Seeking asylum from persecution is a right and people who do so are not “illegals” under the law. Yet refugees are portrayed in negative and threatening terms in Australia, while positive stories are ignored.
Allegations that people smugglers were paid by Australian officials to return to Indonesia should not distract from the search to find a workable solution to the region’s asylum seeker problem.
The government goes into the parliamentary session’s final fortnight on the back foot over two highly contentious issues: its citizenship legislation and Indonesia’s demand to know whether Australia paid…
Michelle Grattan talks to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young about personal attacks on her, paying people smugglers to turn their boat around, gay marriage, and much more.
Tony Abbott declared on Friday that Australia stopped the people smuggling boats “by hook or by crook”. What Abbott wouldn’t say is whether “by hook or by crook” included paying thousands of dollars to…
ASEAN stood on the sidelines as thousands of refugees were stranded at sea, but it should apply its policy of constructive engagement to ending the persecution that drives Rohingya people out of Myanmar.
Despite international pressure, Myanmar’s government intends to continue the decades-long program of discriminatory policies against the Rohingya that denies them their human rights.
Representatives meeting to discuss South-East Asia’s migrant crisis may learn from the previous refugee crisis that hit the region during the Indochina war.
A summit in Bangkok is discussing the fate of thousands of people who were stranded at sea. Australia is represented but refuses to resettle any refugees, casting doubt on its commitment to a regional solution.
The political rhetoric would suggest that asylum seekers are deserving and economic migrants are undeserving. Yet their motivations overlap and are complex – forced migrants do not fit easily into one category.
Australia may have ‘stopped the boats’ but the tragedy of people drowning at sea continues to our north and is getting worse. A regional solution to the refugee crisis is urgently needed.
The migration of early Africans into the Middle East, then across the Mediterranean into Europe and Asia – and eventually into the Americas and Australia and the Pacific Islands – is the origin of today’s humanity.
Indonesians have long felt that Australia lacks respect for their nation’s sovereignty, but Indonesia’s status as a rising power adds to the urgency of recalibrating our approach to the relationship.