HUMAN RIGHTS & EQUALITY FOR ALL,FREEDOM & JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE, ZIMBABWE, BURMA, EVERY COUNTRY SUFFERING FROM WARS, DROUGHTS, STARVATION, MILITARY ADVENTURES, DICTATORSHIPS, POLICE STATES, RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION, HOMOPHOBIA, CENSORSHIP & OTHER OBSCENITIES.INTERNATIONAL ASYLUM SEEKER SUPPORT
A BLOG SITE, "BLOGNOW" COLLAPSED IN 2009, SO USE THE GOOGLE SITE SEARCH ENGINE
In 94 years and four countries I would have hoped, still being alive in a country priding itself on humanity and human rights, that I would find that there is still some compassion left somewhere in the world and in members of parliament who make up the people who are supposed to represent the people of Australia.
If those people really represent the mass of the country who actually voted them into office, then I suggest we consider ourselves worthy of being back as cave people of some thousands of years ago. Unless our families of the moment consider taking action to restore some modicum of humanity into our lives and behaviours, we really are no better than our ancestors from a bygone age.
I have never seen people who consider themselves adherents of religions which claim to have compassion, humanity and support for the more under-priveleged among us behave towards people who have managed to get away from societies where they are persecuted, assaulted, incarcerated, murdered, perpetrate the same abuses on asylum seekers, and who become involved with the equivalent of what these people desperately hoped they had escaped from.
To hold the sword of Damocles over their heads and threaten to return them to the purgatory from which they have fled, is a sort of torture one had hoped we were civilised enough never to contemplate. Yet here we have some so-called religious maniacs threatening to do just that.
Is there no shame left anywhere and enough people in our societies who will object and ensure this doesn't happen?
I would have hoped this wouldn't happen in my lifetime, but it seems it is an idle hope.
Photo on front page of Preston Leader (now closed down) on 10 MARCH 2020
Hotel
hell for refugees
No
freedom in sight for asylum seekers at Mantra Bell City
By
Richard Pearce, Preston Leader, 10 March 2020
The
55 asylum seekers detained in Preston’s Mantra Bell City for 7
months have had no sign of impending freedom, despite increasing
public support for their release.
The
men were brought to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru, some
having spent up to six years offshore.
But
seven months later there is no sign they will be returned or
released, leaving them in permanent purgatory inside the 4-star
hotel.
The
men have received great community backing, with more than 100 people
turning up to Bell Mantra on 29 February to show their support,
holding signs calling for compassion and their immediate release. The
refugees are being housed in 27 rooms, taking up an entire floor of
one wing of the hotel.
The
Leader has estimated the cost
over 223 days, at $160 a night, to be $963,360.
Social media posts have also detailed an extensive guard presence,
with rooms checked about three times a day.
The asylum seekers were brought here under the Medevac Bill, a piece
of legislation allowing refugees access to healthcare as long as they
had recommendations from two Australian doctors.
They would have been released into the community after treatment but
that legislation was repealed in December last year, leaving their
fate in the hands of the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton.
Refugee Action Collective spokesman Chris Breen said while the idea
of staying in a hotel might seem like a holiday, there was no
mistaking the men were prisoners.
“It’s become a place of torture”, he said.
“They can’t open the windows to get air. They’re stuck inside
19 hours a day.”
“The only way they can get exercise at all is if they request to go
back to Broadmeadows Detention Centre.”
Some
of the men have used social media to seek support for their
cause.
“We
have been locked up in hotels by the Australian Government,”
Kurdish musician Moz Azimi wrote on Twitter.
An
Australian Border Force spokesperson said detainees transferred to
Australia for medical treatment were expected to be returned
afterwards.
The
spokesperson said decisions to place detainees in hotels or other
forms of accommodation were determined case-by-case.
They
refused to answer when the asylum seekers would be released.
The
Department for Home Affairs and Bell City Mantra were contacted for
comment.
This photo was provided by Gary Jaynes on 30 JUNE 2020 and the middle column of the wall obliterates the bottom word on the banner. The banner reads:
"FREE REFUGEES FROM MANTRA THEY ARE NOT CRIMINALS"
Demonstration in Bell Street, Preston, outside Mantra Hotel in support of Asylum Seekers incarcerated in one of the concentration camps in Australia
My Article submitted to Overland, but not accepted for publication
18 March 2020
SOUTH AFRICA - APARTHEID POLICE STATE; AUSTRALIA - APARTHEID POLICE STATE; ISRAEL - APARTHEID POLICE STATE
"HOTEL HELL FOR REFUGEES"
Headline on front page of Preston Leader on Tuesday 10 March 2020 (This is a Murdoch paper!!! )
Whatever happened to our so-called democracies?
Starting with South Africa, the world waited with bated breath for
dramatic changes when Nelson Mandela became the first black president of
a united South Africa and possibly the end of apartheid - and the
police state.
Mandela retired after his first and only 5-year term as president -
he was, of course, quite elderly by then and after the criminally hard
life he had had in South Africa's infamously dreadful prison on Robben
Island, he rightly thought a younger generation should govern for South
Africa.
He wrongly favoured Thabo Mbeki who was disastrous during his
periods as president because he was an AIDS denier to the extent that
even today, a few presidents later, HIV/AIDS still presents a major
health challenge for the South African people.
A little later Jacob Zuma became president and corruption set in,
with disastrous results for the economy and all other facets of South
African life.
One of the disasters of this period was the Marikana massacre of
many miners who had gone on strike because of the murderous
mismanagement of the company owning certain mines.
The person who is now the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was apparently
the person who ordered the police and the army to open fire on the
miners. In an earlier incarnation he had been the president of the
organisation Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Then he
became a business man and also very rich.
Disaster all the way, and the rich got richer and the poor poorer -
if possble - and South Africa still remains a mess - in 2020.
I arrived in Australia from South Africa in 1978, hoping apartheid and police state would not be as bad as in South Africa.
Idle hope! After all, apartheid started in Australia on 26 January
1788 and the nature of the British colonisation of Australia was that it
was already a police state. Instead of improving over the years, the
police state has intensified to the extent that asylum seekers managing
to get to Australia - escaping mostly from brutal regimes around the
world and arriving here to ask for asylum, hoping to have peace in their
lives, are locked up in concentration camps from which escape is
virtually impossible.
Some slightly more humanitarian politicians - and they are few and
far between in Australia - managed to pass legislation to bring refugees
to Australia from the concentration camps on Manus and Nauru for
medical treatment. This legislation was overturned by the government
as soon as it was possible, and 55 asylum seekers have been locked up in
a Mantra Hotel in Preston in Melbourne for the last 8 months with no
chance of any relief in sight and no hope of change from a government
and opposition determined to follow a police state mentality of locking
people in concentration camps and throwing away the keys.
What is mostly ignored by most white Australians and many migrants
in the last 200 years or so is that the indigenous inhabitants of this
ancient country are still treated like savages in their own land and
they are imprisoned at alarming rates where they are also suffering
deaths in custody by a brutal police regime determinedly maintained by
the police state governments of the country.
Some of those of us who have experienced the 'joys' of living in a
police state despair of any changes in Australia because so many people
behave like sheep and also can - or won't be bothered with making any
sorts of protests and leaving the rest of us with that hopeless feeling
that there is never going to be any changes - ever!
At the age of 93 I thought I had seen and experienced most of the
worst aspects of human nature but the longer I live the worse it gets -
and I haven't spoken about Israel yet.
Israel is not only a police state, but one with fascist tendencies.
Israelis resent being compared to the Nazis but most of what they are
doing to keep the Palestinians under control is to keep them
incarcerated in their concentration camps in Gaza and the West Bank on
land stolen from them by the zionist settlers. Even those Palestinians
who were and are in Israel as citizens of their own land are treated
like second or third class citizens without full citizens' rights
because the zionist project is to occupy the rest of Palestine which has
some old Jewish names - Judea and Samaria - for them called after some
of the old tribal groups of a few thousand years ago.
Israel wants a Jewish state and if that is what they want, Israel
under no circumstances can be called a democracy - it hasn't been that
for most of its existence - but a theocracy similar to Iran and other
similar religious states.
.........and Israel is the propagator of much of the anti-semitism in the world in the 21st century.
Posted by Mannie De Saxe at 4:12 PM
Labels: anti-semitism, apartheid, apartheid South Africa, Australia, democracy, Israel, police states, South Africa, theocracy
The following article is from The Age online, and is more than about time that the non-Murdoch media acted like they say on the top of their paper - Independent - always.
It now remains to be seen whether they will try and build up a campaign to force this pathetic government and its loyal opposition to get the asylum seekers out of the concentration camps on Manus, Nauru and places like the Mantra hotel in Preston, Melbourne.
Australians who have not supported those trying to get these human rights abuses ended need to reconsider how they have felt being in "lock down" because of COVID-19, and now need to have some understanding of the cruelty to which asylum seekers have been exposed for all these years and DO SOMETHING!!
Refugee activists occupy Preston hotel housing medevac detainees
Healthcare
workers have previously described the makeshift detention centre
housing more than 60 men as a "very high-risk environment" for
transmitting the coronavirus.
Eight
activists checked into three rooms at the Bell Street hotel on Monday,
and barricaded themselves into at least one of the rooms from 7.30am
Tuesday.
The protesters have also occupied the roof of the hotel
and locked themselves on as part of the demonstration. Banners have been
draped from the roof saying: "let them out" and "seven years lock-down
freedom now".
Footage from the scene shows police escorting all eight activists off the property mid-afternoon.
A
statement from the Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance
(WACA) said the demonstration aimed to draw attention to the need for
detainees to be provided with the medical care they were brought to
Australia for under the now-repealed "medevac laws".
Banners are on the roof of the hotel, saying, "let them out".Credit:WACA
"Over
the last two months of this pandemic the federal and state government
message has been 'we are all in this together'. Clearly some of us of
are more in this together than others. We are not truly together until
all, including detained asylum seekers and refugees, have their
freedom," spokesperson Gaye Demanuele said.
Last month, more than 1180 healthcare professionals signed a joint letter to the government calling for the men to be released.
"Failure
to take action to release people seeking asylum and refugees from
detention will not only put them at greater risk of infection (and
possibly death), it also risks placing a greater burden on wider
Australian society and the health care system," said the letter, drafted
by infectious diseases expert Professor David Isaacs.
More than
60 men are confined to a secure floor of the motel, which is off limits
to other guests and staffed by armed guards. While Australian Border
Force, which operates the motel's secure wing, has cancelled all outside
visits, guards come and go throughout the day.
No
detainee in immigration has tested positive to COVID-19, and a
spokesperson said the Australian Border Force was focussed on health and
safety during the pandemic.
The protesters began the demonstration about 7.30am on Tuesday.Credit:WACA
"A
range of measures have been introduced to actively manage health,
hygiene and cleaning requirements in all detention facilities. These
measures are continually reviewed in line with the current health
advice," the spokesperson said.
"All detainees continue to have ongoing access to the medical professionals located within facilities, including after hours."
Refugee activists on the roof of the Mantra hotel in Preston on Tuesday.Credit:WACA
Any detainee with flu-like symptoms are tested and quarantined, according to Border Force.
Kurdish
man Farhad Bandesh was medically evacuated from Manus Island and then
moved from the Mantra to the Melbourne Immigration and Transit
Accommodation centre (MITA).
A refugee activist barricaded in a Mantra hotel room on Tuesday.Credit:WACA"My friends [at Mantra] are really sick, mentally and physically, and the situation there is really stressful," Mr Bandesh said.
"At
the moment I think they've got good energy because of the people that
are supporting them, and we are still asking for our rights after so
many years."
He thanked the protesters, "they show we are not alone".
"All the detention centres are all the same, everyone is panicking and they are scared. They don't want to catch the COVID-19."
The roof of the Mantra in Preston.Credit:WACAActivists
have bypassed lockdown restrictions during the pandemic by walking past
Mantra and the MITA centre in protest of detention.
Walking is
considered exercise and is allowable under Victoria's lockdown rules
though protests themselves are a breach of the restrictions.
Last month, 30 people were also fined for protesting in support of refugees and asylum seekers outside the Preston hotel.
African asylum seekers living in Israel are
being asked to choose between deportation or prison as authorities in
that country crack down on “infiltrators”. But as several asylum seekers
tell KRISTEN VAN SCHIE, it’s no choice at all.
Muhtar Awdalla was given a choice: Leave Israel, or go to prison. It
was early 2014 and the Sudanese asylum seeker had already wasted months
of his life behind bars – in Libya, in Egypt and, when he finally
crossed the border, in Israel. Having fled the conflict in Darfur as a teenager in 2003, the whole point of the years-long journey was to find a better life.
“There were so many people crossing to Israel,” Awdalla said. “They said the country really respected human life.” But when he arrived there in 2009, he found the experience “opposite – totally opposite”. For
eight months he languished in a detention centre. It took months more
to get a temporary visa – he couldn’t work without one. Even when he got
it, he couldn’t study. Dreams of becoming a lawyer stagnated as his 20s
ticked by in restaurant jobs and Hebrew classes and days and days spent
queuing to renew his papers. When
the ultimatum of detention or deportation was put to Awdalla, the
authorities proposed Uganda as his final destination. They would cover
his flights and organise his travel documents. He would even get $3,500.
“I didn’t want to go to prison and waste my time again,” he said. “I thought if I went to Uganda, I could finally study.” He
caught a connecting flight though Jordan and at some point on the
second leg of the journey fell asleep. He woke as the plane was landing.
A sign from the window caught his eye: “Welcome to Khartoum Airport”.
Israel had sent him back to Sudan.
“I
was shocked and disappointed,” Awdalla said. “I never expected to
survive. I thought the Sudanese government was going to kill me.” He was promptly arrested and his belongings confiscated. They even took the $3,500. *** It’s
stories like Awdalla’s that send shivers down the spines of the
estimated 38,000 African asylum seekers living in Israel, mostly from
Eritrea and Sudan. In
December 2017, the country announced a new plan of forced deportations
of asylum seekers to “third countries” in Africa, if those countries
agree to take them. The community will have to choose between leaving, or indefinite detention. But
the announcement is just the latest move in what activists describe as a
sustained campaign by the Israeli government of “making life miserable”
for asylum seekers to convince them to leave.
“They
have no status here,” explained Dror Sadot, spokesperson for the
Hotline for Refugees and Migrants NGO. “They’re not granted refugee
status. The government calls them ‘infiltrators’. They pay taxes but are
not granted any social rights... all of Israel’s responsibilities and
obligations to asylum seekers are just thrown out.” Testimony
from asylum seekers who left voluntarily have named the “third
countries” as Rwanda and Uganda, though both have denied the existence
of any “written agreement” with Israel. Sadot
says voluntary deportees have arrived in Rwanda or Uganda with no legal
documentation – “no work permit, no status, nothing”. Many are robbed
of the $3,500 granted to them by the Israeli government or quickly
trafficked out of the third countries to join the migration route
through Libya to Europe.
“We can monitor only those people who survive. They tell us about their friends who died at sea, who drowned next to them.” Like Awdalla, some say they were not sent to a third country at all, but to the very war zones they fled. The deportations haven’t started yet and will not apply to families. But Sadot said the panic in the community is palpable.
“It’s
really hard. I mean, people are standing here in a line outside our
offices. We’re trying to calm the communities, to send messages out in
their languages to explain the situation. We’re trying to see what legal
options we have.” *** Asylum
seekers from Eritrea and Sudan first began arriving in Israel in the
mid-2000s, before the country sealed off its border with Egypt. After years under “group protection”, applications for refugee status in Israel opened in 2013. Since
then, only 11 people – 10 Eritreans and a Sudanese man – have applied
successfully. The rest are deemed economic migrants and blamed for the
crime rates in poorer Tel Aviv neighbourhoods. Sudanese asylum seeker Anwar Suliman, 38, submitted his application more than four years ago.
“Until today, I didn’t get a yes or no,” he said. “It’s important for us to know the answer – it could change our lives.” Speaking to Daily Maverick, Suliman detailed a frustrating life lived in the limbo of detention centres and visa application queues. Back
in Sudan, before he fled, he was an archaeologist, specialising in
Egyptian and Sudanese history. His political activism twice landed him
in jail.
“I had to escape. If I continued, I could get arrested even more. Maybe killed.” Fifteen
years later, Suliman now works in a restaurant in Tel Aviv. Altogether,
he’s spent about two years in Israeli detention. It’s not a life, he
says.
“But what can we do? Every year some new policy is coming...” Still, given the choice between returning to Africa or a life behind bars, he would pick the latter.
“I miss Africa, but I’m not ready to go back,” he said. “Rwanda and Uganda are not my homeland.
“I
don’t know what comes next. After what happened to us, you don’t have a
plan any more. For some people life is clear. But for me nothing is
clear.” ***
“It’s a racially motivated system,” Eritrean asylum seeker and community organiser Teklit Michael, 29, said. After
10 years in Israel, he doesn’t mince his words. There were the people
who supported the asylum seekers, “people who know about human dignity
and human rights”. But they were in the minority, he said.
“Even
the people who are issuing you visas, they treat you like shit, like a
slave. They don’t give a shit. They don’t think that you’re a human
being like them, that you can suffer, feel pain.” In November 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke glowingly of Africa on a visit to Kenya.
“We
believe in the future of Africa, we love Africa and I would like very
much not only to co-operate on an individual basis with each of your
countries but also with the African Union,” he said. But
just three months earlier, he promised to return the Tel Aviv
neighbourhoods where many Africans live “to the citizens of Israel”.
Asylum seekers like Michael were “not refugees”, Netanyahu said, “but
infiltrators looking for work”.
“They treat us like animals and blame us for everything,” Michael told Daily Maverick. “They never loved us. They never will love us.” So why stay in a place that didn’t want him?
“I
don’t have a choice. I don’t have a passport. I don’t have anything. I
can’t go anywhere. And even if they give me the chance, I don’t know
anything about Rwanda.” Friends who had taken the deal were trafficked out of that country.
“Nobody
actually stayed in Rwanda. Their documents are taken on arrival. They
tell them to pay money for the hotel and money for the smugglers. Then
they take them to the border.
“I don’t have any guarantee for my asylum claim, or for my protection. This is simply human trafficking.
“It’s better for me to stay here in prison than to go to Rwanda or Uganda.” *** Muhtar did find his way to Uganda eventually – after a brother helped bribe him out of a Sudanese prison. At 29, he’s now a third-year law student and president of his university’s law society.
“It’s an incredible feeling to finally be following my dreams,” he told Daily Maverick. He misses Israel. He misses his friends there. But he plans on using his degree to sue the government for what it did to him.
“They
lied to me. They took me to a place I didn’t want to go, a place that
could have ended my life... If you don’t take risks in life, you will
never succeed. But if I knew they were were going to send me to Sudan, I
would never have taken that risk. Never.” DM Photo: African
asylum seekers and Israelis residents of South Tel Aviv neighborhoods
hold signs in Hebrew that read 'South Tel Aviv is against the
deportation' during a protest against the African migrants deportations
in southern Tel Aviv, Israel, 09 January 2018. Some 38,000 African
asylum seekers live in Israel. EPA-EFE/ABIR SULTAN
The situation on Manus has become critical if not criminal, and at this stage there should be an outcry from Australian citizens demanding an end to this foul treatment of people who in the main have experienced nothing but trauma over the last several years since fleeing from those causing them untold grief and sorrow.
The whole story really starts in 1992 when Paul Keating was Australian Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister of Australia after deposing Bob Hawke.
Keating decided that people coming to Australia seeking asylum should be locked up and screened before being allowed to be let out to mix with Australian citizens and their lives and cultures. The situation has gone steadily downhill since then, with the ALP's cruelty being continued by the Coalition and other small groups within the federal parliament carrying on the "great" tradition started by Keating so long ago, with the latest disaster from a country which thinks it is entitled to some UN recognition on its Human Rights organisation. Manus was officially closed by the Australian government on 1 NOVEMBER 2017 when electricity, water, food and other necessities of life were removed from 600 asylum seekers who have refused to move. On 3 NOVEMBER 2017 the Papua New Guinea government, emulating its Australian masters, has refused to let church groups enter the camp with food, and a boatload from Australia carrying supplies has also been forbidden from landing. It is difficult to comprehend the cruelty being inflicted on these people and reminds me of stories from South Africa and Europe during the Nazi and Stalinist and other regime disasters of much of the 20th century.
This could well be termed a genocide in the making, and in the end will be similar to what the world is doing to the Palestinians in their own country and what is being done by governments everywhere which have been trying to get rid of their indigenous communities by every means at their disposals.
The above sign was seen in an upstairs window above a shop in High Street, Thornbury, Melbourne, and the sign reads:
BRING THEM HERE
CLOSE THE CAMPS
When one assesses the total number of human beings involved with this disaster, the number is so tiny in proportion to the refugee problems everywhere else in the world that it adds to Australia's shame that this has been allowed to happen at all, and to continue for so long without roars of outrage from the Australian population.
Which all goes to show how dulled are the senses and sensibilities of the Australian population.
And then think of the numbers who come by plane who outstay their visas and the responses of the politicians to the whole sorry saga.
It is all totally heartbreaking, and do you think anybody will read this and feel ashamed of their attitudes to asylum seekers? Of course not!
Peter Dutton makes one ashamed of the human race, together with his government and their loyal opposition.
Each time the federal government does or says something about asylum seekers that hasn't been done or said before, it doesn't take long to see they have all sunk to depths no one could have believed was possible.
Their cruelty is no different from the dictatorships and police states which we have seen so much of in the 20th century and which has carried on into the 21st century. It just reaches new levels of depravity all the time.
It is only a matter of time before politicians in Australia follow the lead of their zionist masters and start a genocide of sorts against asylum seekers who now seem to have no possibility of resolution to their problems after fleeing from the countries which were persecuting them.
Australia's apprenticeship on concentration camps ended some time ago, even before the establishment of the infamous pair Manus and Nauru.
Those on Christmas Island and on the Australian mainland were already emulating the best in the world - the British ones in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, the German ones during World War II, and, from 1948 onwards, the Israeli ones in Gaza and the Occupied Territories of the Palestinian West Bank which the zionists have always claimed as zionist homeland territory after falsifying history in the best traditions of colonial and occupying powers over the ages, not forgetting one of the other more infamous ones of the modern era such as the USA one called Guantanamo on occupied Cuban land.
One of the best ways of ridding oneself of unwanted refugees, asylum seekers, "foreigners" of various origins - is to lock them up in concentration camps and help them to die off while in imprisonment and then blame them themselves for their deaths.
Manus has been a particularly fruitful camp for asylum deaths in custody - people who have committed no crimes but who have fled from their countries of origin because of illegal wars perpetrated on their countries by such imperial powers as Australia, UK, USA, France and many others too numerous to mention - the African continent bears the brunt of so much these days.
The 20th century has seen endless crimes committed by countries spending untold amounts of money on arms and war equipment, and killing millions of innocent people on an ongoing basis - the Israeli government is a "good" example of this ongoing tragedy, and Australia has willingly joined its masters around the globe in these exercises in order to gain resources, territories, markets, and all the other spoils of war.
The one "spoils of war" issue that none of them wants is the influx of millions of refugees and asylum seekers from around the world, and what do we do? We lock them up and wait for them to die!
This is the sort of discussion in which one doesn't know where to start because it is all so disgusting!
The latest horrors emanating from the current Australian government is an edict stating that those asylum seekers currently locked in the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus will NEVER, repeat NEVER EVER will be given any sort of visas or permits allowing them to land on Australian soil.
Where is the fury from the people living in Australia? Why is there not a mass revolt in the community demanding that this edict is withdrawn immediately?
Where do the Australian people come from other than the indigenous population who come from - well here, Australia, of course?
They come from every country in the world and hundreds, and thousands came here as refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom have fled persecution and oppression of one sort or another.
Then we come to racism and religion and persecution of minorities, and in Australia successive governments have been refining their cruelty over the years, forgetting their own origins or that of their families and that many of their ancestors came here in chains and as slaves and criminals.
We then have the most offensive, racist comments by one of the government ministers that many of the criminal acts in Australia have been committed by one select group of people singled out for mention, never mind the hundreds and thousands of acts of criminality carried out by groups from whom this same minister has himself originated, as have many of his colleagues.
How selective can one get when one wants to brand a "select" group of people in the community as the major criminals in the country??
Is there anything more disgraceful than what is going on in Australia at the moment - 8 November 2016 - than the responses of the federal politicians to some of the most unfortunate human beings on the planet?
Locked away in the concentration camps established by Australia in Nauru and Manus (Papua New Guinea), the asylum seekers have just been dealt another death blow by the Australian government which is in the process of passing a bill to deny entry to Australia - EVER - of these unfortunate people.
Those of us who live in Australia and are mortified by the shenanigans of our politicians are in a situation where all the protests we have been able to be part of for the last several years have found it all to be of no avail, and the situation deteriorates daily.
Why is there not an outcry by the people who live in this country - ALL - except the indigenous population - of whom are migrants and asylum seekers? Why are they not screaming at their politicians and demanding humanitarian treatment of human beings who are desperate for some safety and security in their lives for themselves and their children?
To continue Alan Paton's refrain - "Cry the Beloved Country" - but this is no longer a beloved country - its human rights abuses are horrific and relate to regimes we have known over the past 100 years and more.
Over the last few years I have started petitions concerned with closing the concentration camps and freeing asylum seekers into the community.
The petitions were met with a stony silence generally, the first one obtaining less than 90 signatures. The second one reached about 40.
All of a sudden, because there has been talk of the numbers of children in the camps, their treatment in the camps and torture and disease growing alarmingly, the population is gradually stirring and more people are becoming concerned about the situation.
I don't know what would happen if one tried to start another petition but I am not game to try, being too worn out by the disgusting politics of the whole situation.
Who caused the situation in so many countries around the world that as of today, there are millions all over who are trying to escape the disasters unfolding in their countries of origin?
Why, none other than the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and other countries too numerous to list ---------- and as they say, ......."and the band played on".
When I lived in South Africa during the apartheid years I desperately wanted to get myself and my family out of South Africa. I was, in fact, an asylum seeker in the 1970s. The basic difference between my situation and that of current day asylum seekers around the world was that I had a few advantages which were in my favour and so was much luckier than today's hundreds and thousands who are fleeing in desperate circumstances with no advantages other than a desperate desire to get out of their state of persecution and oppression and torture to a country - any country - which will let them in and allow them to have a safe home for themselves and their families.
I was a white, English speaking, qualified professional with other personal advantages in my favour, and therefore able to gain admission into Australia, which, in 1978 seemed such a good place to live after so many years of living in apartheid South Africa with deteriorating circumstances and more political oppression than had ever been seen in that country at that time.
Now we come to apartheid Australia in 2016 where politicians of all sorts forget that modern Australia was forged from "boat people" arriving here very often in desperate circumstances and doing their best to destroy indigenous people and their cultures and take over the country from the dispossessed who are now treated like squatters in their own country.
Then we get the world's horrors where Australians have gone to countries to fight wars which have nothing to do with Australia's security, causing refugees to flee from their countries and try to get to Australia to gain asylum. Those who managed to get close have now been removed to concentration camps set up by Australia in Manus - part of Papua New Guinea - and Nauru - where they are now left with no hope of getting into Australia because the government has determined not to allow them in.
How do you go on living under such circumstances and why is there no outcry from the Australian population?
Man's inhumanity to man or people's inhumanity to people - it is all scandalous and unforgiveable, particularly as the numbers trying to enter Australia are literally miniscule in relation to what is happening with asylum seekers in other countries.
It makes one embarrassed to actually be a citizen of this country with its disgusting behaviour and cruelty to fellow human beings.
As the asylum seeker situation spirals out of control, the international crisis is one in which most countries around the world have responsibility, both for causing the crises in so many countries and for then needing to deal with the situation in which hundreds and thousands of people who have fled disasters have to be housed and given sustenance and everything else to keep them alive and address the problem.
Most countries in Europe are affected, and the situations in the Middle East and Asia join the disasters from the African continent fleeing to Europe for some hope of survival and a future life.
One of the countries least affected by many thousands of asylum seekers is Australia. The number trying to get to Australia has always been small, the majority having tried to get to countries in other parts of the world.
An Australian prime minister who was nominally from a political party of the left introduced the first concentration camps to Australia in 1992, and in the last 24 years the crisis of asylum seekers has deteriorated so that some thousands of people are imprisoned in countries other than Australia and where they have no opportunity of ever obtaining justice for being locked up for "crimes" they never committed.
As a South African who lived in apartheid South Africa for the major portion of his life, I saw the consequences of the people who were incarcerated in the British concentration camps during the South African war of 1899 to 1902. Those people who had been locked up lived with the traumas ever afterwards and passed the traumas on to their children and grandchildren and beyond, to this day.
There will be the same outcome for the people Australia has locked up in its offshore concentration camps in Nauru and Manus Island of Papua New Guinea.
The population of Australia is to blame as much as successive governments because politicians and the media have continued to demonise innocent people fleeing tragedy and disaster in the countries from which they have fled.
Very few politicians do anything about remedying the disaster and the horror continues.
We need to use whatever forums we have at our disposal to keep on pursuing the issue until something is done to stop the tragedy unfolding.
Inside The Department: The Explosive Leaked Transcripts From The Moss Review
By Max Chalmers and Chris Graham
A
senior public servant’s candid revelations about ‘shit-worried’ Scott
Morrison, protests on Nauru, the violence on Manus, and the sacking of
Save The Children workers. Max Chalmers and Chris Graham report.
In
his September 25, 2014 video message to asylum seekers detained on
Manus Island and Nauru, Scott Morrison plays the tough guy.
A deadpan Minister for Immigration speaks directly into the camera:
“If you are currently in Papua New Guinea or Nauru, you will not be
transferred to Australia… you will remain there until you either choose
to return, or you are resettled somewhere else other than in Australia.
“Now is the time to think about your future, for you and your family.”
The video was designed to bludgeon detainees into returning to the countries from which they fled.
It backfired, spectacularly.
Contrary to Morrison’s message, there was no influx of ‘illegals’ on
Nauru asking the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to send
them home.
Instead, there was widespread anger, and protests. And as the anger
grew, so did the numbers protesting, and so did the intensity.
Over the course of a week, both adults and children began to
self-harm, with detainees drinking shampoo and mosquito repellent,
others attempting suicide by hanging, and some detainees as young as 15
sewing their lips together.
The disturbing details are contained within a string of interviews
with Philip Moss, the former Integrity Commissioner charged by the
Abbott Government with investigating allegations that asylum seekers on
Nauru were raped, and that government contracted workers were involved
in assisting detainees in the protests, including coaching them to
self-harm in order to generate public sympathy for their plight.
Leaked transcripts of some of those interviews have been obtained by
New Matilda. They contain deeply disturbing testimony of asylum seekers
about their treatment on Nauru.
They also contain some stunning insights into the inner workings of the Department of Immigration.
One of the nation’s highest ranking public servants – Mark Cormack
(pictured right), a former Deputy Secretary, Immigration Status
Resolution Group in the Department of Immigration - is interviewed by
Moss.
Cormack is directly responsible for the handling of asylum seekers, once they’ve been detained by Australian authorities.
Cormack’s interview was held on December 10 last year, just a few days before he left the department. It is remarkably candid.
Cormack reveals that as the protests over Morrison’s video gathered
momentum, Morrison became “shit worried” he would have another Manus
Island on his hands, a reference to days of violent protests inside and
outside the Papua New Guinea-based Australian detention centre, protests
which ultimately saw an Iranian asylum seeker, Reza Berati, beaten to
death by the very government workers paid to protect him.
Some of Cormack’s more startling testimony reveals that:
1. Morrison’s “looseness” was to
blame for the fact media were mislead over the death of Berati, despite
the Minister later blaming the error on flawed departmental advice.
2. In the days immediately after
the release of his video, Morrison became “shit worried” about the
situation on Nauru, with Cormack fearing it could escalate to “a scale
much worse than Manus”.
3. Cormack promised the Minister
“a list of the names” of Save The Children workers who were suspected of
agitating with asylum seekers and possibly coaching them to self-harm.
They would then be removed from Nauru. Morrison “heartily agreed” with
the plan, and then was “continually on [Cormack’s] back” until the staff
left the island.
4. The 10 Save The Children
workers who were subsequently ordered off Nauru by the department may
not have been “the right 10 people”.
5. Cormack appeared to criticise
the fact the Moss review is investigating both rape allegations and
claims of staff misconduct, and tells Moss during his testimony that
“we’re going to have to be very careful about what we say, what the
Minister did….”
6. Morrison believed that asylum
seekers might have been “put up” to allege rape in order to bring the
Australian immigration detention process into disrepute.
New Matilda will be reporting details of other transcripts in the
coming days. In the meantime, here are some of Cormack’s insights into
Australia’s system of immigration detention.
1. Scott Morrison’s “looseness”
IN THE days following the February 2014 murder of asylum seeker Reza
Berati on Manus Island – violence which saw an additional 77 detainees
injured, 13 seriously and one critically - Morrison initially tried to
pin the blame on detainees because, in his words, they had broken out of
the safe confines of the immigration compound.
Morrison’s claim was contradicted by media reporting at
the time, including by former New Matilda editor Marni Cordell, which
revealed police “went in shooting” after several days of internal
protests, and that Barati had been beaten to death inside the confines
of the detention centre.
Within hours, Morrison began backing away from the story, but he
waited five full days before finally abandoning it altogether. In
finally correcting the reports, Morrison laid the blame for his initial
error on information he had been provided at the time.
“When I first reported on this matter in Darwin in the early hours of
that morning, just hours after the incident, the initial reports were
that events had taken place outside the centre. It was important to
brief on the issue as early as possible on Tuesday morning as there had
been a tragic death.
Information is rarely perfect soon after the event.
Any early reports are always qualified along these lines, as my report
on that morning was,” Morrison told media.
But according to his testimony to Philip Moss, Mark Cormack has a different recollection of events.
“A person died, many people were injured, the public lost faith in
the government’s policy, the Minister suffered a major credibility hit
because of some looseness in public communication on his part
immediately after the event, which subsequently had to be corrected, and
then we had to go through this process of reparation and restoration to
the point where we’ve kind of recovered from that,” Cormack told Moss.
“But many people will never forget that, same as people don’t forget
the Villawood riots and other riots, people don’t forget that sort of
stuff.”
2. Morrison became “shit worried”
FOLLOWING the release of Morrison’s video to asylum seekers on Nauru
on September 25, 2014, Cormack acknowledges that tensions escalated
quickly among detainees, and was sustained and organised.
Children and adults were self-harming, and some of the incidents were being filmed and leaked out to media.
Cormack describes the situation on Nauru as “five or six days of
large scale disruption”, which, “if not stopped could lead to a dramatic
meltdown of a scale much worse than Manus, because there were kids
involved, there were women involved, there are families involved, there
are unaccompanied minors involved, and there weren’t any [proper] fences
really... although we’ve put some up since then. But really there isn’t
a lot to contain people there, other than the physical environment…. I
mean if people want to get out of there, they can, and they do.”
The major concern Cormack conveyed to Moss was his fear that some
staff from Save The Children – a non government organisation contracted
by the department to provide social services for detainees – had become
too close to detainees, and were involved in assisting them in the
escalating protests, and coaching them to self-harm.
Cormack’s concerns were backed up by an intelligence report from
other contractors on the island, Transfield and Wilson Security, dated
September 30 (five days after the release of the Morrison video) which
warns the government of a sequence of likely events, all of which
appeared to be coming true.
“Suddenly, we saw [happening on the island] what the intel report had
said would happen, which is that you would see people take more
detailed information reports that could be discoverable in an FOI
context, and you would see people… participating in more organised
self-harm involving children,” Cormack says.
“So you get this report at the same time as you are seeing … five to
six days of growing kind of peaceful protests… and you think, hmmmm, I
think there might be something to this intel report. And by the way, I
lived through Manus and other things and there’s a certain sense of
foreboding happening here, and… this is off the back of a month-by-month
buildup of concerns about [the actions of] Save The Children [staff].”
Cormack then describes the actions taken by him and Angus Campbell,
the former head of the defence force and the man leading ‘Operation
Sovereign Borders’, the government’s crackdown on boat arrivals.
“… this would have been towards the end of September, I think the
30th of September is the date of the intel report, so it was probably a
couple of days after that.
“Angus [Campbell] and I meet twice a week with the Minister on all
matters Operation Sovereign Borders, and obviously my bit’s the Offshore
Processing Centres, Angus does the boats, and all that sort of stuff as
well.
“The Minister was shit worried about how things were going in Nauru,
and we shared with him this intelligence [report]… Basically [we] said,
“Have a look at this.”
Cormack adds: “What I put to the Minister was we’re very concerned about what [the intelligence report] says."
The veracity of some of the claims in the intelligence report have since come under close scrutiny – in a Lateline report aired earlier this week,
and by Philip Moss himself, who during the course of his interviews
repeatedly challenges the author of the intelligence report, Lee
Mitchell, a senior intelligence analyst with Wilson Security, about the
claims of self-harm coaching.
While the truth of that allegation in particular remains unclear –
the Moss review has still not been released – what is apparent from the
interview with Cormack is that Morrison was kept informed of a
subsequent plan to sack Save The Children staff.
And in the end, that’s what the Department of Immigration did. At
Cormack’s behest, 10 Save The Children workers were identified, then
removed from the island.
3. Morrison ‘heartily agrees’ with plan to get rid of 10 Save The Children workers
CORMACK'S interview reveals some remarkable admissions about the
Minister’s knowledge of the fate of the ‘Nauru 10’ – the Save the
Children staff who were summarily removed from Nauru, amid accusations
of misconduct.
“I said to the Minister, ‘Minister what I’m going to do is I’m going
to get a list of the names of the people who were identified as
orchestrating or participating in this kind of behavior. I will get a
list put to me, and I will exercise a right under our contract to have
those people removed’,” Cormack tells Moss.
“That’s what I said to [Morrison]. And he heartily agreed.”
Within a day or so, a list emerged. On it were the names of 10 Save The Children staff.
Cormack continues: “So I took a judgment call, Philip… to request
that those people be removed from any ongoing participation in the
Regional Processsing Centre activities.
“[The Department] simply executed what I considered to be a lawful
order from myself, which I had socialised with the Minister, but he had
not ordered me to do, but was clearly on my back from the time I uttered
it to the time those people were seen to be either off the island or
never coming back to the island. [Morrison said] ‘Have you dealt with
those people? Have you dealt with those people?’"
Cormack tells Moss that within days of the 10 workers being removed, “it all subsided”.
Other evidence in the Moss transcripts conflicts with that claim –
protests apparently continued for weeks. But Cormack’s remaining
testimony also raises some important questions.
4. We might not have “the right 10 people”
THE removal of the 10 workers was a major news story at the time,
with the Daily Telegraph splashing the story after being leaked the
intelligence report.
It broke the morning Morrison announced the Moss review, although,
notably, an ongoing federal police investigation does not appear to have
identified the source of the leak.
In one interview conducted by Moss, Department of Immigration
official Kylie Burnett agreed with a proposition put to her that
identifying the 10 sacked Save The Children workers was “the proper
thing to do”.
And a Save The Children manager based on Nauru also agreed that some
of the workers sent home had likely been engaged in misconduct. But she
expressed surprise at the departure of at least one staff member,
stating, “None. None, there is zero,” when asked if she could think of
any reason why that particular staff member was removed.
That same manager alleged some instances of misconduct on the part of
removed staff, however it appears to be limited predominantly to issues
related to data security.
But the man at the top – Mark Cormack – appears far less certain.
After devising the strategy to remove the Save The Children workers, his
testimony to Moss contains an extraordinary admission.
“… Whether they were the right ten people, whether it was pure
coincidence, I don’t know you’re ever going to find the evidence to say
one way or the other,” Cormack said.
“But to me, what I’m comfortable about is that I lawfully executed a provision under our contract (to have the workers removed).
“I did so off the background of very severe disorder…. And I don’t
regret a single thing that I’ve done, Philip, in relation to this. If I
have over-managed it, if somebody can prove a cause and effect or
disprove a cause and effect they’re welcome to do that.
“But to be perfectly honest, I take my responsibilities very
seriously to manage the order of these places, and the people that I
have to trust are our contracted service providers and also the
government of Nauru, who also have expressed a growing… dissatisfaction
and discomfort with the Save The Children people.”
The 10 workers removed from Nauru have begun legal proceedings against the Commonwealth.
5. “We’re going to have to be very careful”
ANOTHER exchange between Cormack and Moss leaves open a tantalising question.
Cormack expresses concern that the Moss review has blended “two bits
of unrelated activity” - an apparent criticism that the review is
charged with investigating both allegations of sexual assault against
asylum seekers, but also the alleged misconduct of staff.
Cormack appears to see them as two entirely separate issues.
“… I think what happened – and I’ll come to what the Minister did,
and we’re going to have to be very careful about what we say, what the
Minister did…”
Moss interrupts: “Sure.”
When Cormack continues, he trails off on a different tangent, and never discloses what Morrison did.
6. Morrison thinks rape allegations a "put up" to damage Australian detention process
THE transcript also contains a comment from Cormack about what he
perceives as Morrison’s response to the allegations asylum seekers had
been raped.
“[Angus Campbell and I] expressed concerns, obviously, about what the
intel was saying, which in [Morrison’s] mind suggested a very close
link between allegations of sexual assault and people potentially being
put up to make allegations that would bring the whole system into
disrepute.”
It’s also clear in Morrison’s public statements that he has doubts about the authenticity of rape claims.
In his press conference announcing the Moss Review, Morrison tells
media: "Serious allegations have been made regarding sexual misconduct
and abuse at Nauru, and such allegations should never be taken lightly,
should never be made lightly.
"On receipt of those allegations, and in addition to seeking further
information, those matters were referred to my department for
assessment, and advice on what further action should be taken.
"In addition to that, and in parallel, I’ve been provided with
reports indicating that staff of service providers at the Nauru centre
have been allegedly engaged in a broader campaign, with external
advocates, to seek to cast doubt on the government’s border protection
policies more generally, and that also casts some doubt on the integrity
of previous allegations.
“I’m drawing no conclusions about any of these matters, but it’s very important that we get these matters resolved."
Morrison also describes the allegations of sexual misconduct as
“abhorrent” and tells media he would be “disturbed” if they took place.
TRIGGS: … Is it acceptable to have children, held on Christmas
Island, in shipping bunkers, containers, on stony ground, surrounded by
phosphate dust, in that heat, with no education, at the moment, an
acceptable environment into which to send children?
CORMACK: We operate within the policy of the government of the
day. We put in place measures that recognise that there will be,
consistent with government policy, a requirement to detain children, and
the last time I looked, president, there was no shipping container…
GILLIAN TRIGGS: I've seen them.
CORMACK: They are containerised accommodation, they are not shipping containers.
TRIGGS: Thank you very much, is that not a shipping container?
CORMACK: No it's not.
TRIGGS: What is it then?
CORMACK: It's not. It's modular accommodation. It is. If you want to use these emotive terms…
Ironically, Cormack’s testimony to Moss is littered with emotive
terms, perhaps none more so than his startlingly frank assessment of
what occurred earlier that year on Manus Island, when Reza Berati was
beaten to death by the men paid to protect him.
“… I think the thing that had the greatest impact on me was just the
scale of the unrest, the large injury toll that was inflicted upon
people, the fact that in the case of Manus, it got beyond the point
where we couldn’t control it. And as you know, what happened with Manus
[was] people wielding machine guns, assault rifles and effectively the
PNG mobile squad broke down the fence, fired tear gas and then followed
that with rounds of automatic shotgun (sic) at people who were unarmed,
and they were joined by Salvation Army local staff, who came and
absolutely beat the shit out of large numbers of people and killed a
man.”
It was precisely this horror, says Cormack, that motivated him to
move against the Save The Children workers, after he formed the belief
the protests on Nauru could escalate to “a scale much worse than Manus”.
The Moss review
THE Moss Review has still not been released by the Abbott Government, although it is understood to have been completed.
It remains unknown if Moss finds any evidence of self-harm coaching
on Nauru, although New Matilda understands Moss may have uncovered
evidence of staff misconduct around the removal of sensitive data from
the island.
Cormack and Morrison have both moved on from their roles in the
Immigration Department - Cormack to another deputy secretary position in
the Department of Health and Ageing, and Morrison to the Social
Services portfolio.
But it seems they may well be brought back together one final time.
New Matilda is seeking comment from Minister Scott Morrison and Mr Cormack, but it was not available at the time of press.
* New Matilda is a small, independent Australian media
outlet. We rely almost entirely on subscriptions for our survival. If
you want to help fund our independent, investigative journalism, please consider subscribing here.
