Before our eyes, day by day, Scott Morrison becomes the hollow man.
His face tightens and twists, his eyes are dead, and his words strangled
with jargon. We've seen this before. Remember Philip Ruddock gradually
turning into a stick of chalk, as immigration minister and later
attorney-general, while he plodded his way through the ''Pacific
solution'' and the vilification of David Hicks? This is what happens to human beings who believe the ends
justify the means. Ends that are wretched will invariably produce bad
means. When you peel back the layers, the oft repeated Coalition
justification for stopping the boats is that ''the Australian people
want it''. It hardly needs me to point out that history is littered with tragedies when justification is hitched to popularity. Stopping the boats is an end, and any amount of nastiness to achieve that is justified - popularity confers legitimacy. Maybe, in decades to come, we will look back at this time and
regard it as one of the worst stains on our nation. More awful than
the White Australia Policy and up there with the stolen generations. A
time when our nation had a dark heart.
Ten years ago, the Australian Human Rights Commission released a
previous report into children in immigration detention, when there were
around 700 children in detention.
Today, there are over 1000 children in Australian detention centres including unaccompanied minors sent off-shore. The average length of time spent in closed immigration detention facilities is 226 days, the highest level in more than two years.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has announced it will conduct
yet another national inquiry into the ways in which life in immigration
detention affects the health, well-being and development of children.
Even though refugee advocacy group welcome the inquiry, the federal government has expressed disappointment that an inquiry into children in immigration detention was not launched under the previous Labor government.
Rather than both sides of politics blaming each other, or worse still
backing each other up, rather than spending more time and money
endlessly redoing investigations and reports, read what was written ten
years ago and act on it NOW.
Article 31 of the UN Refugee Convention - which we naturally signed -
forbids host countries from penalising refugees who declare themselves
and show cause. Articles 32 and 33 forbid their expulsion or refoulement
to any place of endangerment through race, religion or belief.
Article 26 requires the host to allow free movement. Articles
27 and 28 require provision of identity and travel documents. Other
articles require the same rights to education, housing, employment,
artistic freedom, social security and ''sympathetic consideration'' as
accorded to nationals. Article 16 requires free access to courts of law.
Yet we detain people without proof or charge. We deny them
freedom of speech or movement without limit or reason. And although the
Abbott government pretends that ''stopping the boats'' saves lives, we
cage them in such hot, crowded and brutalised despair that they riot,
suicide and abort babies rather than continue. We forbid reportage. We
censor news.
These are matters of fact. Together, they reveal our
immigration policy as nimbyism of the ugliest sort and grandest possible
scale.
Ever since that day back in 2001 when the Norwegian freighter Tampa
rescued asylum seekers from drowning and John Howard refused permission
for them to disembark at an Australian port, the political landscape
for our country changed. Because we the people endorsed that decision,
we must accept responsibility for everything that has happened since.
That John Howard’s legacy will be tainted forever by this one
opportunistic decision and be the defining measure of his time as prime
minister is something for him to contemplate. That we the people have,
subsequent to that decision, forced both the major political parties to
quiver in their shoes every time the media highlights the issue is
something for us to contemplate.
On Q&A last Monday night, Jamie Briggs, Assistant Minister for
Infrastructure and Regional Development argued against his government’s
culpability in the Manus Island murder of Reza Berati by reminding Labor
Transport spokesperson, Anthony Albanese that 1000 asylum seekers
perished at sea over the past 5 years. When a debate descends down this
path one can see that the substance of the issue has been reduced to the
level of its form. It now comes down to the question of who has been
more successful in killing the least number of people seeking asylum in
the race to stop the boats. Where is the outrage?
When we defend the charge of causing someone’s death with a counter
charge that our accuser did the same thing, we should know that we have
reached the bottom of the barrel in our moral and social understanding
of rightness and wrongness
Scott Morrison should be sacked as well as the Abbott Government , A fascist Government with no moral compass. +
Revealed: G4S guard says he invited in PNG police dog squad before Manus riot
• PNG police with dogs asked to enter detention centre on 17 February
• Guard’s statement written morning after riot names Reza Barati
• Official incident log says G4S ‘lost control’ of local riot squad
• ‘No Australian will tell us what to do,’ one local said
The detention centre at Manus Island. Photograph: Department of Immigration/Getty Images
The Papua New Guinean police dog squad was
invited into the Manus Island detention centre under instruction from a senior
G4S guard before a riot erupted on 17 February, according to a graphic
statement seen by Guardian Australia.
The statement of a guard, employed by the security
contractor G4S which runs the detention centre for the Australian government,
was written the morning after the violence and provides the most detailed description
and timeline yet of how events unfolded in the Manus clashes, which left one asylum
seeker dead and dozens injured.
Guardian Australia has also seen a page of
what is understood to be the official “incident report” provided to the Immigration
Department, which shows how G4S staff “lost control” of the local riot squad
during Monday night’s unrest.
This letter by one of our readers, James Horton was sent not just to Bill Shorten but to The Age, The Australian, the Herald Sun
and a copy to The AIMN. I publish it here as most of our readers, as
well as myself, support onshore processing of asylum seekers.
Dear Bill,
I am writing to you as leader of the Opposition to ask you take a
lead in undoing the harm being caused by our current asylum seeker
policy, by rejecting off-shore processing and indefinite detention.
There is a human tragedy currently unfolding before us and you have
an opportunity to re-embrace the values your party once stood for, by
helping bring to a more timely end to a dark chapter in our country’s
history. With each passing day, we are all the more diminished as a
people and as a nation.
We should all know better. We have witnessed the awful legacy of past
injustices wrought in our name, like the “Stolen Generation”, and the
abuse of children in church and state care (now the subject of a Royal
Commission). These have been injustices enabled by misguided policies,
administered by trusted institutions, and perpetuated by secrecy,
misinformation and “good” people prepared to “look the other way”.
Let us not allow our treatment of asylum seekers be our generation’s terrible legacy.
All I ask, Bill, is that you have the courage and conviction to come
to terms with the human and economic failings of our government’s policy
and provide a voice that truly represents the values we uphold as
Australians.
Our minor political parties and independents cannot do this on their own.
Finding the right solutions will require empathy and compassion. I
know this is not an easy path for you in a political environment where
propagating fear and ignorance have become a drug of addiction, but it
is the right path. The good news is that the right moral solutions don’t
need to come at the expense of achieving good economic outcomes.
There are communities across Australia ready and willing to be be
better partners than G4S and Transfield can ever be . . . and surely
treating our biggest neighbour, Indonesia, as part of a solution rather
part of a problem, offers the promise of better long-term humanitarian
and economic outcomes than the exploitation of impoverished countries
like PNG and Nauru.
Bill, now is the time to break with the past while the electoral
cycle is young, and before your party’s continued tacit support
completely erodes any possibility of regaining moral credibility. There
is a small window of opportunity, and it is closing rapidly. Please act
now.
And Bill, one more thing . . . this is not just about asylum seekers.
It’s about starting a new conversation with the Australian people that
appeals to the strengths of our national character, not our weaknesses.
The values we need to take on the challenges ahead. It’s about a new
conversation about what it takes to make a resilient nation, starting
with its people.
Labor will attack Scott Morrison over the
Manus Island riot, but both sides of the political divide are guilty of
inhumane policies spanning more than two decades, writes Paula
Matthewson.
Both sides ruthlessly exploited nascent voter anxiety about asylum
seekers into a full-blown paranoia. By framing the issue as one of
border protection rather than immigration or human rights the Howard
government implicitly encouraged voters to make a connection between
asylum seekers, terrorists and the war on terror. It's hard not to
conclude that Howard's ill-founded observation about "people like that"
throwing their children overboard wasn't similarly confected to demonise
asylum seekers.
Then as the events of September 11, 2001 faded,
at least in the minds of Australians, voter unease over asylum seekers
emerged as a by-product of the industrial relations battle. Having been
brought to a state of high concern by both parties claiming the other
was putting their job security at risk, voters began to equate asylum
seekers as yet another threat to their employment prospects. Neither
side has ever attempted to dissuade this misapprehension, with prime
minister Gillard even reinforcing it by capitulating to the unions and imposing a limit on the use of 457 visas for skilled foreign workers.
Voter
antipathy for asylum seekers has been kept at a fairly vigorous simmer
ever since – it's just too electorally valuable to the parties to be let
to go off the boil.
Perhaps most shockingly, Kevin Rudd exploited
it on his re-election as Labor leader in an attempt to consolidate his
Messiah 2.0 status. Erasing from that prodigious brain any memory of his
denunciation of the inhumanity that was the Pacific Solution, Rudd
unleashed the ultimate deterrent (and hopeful vote-winner) by vowing
that no asylum seeker would ever reach Australia and instead would be
settled in PNG.
After Rudd's defeat it was no surprise Tony Abbott
also embraced this extreme policy, having pinned his electoral
legitimacy on "stopping the boats" (shorthand for "not letting those
foreign devils steal Australian jobs, crowd our trains or marry our
daughters").
It's hard to imagine that we have to call all those politicians HUMANS that created a monster that is destroying the HUMANITY IN AUSTRALIANS.
A witness to violence at the Manus Island detention
centre last Monday night says guards from the security firm G4S allowed
locals armed with makeshift weapons into the facility.
The Federal Government has backed away from its initial claims
about what happened during the violence at its off-shore detention
centre that killed one detainee and left dozens more injured.
Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition, says it was a deeply concerning case.
"I think they have recognised at the very least the extreme psychological
trauma that Nauru has inflicted on Salima and the impossibility in her
mind of being able to go ahead with having a baby in the conditions on
Nauru," Mr Rintoul said.
He says pregnant women should not be held in offshore detention centres, but the Minister denies the conditions were to blame.
"The
Government rejects any suggestion that Australia's offshore processing
policy provides any legitimate medical grounds for a parent to choose to
have an abortion," Mr Morrison's statement said.
"This is yet another outrageous claim."
Mr Johnson said the couple is now in detention in Darwin.
"I
have briefly spoken with the psychiatrist who examined her last
Wednesday and that is in fact since I have last seen her," Mr Johnson
said.
You’ve probably guessed that this is not fan mail. I’m sure you do have
fans, but I don’t think there would be many game enough to admit it
after your recent behaviour. Trolls perhaps, but not people. Why not
people, you may ask? Succinctly, because no person with a shred of
humanity, the sort of humanity needed to qualify as a human, could ever
condone what you are doing to the world’s desperate asylum seekers who
come to Australia begging for help.
Before you ready your list of excuses as to why it’s justifiable for
someone to be murdered inside an Australian detention facility, there is
no justifiable excuse you could possibly provide that will go anywhere
near being a justifiable excuse. According to witness reports,
a man has died after having his throat cut and sustaining head
injuries. His name was Reza Berati. He had a family and friends who
loved him. He had a personality. He had a whole life ahead of him. And
he was murdered. With violence most compassionate people wouldn’t accept
against an animal. A man was murdered. There’s no other way to describe
it. You did not carry out the violence, but you were in charge of the
person who did, and you were responsible for the victim, Reza Berati
since he was in your care.
Human rights and asylum seeker advocates are condemning
a decision to employ a former Sri Lankan military officer as the acting
manager of the Manus Island detention camp.
The ABC has confirmed that Dinesh Perera has been running the facility for the G4S security company.
The director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights Law centre, Emily Howie, says Mr Perera should be removed.
"It's
completely inappropriate for anyone with links to the Sri Lankan
military to be in charge of the welfare and well-being of vulnerable
asylum seekers, including Tamils," Ms Howie said.
"There's a high likelihood that the Tamils being held there are fleeing persecution at the hands of the Sri Lankan military.
"This
isn't about the activities of this one man. It's about way that
Australia takes care of the asylum seekers who are in its custody.
“ The shadow treasurer said he could not accept the Government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia without proper human rights protections. I will never ever support a people swap where you can send a 13-year-old child unaccompanied to a country without supervision,” he said. “Never. It’ll be over my dead body.” Should we have spent the last few months looking for Joe’s body? Or was it just the TRADE aspect that he objected to? After all, that’s the sort of weasel words we’ve come to expect from politicians. Something like, I never said that I wouldn’t accept unaccompanied minors to another country, I said I wouldn’t accept a people swap where that happened." excerpt from Rossleigh Brisbane
Scott INFO PAD Morrison cowers behind secrecy and misinformation along with the rest of the Abbott government.
Scott Morrison's conduct should now be the subject of the inquiry he
has commissioned into the chaos and carnage that unfolded on Manus
Island last week. The inquiry's terms of reference should be widened to include
who gave the Immigration Minister such wildly inaccurate information
after the violence - and what steps he took to verify it before going
public. The minister now concedes he was wrong to assert, without
qualification, that 23-year-old Iranian, Reza Barati, was killed outside
the detention centre when he and others ''absconded'' from the
''safety'' it afforded. He also said the asylum seeker was shot in the buttocks,
received his wound ''outside the centre'', that just two shots were
fired, and there was no suggestion anyone employed by security
contractor G4S was involved. All these assertions have been challenged.
What the Abbott Govt is doing is like asking Dracula to accept more victims.The infirm mind of an insane Government.
The Abbott government wants to send some asylum seekers to Cambodia,
at a time when the country's strongman prime minister, Hun Sen, is
overseeing a brutal crackdown on dissent in one of south-east Asia's
poorest nations. Facing growing opposition after decades of authoritarian
rule, Hun Sen last month authorised a violent crackdown on
anti-government protesters and striking garment workers that left five
people dead and dozens injured.
A request on Saturday by Australia's foreign minister, Julie
Bishop, for Australia to initially send a small group of asylum seekers
to live in Cambodia comes amid the strongest challenge to Hun Sen's
rule since he took power in 1985, becoming one of the world's
longest-serving leaders,
"MORE than 200 locals joined riot police and guards from security
contractor G4S in crushing Monday night’s uprising by asylum-seekers at
the Manus Island detention centre. Civilian
residents of the Lombrum naval base, on which the detention facility is
located on Manus Island, said when security forces felt they were being
overwhelmed they asked locals to help repel several hundred rioters. MANUS ISLAND CENTRE COULD CLOSE AFTER INVESTIGATION This
account explains for the first time how there were such widespread
injuries, with 77 asylum seekers requiring treatment and one man — Reza
Berati, 23, who has been described as having regularly trained in boxing
at the centre, and was a riot leaders — dying later at hospital." Excerpt from the Article
Reza Berati, the asylum seeker killed on Manus Island.
The asylum seeker killed on Manus Island during rioting has been named as 23 year-old Iranian Reza Berati. At
a briefing on Friday, immigration minister Scott Morrison said that
Berati had arrived in Australia on 24 July 2013 – just five days after
the hardline PNG solution was announced – and was sent to Manus Island.
“The family expressed their wish to have the body returned home for burial arrangements,” Morrison said.
A
group of contractors who all met Berati on Manus island sent Guardian
Australia an exclusive statement describing him as a “gentle giant”.
The group said that Berati was “known to be a joker” and that many of the contractors were helping him to learn English.
“We
read him children’s books such as fairy tales and Reza always waited
and looked forward to meeting with us and reading with him. He studied a
lot,” the group said.
“He used to always pick up bugs and
moths off the ground and put them back in the garden, worried that
someone would step on them. (The guys used to feed the moths to cane
toad frogs around the compound for fun... There wasn’t much else to
do...) He used to try and stop them.”
They continued: “Reza
also always helped staff hand out medical slips and appointment slips to
those in the same compound as him. He wanted to keep busy to avoid
boredom and keep his mind active.”
The group described Berati
as “very tall and very muscly” and said they were worried that he may
have been singled out during the riot because of his size.
None
of the contractors were present in the detention centre at the time of
the riots but say they had met with Berati “nearly every day” during
their stints on Manus.
“Reza worked out in the gym a lot and
taught his friends how to stay fit and healthy. He helped his friends
learn how to use the gym equipment. Many of the guys did not want to
participate in recreational activities due to stress, depression and
other mental health issues.”
Guardian Australia understands
that Berati was detained in Mike compound where the majority of the
rioting broke out. He was transferred from Oscar compound due to the
length of his stay on Manus, and for good behaviour.
Tony Abbott callous disregard to Humanity is absolutely appalling. The
Governor General should act immediately and sack this Government. A true
Fascist Government.
Manus Island's police chief has blasted the Abbott government's
running of the immigration detention camp on the island, suggesting the
recent fatal violence could have been avoided.
Police commander Alex N'Drasal said the protests were sparked
by the failure to act on a list of grievances raised by the asylum
seekers. He said the Australian government should improve the way the
detention centre is run.
Meanwhile, the Australian government has suffered the
ignominy of having its asylum-seeker policy publicly criticised by
another foreign government - this time China, a country with its own
chequered human rights record.
But reliable forensic evidence as to who did is likely to come from the asylum seeker who was shot.
Fairfax has learned that X-rays taken of the man's wound on Tuesday reveal a projectile still wedged against his hip bone.
And that the shape suggests projectile from a large calibre weapon such as those used by police.
Initially there had been rumours that the wound might be from small pellets from a shotgun possibly fired during the riot.
But Manus Island doctor Otto Numan, who X-rayed the victim,
and has seen a number of shotgun wounds said: ''It's not a pellet. I
have seen pellet wounds.''
He said it appeared to be large and in his experience did not match the same type of injuries from a shotgun.
After 24 hours of disturbances among the hapless and hopeless 1340
asylum seekers held there, one man is dead, a dozen more are seriously
injured, and another 65 have lesser injuries.
While Morrison projected his now standard contempt for
accountability, holding faux press conferences where he refused to
answer most questions, two things have become increasing clear.
First, that Manus Island, hell-hole that it is, is not just
part of Operation Sovereign Borders, it is its linchpin. Without it, the
whole offshore policy crumbles.
The fact that everything depends on Manus remaining online
was evidenced by Abbott's emergency chat with O'Neill in the wake of the
first incident on Monday night. The Australian PM was reassured that
PNG was still solid. The spectre of First World wealthy Australia
craning in desperation to retain the acquiescence of its impoverished
neighbour is an embarrassment and reveals the structural flaw at the
heart of the policy.
Papua New Guinea locals employed by security guards at the Manus
Island detention centre attacked asylum seekers with machetes, knives
and rocks, an interpreter employed by the Australian Immigration
Department has claimed.
Azita Bokan alleges asylum seekers used plastic chairs as
shields when they were attacked by locals who entered the centre on
Monday night.
Abbott Government should be sacked by the Governor General. It has now become a Murderous and Incompetent Government that has allowed Asylum Seekers to be demonised, tortured and murdered.
How long can Scott INFO PAD Morrison cower behind secrecy?
Now there's blood in his hands he can no longer hide.
The security firm G4S, which manages the detention centre, denied
claims of attacks inside the centre. In a statement, G4S said it had
removed all ''non-essential'' staff from the compound, along with asylum
seekers who were not participating in the protest. The statement said
the asylum seekers were injured once they left the detention centre.
The opposition spokesman for immigration, Richard Marles,
calling for an inquiry into the incident. ''It's becoming apparent that
Manus Island is melting down on Minister Morrison's watch,'' he said on
ABC 24.
The Refugee Rights Action Network's Victoria Martin said:
''Last night's attack was a massacre. It was a pre-meditated attack on
unarmed and defenceless asylum seekers, some of which have escaped war
and are now being put back into, what is essentially a war zone. Manus
Island is lawless.''
The Greens have demanded that the Manus Island centre be closed.
Greens leader Senator Christine Milne accused the government
of ''bragging'' about poor conditions at the facility. ''Ministerial
responsibility has to mean something and Scott Morrison has to stop
hiding,'' Senator Milne said.
ABBOTT AND CO WILL HAVE TO ANSWER THE UN FOR THESE VIOLATIONS
"There’s nothing normal or acceptable about this level of sociopathy from the Government. I don’t say this as a crybaby lefty, but as a conservative who is quite partial to promoting regular migration pathways and offshore processing. This is disgusting. In the weeks following the government’s criticism of the ABC for airing allegations of the navy abusing asylum seekers, the government releases a comic which depicts the navy as a shadowy harbinger of despair. When we’re all chided for not being on Team Australia, the Abbott ministry produces this mendaciloquent garbage which portrays Australian public servants as worse human beings than “scum of the Earth” people smugglers." Excerpt from the Article by the Guardian Newspaper
Both Major political parties should abandon the detention of Asylum Seekers which is against Human rights, having been condemned by the United Nations. It's barbaric and inhuman to continue with the current system.
The man who died in a Melbourne immigration detention centre was an Indian university student whose visa had been cancelled. The 27-year-old hanged himself in his cell on
Thursday night in the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre after
overstaying his visa, two independent sources said. The Indian community responded by saying more care
should have been taken of the young man's mental health through the
detention centre's duty of care. ''I would urge Minister Morrison to get the system
to review their arrangements in this regards,'' said Yadu Singh, the
president of the Indian Australian Association of NSW.
''We feel sad to know about the death of this young man,'' Dr Singh said. ''Our hearts go out to the parents and family members.
''It is well known when people go into a detention centre they are under massive stress.''
It's hard to imagine that we have to call all those politicians HUMANS that created a monster that is destroying the HUMANITY IN AUSTRALIANS.
