Recent history shows politicians should think twice before using refugees and asylum seekers for electoral gain.
A picture taken in the late 1970s shows a group of refugees (162 persons) who arrived on a small boat which sank a few meters from the shore in Malaysia.
UNHCR/K. Gaugler
Forty years ago, the Canadian government applied its new program for private sponsorship of refugees allowing Canada to welcome the largest number of Southeast Asian refugees in the world.
Front pages from Australian newspapers covering terrorist attacks on the United States.
AAP Image
The term ‘genuine refugee’ is thrown around often, yet few know the complicated process of how someone is deemed to be one.
The Brotherhood of St Laurence’s ‘Given the Chance’ program enables asylum seekers and refugees to demonstrate their skills and loyalty as employees.
Brotherhood of St Laurence
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.
Sarah Hanson-Young talks about personal attacks on her, and paying people smugglers to turn their boats around.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
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.
Rohinga people face triple discrimination.
EPA/Hotli Simanjuntak
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.
Under enormous pressure, countries in south east Asia are at last offering help to thousands of stranded migrants – but their gesture is far less meaningful than it seems.
Rohingya refugees from Myanmar travelled in this fishing boat to Sumatra, Indonesia, with officials announcing some 2000 people were rounded up or rescued after arriving in Malaysia and Indonesia over the weekend.
EPA
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.
Another day, another challenge for Operation Triton.
EPA/Francesco Arena
It’s absurd that Europe continues to blame migrants seeking a better life for their own fate.
A refugee displays an image of one of his three children who drowned when the boat on which the family fled the war in Syria sank in the Mediterranean.
EPA/Pete Muller
Political leaders have a ready culprit in people smugglers for drownings at sea. The problem is that this ignores responsibility for eliminating all other options for these people to avoid harm.
Hundreds more migrants rescued as they flee violence and conflict in Africa.
EPA/Alessandro Di Meo