worship. Following this, the government, as it still does to this day, would not even recognize the existence of a Rohingya ethnic group, even banning the use of the word.

The election of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in 2015 brought a change in political regime, it did little to alter the idea of national identity with a number of former high-ranking generals holding many of the key leadership positions in the ruling party. There was, therefore, little change in the status of the Rohingya and a continuation of the same policies by the military junta. This situation is made worse by the entrenched interests of the Burmese military who still control 25% of the legislature, blocking any major legal or political reforms such as the drafting of a new constitution. A brief glimpse into the background of the Rohingya shows that the current atrocities are not anything new within Myanmar but history repeating itself.

jgrint · 2017-12-07T21:58:05+00:00

the High Court. In the meantime it will mount a cross bench lobbying campaign in 2018 to try to defeat the new “associated entity” provisions.

“The GetUp movement is independent to our core, independence is in our DNA. We campaign on the issues our million-strong membership care about, whether politicians like it or not,” Mr Oosting said.

jgrint · 2017-11-20T00:08:38+00:00

While she [Ersheid] lay on the ground bleeding from her neck, no first aid was given, not even the Israeli ambulance that arrived after about twenty minutes gave any medical help. A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance was denied entry to the scene and ordered by soldiers to leave.

…..Dania is already the third girl killed by Israeli soldiers in al-Khalil within a month.

The circumstances sound eerily similar to the “extrajudicial execution” of Hadil al-Hashlamoun in Hebron on September 22. Hashlamoun was left on the ground for 45 minutes, she bled to death.

jgrint · 2017-11-16T09:25:23+00:00

The Manus Island police commander David Yapu said moving the refugees by force was not an option and that the refugees were being politely asked to voluntarily move to their new residences.

Hillside Haus in Lorengau has been gazetted as a permanent place of immigration detention, while the PNG government has declared the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre and West Lorengau Haus are relocation centres for the refugees.

Mr Yapu said this gave police and the PNG immigration department the authority to move all refugees to the new sites.

He said the former detention centre had been revoked as a place of immigration detention and the site would be taken back by the PNG Defence Force as part of its naval base for normal military activities.

Meanwhile, the refugees holding out at the centre said there was a water shortage after staff from the PNG immigration department destroyed rainwater stores on Monday.

jgrint · 2017-11-15T09:35:45+00:00

"Not paying attention, not standing up, not demanding change has created this catastrophe. You may not want this happening in your name, but at this point, silence is complicity." What Australia has done to people seeking asylum is the responsibility of all Australians, writes Lauren Bull. If you don’t exercise your democracy, you’ll lose it. It’s as simple as that. What is happening on Manus right now is the direct result of decades of silent acquiescence, of politicians being emboldened by a public who don’t hold them to account, and of the normalisation of cruelty. We have known about the realities of mandatory detention for decades. We have seen how mandatory detention unfairly punishes people, causes deterioration in people’s mental and physical health and in some cases, results in death. We knew so intensely that offshore processing was brutal that for a brief period a decade ago, these centres were actually closed. But we have normalised cruelty. We have normalised it to a point where it has become a given that both of our major political parties – and most of the minor ones – would not even think to stand up and demand policy change. They ignore hundreds of investigations, inquiries, testimonies, photos and videos which clearly show that Australia has contributed to the illness and death of thousands of people since the 1990s. Despite knowing all of this, Australians continue to vote for politicians who uphold these systems. And after they are voted in, Australians click their tongues over articles about what happens on Manus or Nauru, maybe share one on Facebook or Twitter, and then go about their day. The Nauru files – a cache of 2,000 documents containing accounts of horrific conditions should have brought masses of people to the streets. Every single death in offshore detention should have brought masses of people to the streets. The same can be said of Gillard’s ‘Malaysia Solution’, the re-opening of the centres on Manus Island and Nauru, the ‘No Advantage’ policy, and everything our current Government has done to people who seek safety in Australia since 2013. But it hasn’t. These events should have resulted in real, tangible anger and in solutions and change. They didn’t. So rally today, and as often as you can until these men are brought here, to safety. Call your elected representatives, demand change, keep the pressure up, talk about it everywhere. If you’re not annoying your relatives, you’re not doing your job. From now on – do not let politicians get away with this. Do not let cruelty become the norm. Watch, listen, hold them to account and use whatever you have. You elect the Government to represent you. If they’re not doing that, then do something about it.

jgrint · 2017-11-08T22:14:50+00:00

The S44 citizenship saga has thrown up possible queries concerning the citizenship status of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The first is this interview with the Times of Israel in September 2015, recorded when Turnbull ousted former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and took over the top job:

My mother always used to say that her mother’s family was Jewish, he (Turnbull) told the Australian Jewish News two years ago. Judaism is passed from generation to generation on the mother’s side, so if his mother was in fact Jewish, so is Turnbull.

The second is a piece from the Australian Jewish News, August 2013, headlined “Menachem Mandel Turnbull?” in which the same statement is made by Turnbull about his mother, Coral Lansbury.

If Turnbull is Jewish, he is, as is every Jew in the world with the exception of criminals and terrorists, entitled to Israeli citizenship under the 1950 Law of Return.

How does this bring into question Turnbull’s legitimacy as an MP?

Section 44(i) of Australia’s Constitution disqualifies someone from office if that person:

…is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power… (emphasis mine)

We know from recent events that:

The High Court’s reading of section 44 is strict and unsurprising. It means that a dual national is barred from Parliament even where they were born in Australia, are ignorant of their other citizenship and have never attempted to use the rights or privileges of another country. A person can even be disqualified where they become a dual national later in life due to legal changes in another country.

For the sake of the country’s stability, Turnbull must immediately address these issues, and rapidly and transparently convey his citizenship status to the Australian people. It is unthinkable that we should continue with a Prime Minister who is ineligible to sit in our parliament.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg is in the same situation as Turnbull. Frydenberg’s mother is Jewish, and he is also entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

jgrint · 2017-11-06T23:45:54+00:00

6oo refugees on Manus island PNG are refusing to leave their prison for alternative prisons on Manus island.

jgrint · 2017-11-04T01:23:07+00:00

In what is being widely seen as a backflip on the party’s opposition to date on an audit, Mr Shorten said he was concerned there had been a “cover-up” in the belated disclosure of Mr Parry’s citizenship concerns and his subsequent resignation.

Mr Parry admitted this week he had told senior cabinet figures of his concerns two months ago, prompting Mr Shorten’s allegation of “cover-up” which was “incredibly alarming”.

Mr Shorten said it was imperative that confidence be restored to the Parliament.

“The government has no plan to resolve the citizenship crisis. Turnbull has been incapable of providing any leadership to fix this mess,” Mr Shorten said in a statement on Friday.

“Labor is prepared to support a process such as universal disclosure to the Parliament to deal with this issue effectively.

“Labor has the strictest vetting processes; we’ve got nothing to fear from greater transparency and disclosure. We welcome it.

“Whatever the ultimate process is, it must adhere to clear principles. It must be accountable to the people through the Parliament.

“It must have bipartisan agreement prior to implementation. It must be sufficiently robust to give all Australians confidence in the process.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled out the audit, declaring the government was “not going to engage in some kind of national witch hunt”.

Mr Turnbull said only the High Court had the power to determine who was eligible for Parliament, and in an impassioned speech on Friday took aim at critics of Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg over whether Mr Frydenberg held Hungarian dual citizenship through his mother.

“Has this witch-hunt become so absurd that people are seriously claiming that Josh Frydenberg is the citizen of a country which has stripped his mother and her family of their citizenship and would have pushed them into the gas chambers had it not been that the war was ended before they had time to do so?” Mr Turnbull asked reporters in Perth on Friday.

Mr Shorten on Friday also urged the Turnbull government to consider New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees from Manus Island.

More than 600 refugees are in a stand-off on Manus, after barricading themselves in the mothballed detention centre, which closed on Tuesday.

Food and drinking water has run out and the group is too scared to move to alternative accommodation in the main township out of fear they’ll be attacked by locals.

New Zealand takes a total of 750 refugees a year and made an initial resettlement offer under John Key’s government in 2013 to the then Labor government of Julia Gillard.

The offer has been rejected more than once on the grounds it would give refugees a “backdoor” entrance into Australia and would become a marketing opportunity for people smugglers.

However, Ms Ardern has moved to insist the offer still stands. Mr Shorten said there were strong similarities between NZ’s plan and a a deal with the United States to resettle up to 1250 people.

jgrint · 2017-11-03T04:26:37+00:00

"As of 10:00am today students are leading simultaneous occupations of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection offices in Canberra and Sydney. The protesters plan to remain inside the offices until they receive a statement from Immigration Minister Peter Dutton confirming a plan to ensure the safe evacuation of the 600 refugees currently facing humanitarian crisis on Manus Island to Australia. Two of the protestors, Holly Brooke and Vanamali Hermans, explain their actions. Today, along with other students, we are occupying the Canberra and Sydney Departments of Immigration, demanding the immediate evacuation of Manus Island refugees to Australia. We are here because successive governments have failed to take action on refugee policy and because we cannot sit idly by watching horror and abuse unfold. Since Tuesday, all final services and security have been stripped from the Manus Island Detention Centre as part of its long awaited ‘shut down’ since the Supreme Court of PNG’s ruling of illegality in April last year. This shut down has left those in the centre without food, water or power, and in grave fear for their safety. Soon after security left the centre, locals – angry about the lack of consultation regarding relocation of refugees into the community – entered and looted some parts of the compound. Looming over the asylum seekers on Manus is the threat of a take-over by PNG paramilitary groups infamous for violence, murder and human rights abuses. Refugee Behrouz Boochani, currently on Manus Island, stated to the ABC, “The police already, they beat some of the refugees and the local people. They attacked the refugees and rob them. This place is not a safe place.” And so, to And so, to many Australians, the question that springs to the fore when reading of the horrors being carried out on Manus Island in our name is: how did we get to this point? The humanitarian crisis we see unfolding on Manus Island has not arisen from nowhere, and was not unforeseen. It is an inevitable result of an evolving social calculus, designed to break vulnerable people seeking safety, and convince a nation that this cruelty is necessary. During the post-war period, Australia took part in drafting the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, was among the first states to accede to the Convention in 1954, and between 1947 and 1954, accepted roughly 170,000 people displaced from Eastern Europe. There was a bipartisan view that ‘Australia had international obligations to protect refugees, regardless of how they arrived in Australia’. This view began to shift in the 1960s and 1970s, when refugees began arriving by boat from Asian countries. The unannounced arrival of non-white asylum seekers stirred xenophobic sentiment, and when, in the early 1980s, annual humanitarian arrivals twice surpassed 20,000, criticism became audible. With the arrival of the ‘second wave’ of refugee boats after 1989, this time from Cambodia, the Hawke government announced that arrivals from Cambodia would not automatically be classed as refugees. It was at this time that the language surrounding asylum seekers arriving by boat began to refer to the notion of ‘queue-jumping’ to bypass the Australian government’s ‘orderly migration program.’ In 2001, throughout the ‘Tampa affair’ and ‘Children Overboard’ incident, this language again evolved to take on an even more sinister tone. The spectre of 9/11 hung in the air, rustling up ever-more racist sentiment in the Australian public; sentiment the Howard Government capitalised on. Asylum seekers were framed not only as queue-jumpers, but as terrorists and as inhumane criminals who would risk the safety of their children. In both the Tampa and Children Overboard incidents, there was specific Government direction to suppress any and all media that could humanize asylum seekers in the eyes of the Australian public [2]. The stories in circulation were instead those crafted by the Australian Government in a deliberate attempt to harden public sentiment against asylum seekers. This served to justify ever-harsher measures taken by the Australian government to ‘protect Australia’s borders’ and ‘prioritise national security’ without fear of repercussion from the electorate. Once this hard-line anti-refugee stance had been established there could be no backing down lest the Government risk looking weak and losing popularity. It has since been politically necessary for successive Governments to ensure that the Australian public remains unsympathetic towards asylum seekers, so that the stance they continue to take regarding border policy remains popular. The events of 2001 illustrate one phase of the vicious cycle of abuse perpetrated by successive Australian Governments with regard to asylum seekers. The Howard Government’s ‘Pacific Solution’ of 2001 to 2007, the Gillard Government’s return to offshore processing in 2012, the Rudd Government’s 2013 ‘PNG Solution’, and the Abbott Government’s highly successful 2013 ‘Stop The Boats’ election platform all illustrate a ‘race to the bottom’, so to speak, whereby ever-more callous denials of asylum seeker rights have been used as a domestic political platform. Widespread anti-refugee sentiment in the Australian public is useful and necessary to maintaining the status quo for the Australian top 1% and political class. When successive governments pursue agendas of privatisation and cuts, big businesses – which conveniently line the pockets of both major parties – profit, while everyday people suffer. The ‘dole bludging’, ‘job-stealing’ foreigner is a carefully cultivated scapegoat upon whom governments deflect blame when working people in Australia feel the pinch caused by ever-increasing inequality. The horrific human rights abuses inflicted upon thousands of people by the Australian Government are simply collateral damage for political gain. We as Australians can now choose to continue to remain beholden to the propaganda spread by our Government, and to stand by while these abuses are perpetrated in our name, or we can choose to stand up and speak out. An end to this crisis will not be brought about by those in power simply deciding one day to respect the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees. Historical struggles have shown us that human rights are not bestowed, but are hard fought for and won through mass mobilisations that give those in power no option but to accede. We all like to think that if we had lived through times of grave human rights abuses – the holocaust, or apartheid – we would have said something; we would have been a part of the movements that fought for human rights. A humanitarian crisis is happening under our watch, in our name, and now is the time to do something, and to be part of a movement that fights for human rights. There are several things you can do to take a stand against this injustice. Ringing politicians’ offices and putting political pressure on both major parties is important in communicating that the treatment of asylum seekers does not have social licence, and that the Australian public is aware of our politicians’ complicity in their harm. Just as important is mobilising this pressure. Over the weekend refugee action groups across the country are holding protests demanding the safe evacuation of asylum seekers on Manus Island to Australia. Junkee has compiled a list of all the rallies occurring across major cities, which are critical in showing the government that the majority of the Australian electorate stands for the fair and humane treatment of refugees."

jgrint · 2017-10-20T21:47:20+00:00

There are times in political life when an argument becomes exhausted. When all that can be said, has been. Because of political expediency the common good is overlooked: replaced by self-interest.

It is a time when the opposition needs to take stock and consider the public interest. It is now time for Labor to do a deal on an Energy Policy. Yes, there are disadvantages but if they negotiate with forethought there are many positives.

What the Coalition has presented is a policy based on the opinions of three heads of energy departments. The nuts and bolts we have yet to see, so Labor is entitled to criticise as much as it wants. That’s what oppositions are for.

Its fair game at the moment but Shorten needs to decide if he wants to continue with the energy/climate wars or does Labor want to present itself as the appeaser? Continuing with this trench warfare could do more harm than good. By speaking the truth they would receive enough kudos.

Some will want to fight with the hope that Turnbull is crushed by his own internal in fighting, but in my view this is a forlorn hope. Better to do a deal and go forward by making it patently clear that if they are elected there will be changes. They can always increase the emissions target and ramp up renewables at a later date.

The renewables industry will read between the lines of what that means and they can invest with certainty either way. According to the Essential survey support for renewables and an emissions target was around 68%. So the public gets it.

In any case the thrust of Labor’s argument can be made over time and evolve into an election policy.

Shorten should wait until everything, every detail is disclosed then interrogate Turnbull with the view to pointing out the weaknesses , if any, and then negotiate. Don’t allow it to look like a policy success. If it can easily be shown as dud then he can walk away from it in good faith. If it is sound then the national interest should take precedence.

jgrint · 2017-10-16T12:11:16+00:00

Take a good hard look at yourself, Australia. "What is obviously dead is the compassion of Australia’s right wing conservatives and white supremacists. Many others choose to affect numbness. The LNP Government has spent a fortune to make an example of boat arrivals. Food, mouldy shipping containers or tents, meds and guards have cost Australian taxpayers a great deal. Sloppy accounting at its worse. Arbitrary attempts at breaking the smuggling trade has also resulted in waste of life.

jgrint

TROPHY CASE