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Articles on Asylum seekers

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Hazaras have long been persecuted in Afghanistan, but those returned from countries like Australia are in particular danger of being tortured and murdered. Wikimedia Commons/ISAF Public Affairs Office

Australia’s folly returns Afghan Hazaras to torture and death

It has been a bad time lately for Afghan Hazaras with Australian connections. In late September, the shocking news came through that the Taliban had tortured and murdered an Australian of Afghan background…
A supposedly proud record of generosity to refugees in no way alters the harshness of the government’s present policies. AAP/Stefan Postles

Unfamiliar pasts challenge our view of responses to refugees

How do Australian institutions and political leaders draw on history to tell us who we are? How do they make sense of Australia’s past as a country of immigration and a nation that has accommodated hundreds…
Paediatricians says children’s trauma is compounded when they are placed in mandatory detention. Australian Human Rights Commission/AAP

Paediatricians say mandatory detention is child abuse

More than 80% of Australian paediatricians believe mandatory detention of asylum seeker children constitutes child abuse, according to survey results published today in the Medical Journal of Australia…
Refugees may find a welcome in rural and regional Australia if resettlement helps ease labour and skill shortages. AAP

Regional Australia can be a carrot or stick in the new refugee policy

Accompanying the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) in Australia last week was a new type of immigration visa, the Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV). What is significant about the SHEV…
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison and Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng toast the resettlement deal, which has alarmed refugee advocates. EPA/Mak Remissa

Explainer: does the Cambodia refugee deal comply with the convention?

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Australia and Cambodia raises important questions about Australia’s international legal obligations, the nature of regional refugee protection and resettlement…
When Immigration Minister Scott Morrison talks of restoring integrity to the program, he isn’t fretting about meeting international legal obligations. AAP/Lukas Coch

Abandon all hope the doubly persecuted people who enter by boat

Whenever an immigration minister states that new laws will “restore integrity” to the immigration program it is clear what they mean is we have new ways of refusing cases and punishing the bad refugees…
Hamid Kehazaei’s death shows asylum seekers Australia detains are excluded from the ethical principles on which medicine and our health system are based. Refugee Action Coalition

Asylum seeker’s ‘brain death’ shows failure of care and of democracy

The news that Hamid Kehazaei, a 24-year-old Iranian asylum seeker detained on Manus Island, has been diagnosed as brain dead following his transfer to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane is a tragedy. That…
It is reasonable to surmise that the number of boats attempting to reach Australia has fallen dramatically in the Abbott government’s first year. AAP/Jon Faulkner

The boats may have stopped, but at what cost to Australia?

In opposition, Tony Abbott and his alternative government set itself a three-word performance indicator for success in its refugee policy if and when it took office: stop the boats. With one recent exception…
Nauru is anything but a tropical paradise for the resettled refugees who were originally flown in as asylum seekers. EPA/Rod Henshaw

‘Here the word future is not a word’: life as a refugee on Nauru

As the government secretly flew 157 asylum seekers seized at sea to Nauru overnight on Friday, 50 men recognised as refugees and given “temporary protection” to settle on Nauru have issued a statement…
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison refused to be drawn on whether people were being trained to use the orange lifeboats. AAP/David Crosling

Tamils trained for lifeboat return to India: lawyers

Lawyers for the 157 Tamil asylum seekers now transferred to Nauru say that while being held at sea the people were told they would be put into orange lifeboats bound for India. The Human Rights Law Centre…
Immigration secretary Martin Bowles has rejected the notion of any cover up by the department relating to children in detention centres. AAP/Joel Carrett

Immigration secretary denies departmental cover-up of asylum health stats

Immigration department secretary Martin Bowles has said his department was seeking advice about new data on the mental health problems of children in detention, not trying to cover it up. Bowles was responding…
Asked to describe their situation, many children in detention drew pictures to express their feelings of hopelessness and despair. Author supplied

Eyewitness: With Gillian Triggs on Christmas Island to inspect child detainees

If a visit to Christmas Island sounds like fun, think again. A remote tropical island in the Indian Ocean – billed as a birdwatcher’s paradise and a haven for snorkelling – has a dark side. It is “home…
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been the subject of calls to get asylum seeker children out of detention centres and into the community. AAP/Nikki Short

Grattan on Friday: Government must be held to account for what’s happening to children in detention

Two characteristics of this government are that it regularly overreaches and that where possible it shies away from transparency and accountability. Very different issues in the news this week highlight…
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been urged to take asylum seeker children out of detention centres. AAP/Nikki Short

Appoint asylum seeker children an independent guardian: churches

Immigration minister Scott Morrison should cease to be the legal guardian of unaccompanied asylum seeker and refugee children, a church-sponsored report has urged. Instead, an independent guardian should…
Less than welcoming… policies that prevent asylum seekers working are dehumanising. AAP Image/Newzulu/Zebedee Parkes

Asylum seekers and the dignity of work

My interview with Mr Syed did not get off to a great start. We’d arranged to meet at the Dandenong library – part of the city council building, a huge, bright orange edifice in the redeveloped heart of…
Australia’s judiciary has emerged as a political and activist institution, frustrating the militarised strategies of the Abbott government in asylum policy. AAP/Lukas Coch

High Court asylum case pits the executive against the judiciary

The full bench of the High Court will hear the case of 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers currently on an Australian customs vessel over two days, starting on August 5. But when the High Court issued an injunction…

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