Posts Tagged ‘Migrants and Refugees’
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Yuko Narushima; 13/5/10
Australia’s longest-serving immigration detainee is a Chinese grandmother who is becoming more withdrawn each day her nine-year detention drags on. The once fashionable Hong Kong business woman panics when there’s a knock at her door. She suffers from severe anxiety and depression, owing to her fear of being deported to China and killed. Yesterday, the Commonwealth Ombudsman recommended Immigration Minister Chris Evans give Ms Bao (not her real name) a visa. It is the second time he has made such a demand but so far, action has been delayed.
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Tags: Australia, China, Human Rights, Migrants and Refugees
Posted in Australia, China, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Stephen Fitzpatrick, 3/4/10
Indonesian immigration authorities are questioning 47 asylum-seekers seized this week trying to reach Christmas Island from Java, one of several boatloads taking advantage of the end of the rainy season. “The weather is definitely a factor,” national police spokesman Edward Aritonang said. “If we use the picture from previous years as a guide, we can see there’s a rise – we’ll see what develops this year.” Many of those trying to reach Australia’s immigration zone in the current wave are from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, and most appear to have been living in temporary accommodation near Bogor, south of Jakarta.
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Tags: Asia, Australia, Indonesia, Migrants and Refugees
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Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Paul Maley; 9/2/10
ASIO fast-tracked security checks on 78 refugees being held in Indonesia following the Oceanic Viking standoff, allowing the Rudd government to meet the terms of a special deal to resettle them within four to 12 weeks. The security agency’s director-general, David Irvine, revealed ASIO had been asked to prioritise the cases of the 78 Sri Lankans being held at the Tanjung Pinang detention centre after their month-long standoff on the Oceanic Viking, a Customs vessel. The revelations came as Mr Irvine told an estimates committee hearing in Canberra yesterday that his agency had handed down a total of 13 negative security assessments in the past 18 months.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Migrants and Refugees
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Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Paul Maley; 19/11/09
Kevin Rudd’s claim that the 78 Tamils rescued by the Oceanic Viking received no special treatment was in tatters yesterday after officials in Canada and Indonesia described the arrangements made for the refugees as extraordinary. With the first of the rescued Tamils expected to arrive in Australia as early as today, Canadian immigration officials said they were preparing to take almost a quarter of the refugees. A spokesman for the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Department, Douglas Kellam, said Ottawa would give priority to those with family in Canada. “Based on the criteria we have and the indications of who would be interested we expect it would be less than a quarter of the people on the boat,” Mr Kellam told The Weekend Australian. “It’s not as though there’s a quota we have, that’s our indication of the number of people we’re looking at.”
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Tags: Australia, Indonesia, Migrants and Refugees
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Monday, September 28th, 2009
Nicolas Perpitch; 28/9/09; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26133743-5013404,00.html
Australian maritime authorities yesterday stopped two boats carrying a total of about 40 asylum-seekers on their way to the mainland, taking the total of boat arrivals this month to nine. HMAS Ararat intercepted one boat about 93 nautical miles northwest of Darwin shortly after 4pm. Initial indications were that there were 12 people on board. HMAS Broome stopped another boat about seven nautical miles north of Ashmore Island, just before 5pm yesterday, carrying an estimated 28 passengers and four crew. A total of 28 boats carrying asylum-seekers have been intercepted this year. The federal opposition has used the spate of recent arrivals to claim the Rudd government’s “softer” treatment of refugees, introduced last September – compared with the hardline approach adopted by the Howard government – is attracting people-smugglers to target Australia as a destination. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said Australia was working hard with Indonesia and Malaysia in a push to deter people-smuggling. The recent run of boats arriving in Australian waters has put a strain on the Christmas Island detention centre.
Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Migrants and Refugees
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Paige Taylor; 18/8/09
Detainees inside Christmas Island’s high-security immigration detention centre are being allowed out without guards under a system in which island residents become chaperones for approved excursions. The designated persons program allows residents of the small Australian territory, 2300km northwest of Perth, to collect detainees from the detention centre and escort them around the island for picnics, cultural events and outings. The program at the $400million immigration detention centre is viewed by refugee advocates as an important step forward for those in the 800-bed facility, which was built with electric fences in the jungle 23km from the island’s main settlement. The Rudd government last year decided not to use a visiting area fitted out with glass dividers that prevent any contact between visitors and detainees and many visits are now conducted in open-air areas inside the compound.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Migrants and Refugees
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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
Stephen Fitzpatrick & Mark Dodd; 14/7/09; (2 Items)
An Afghan asylum-seeker arrested after several days lost at sea claims Australian Federal Police told him a helicopter and boats would be sent to rescue him and up to 85 others. Ali Yewar, 28, a passenger on an asylum-seeker vessel that was bound for Australia and feared lost in Indonesian waters, told The Australian yesterday he called the AFP and gave readings from an onboard GPS device to pinpoint the location of the group’s boat as it foundered off the eastern Indonesian island of Flores. Mr Yewar, also known as Juma Khan, said no help had arrived. “For four nights we drifted but no one came to help us as they promised,” he said. “I spoke to Australians, to Indonesians, but no one came. Our boat was being pushed around in the heavy wind, our engine was seized and the boat was full of water.”
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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Indonesia, Migrants and Refugees
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Monday, June 29th, 2009
Tom Arup; 29/6/09
A boat carrying 194 people, the largest number in eight years, has been intercepted by border protection 23 nautical miles north-west of Christmas Island. The small wooden fishing boat, which defence sources said was “overcrowded”, had been tracked since Friday by Australian officials, after it left Indonesia. On board were mostly men, understood to be of Afghan or Iraqi descent, who are now being processed on Christmas Island in immigration detention. No children were on board. It is the 16th boat to arrive in Australian waters this year — during which 867 people have been intercepted by border protection.
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Tags: Australia, Migrants and Refugees
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Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Yuko Narushima; 23/6/09
Mohamed Haneef’s treatment by the immigration department is unlikely to be repeated again, with rules changed to stop visa cancellations on speculative character grounds. Immigration Minister Chris Evans issued the directive last week, continuing a pattern of talking tough while introducing more humane measures without fanfare. The changes narrow the character grounds on which a minister can deny or strip a person of a visa. Over the past decade, such cancellations swelled from a handful before 1999 to many hundreds.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Migrants and Refugees
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, Terrorism | No Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Paul Maley; 15/5/09; (3 Items)
Six years ago Immigration Department officials asked a 38-year-old Iranian draughtsman locked up in Baxter detention centre for permission to take his seven-year-old daughter to Port Augusta for a shopping trip. The man agreed. “No problem,” he told staff. “Yes, go ahead and enjoy yourself.” He never saw his daughter again. Instead, Immigration officials bundled the young girl on to a plane and sent her home to her mother in Iran. The man, codenamed “Mr X” by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, was in solitary confinement at the time. He was not told of his daughter’s departure until she had touched down in Tehran.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Iran, Migrants and Refugees, Sri Lanka
Posted in Asia, Australia, China, Human Rights, Racism, Refugee & Migrant, Sri Lanka | No Comments »
Friday, March 13th, 2009
13/3/09
Parts of Australia’s immigration and indigenous policies have been named potential human rights violations by the United Nations. The UN also has concerns about Australia’s anti-terror laws and will ask the Federal Government to explain how it is ensuring they don’t contravene international law. The listing of potential international law breaches comes as the UN Human Rights Committee prepares to hold a review into Australia’s human rights record in New York over the next fortnight.
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Tags: Australia, Europe; Human Rights, Migrants and Refugees, UN
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, United Nations | No Comments »
Saturday, January 31st, 2009
Sian Powell; 31/1/09; (3 Items)
Bare backs striped with the scabbed welts of savage beatings; a youngster sobbing in a hospital bed with cotton wool padded to burns on his thigh; skeletally thin men on a wooden boat, half-filled with seawater, some so weak they can hardly clamber aboard a rescue-ship. These are the Burmese Rohingya, pictured in photographs that have shocked the world. Human-rights groups now say hundreds of these stateless and desperate people are feared drowned, after the Burmese military beat many of them, and the Thai military detained hundreds of others, later pushing their rickety boats back out into international waters allegedly with no engines and inadequate food and water.
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Tags: Australia, Burma, Migrants and Refugees, Thailand
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Jewel Topsfield; 22/1/09
Eight Afghan asylum seekers rescued by the navy from a sinking boat off Western Australia last year will be flown to the mainland after the Immigration Department found they would face persecution or death if returned to their homeland. The decision to grant the permanent protection visas comes less than a week after 28 Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers — the first group to be processed on Christmas Island under the Rudd Government — were also found to be refugees. One of the eight Afghans, a medical doctor and human rights activist, told The Age from Christmas Island he was forced to flee his homeland after being shot twice.
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Tags: Australia, Iraq, Migrants and Refugees
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Iraq | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Connie Levett and Yuko Narushima; 21/1/09
Thailand is facing international condemnation after towing about 1000 refugees into international waters and abandoned them with barely a day’s supply of rice and water. Five hundred men are now missing feared drowned. Survivors who were rescued by Indian coastguard 12 days after they were set adrift have told harrowing accounts of their treatment by the Thais.
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Tags: Migrants and Refugees, Thailand
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Stephen Lunn; 4/11/08; (3 Items)
Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans was warned four months ago that migrants were being denied permanent residency in Australia because a family member was disabled. Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes confirmed to The Australian yesterday that he had written to Senator Evans mid-year asking the Government to change the law to ensure immigration decisions did not discriminate against the disabled. Dr Innes’s letter was sent months before the case of Bernhard Moeller came to light last week. The German doctor, who is in Australia on a temporary visa and has practised as a specialist physician in rural Victoria for two years, was rejected for permanent residency by the Immigration Department because of the potential cost to the community of his 13-year-old son Lukas, who has Down syndrome.
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Tags: Australia, Disabled Discrimination, health, Migrants and Refugees
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | 1 Comment »
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
18/10/08
Two Indonesians have been charged with people smuggling after a boat arrived in Australian waters carrying 14 passengers who claimed to be Afghan refugees. There were 17 people, including three crew, aboard the boat when it pulled up alongside an offshore oil production and storage facility in the Timor Sea on October 6. The group was picked up by a Royal Australian Navy vessel and taken to Christmas Island, off the northwest coast of Western Australia.
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Tags: Australia, Indonesia, Migrants and Refugees
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
