Whatever your reason, we want to hear it. We are asking people and organisations to record video messages on why they are marching on World Refugee Day this year. You can do it on your phone or webcam pretty easily and upload it to YouTube. Or you can be a bit more creative. Send the links to racvicmedia@gmail.com, make sure you include “I am marching on World Refugee Day because…” somewhere in the video and we will compile them.

World Refugee Day is on June 17, 12 noon on the steps of Parliament House, Spring Street, Melbourne. It has been called by the Refugee Advocacy Network, and endorsed by the Refugee Action Collective among other organisations.

Here’s an example we did ourselves:

A Tamil man who was on the Oceanic Viking has attempted suicide in Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation in Broadmeadows overnight. Jasee is the third Tamil with a negative ASIO security clearance to try and take his own life this month. Tamils in this situation face a life of indefinite detention, unable to be returned to Sri Lanka as they have been recognised as refugees, but the Immigration Department refuse to release genuine refugees if they have unappealable negative security clearances from ASIO.

These continued suicide attempts highlight the desperation and hopelessness inside detention for the tens of refugees inside the Broadmeadows detention centre. The Refugee Action Collective demands the immediate release of these refugees and for the Immigration Department to act swiftly to prevent any further suicide attempts before they succeed.

“The Australian Government is trying to kill these refugees everyday. By refusing to release these men, they are driving them to suicide,” said Benjamin Solah from the Refugee Action Collective. “Indefinite detention is killing them. They need to be removed from this fatal situation immediately. Is Chris Bowen waiting for one of them to succeed?”

The Tamil refugee, the first Tamil to receive a negative ASIO finding
had been in detention for 37 months. He was taken to hospital by
ambulance, unconscious and with a weak pulse. His present condition is
not known. The refugee is in his early thirties.

It is the second recent suicide attempt at the Melbourne Immigration
Transit Accommodation centre in a month by ASIO rejected refugees.

The negative ASIO security finding condemns refugees to indefinite
detention. There is no right to know what evidence ASIO relies on for
the negative security finding and there is no right to review or
appeal negative decisions.

“It has been clear for months that the ASIO negative refugees cannot
tolerate indefinite detention for much longer,” said Lucy Honan from
the Refugee Action Collective.

“Chris Bowen must urgently address the recommendations of the
Parliamentary Inquiry into Immigration Detention that call for
refugees to have the same rights of review and appeal for their ASIO
assessments as Australian citizens. This has become a matter of life
and death.”

For more information, contact racvicmedia@gmail.com

The Refugee Action Collective has condemned Oakeshott’s bill as being anti-humanitarian and an attempt to circumvent the High Court ruling in 2011 that ruled the Malaysian refugee swap deal as illegal.

Spokesperson Sue Bolton described “Oakeshott’s legislation as extremely dangerous” because it would allow an immigration minister to designate any nation as a suitable offshore assessment country as long as it is party to the Bali Process, a grouping of more than 50 countries aimed at combating people smuggling.

Bolton said that “Oakeshott is shifting the focus away from protecting the right of people to seek asylum and instead focusing on people smuggling as a crime.

“Under international law, people have the right to seek asylum. Criminalising the means by which people seek asylum is negating international law.

“The major parties’ and Oakeshott’s attacks on people smuggling are a hypocritical attack on right of asylum seeker to escape their countries and seek asylum.

“Some of the countries that are part of the Bali process are guilty of gross human rights violations – Malaysia, Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

“If it is legal to seek asylum under international law, then it is legal to get help from someone to escape. Many refugees from Nazi Germany sought help from people smugglers to escape. Many of the people smugglers from that era are regarded as heroes.

“Oakeshott’s legislation is silent about protecting the human rights of asylum seekers in a third country, if his legislation were passed into law.

“Malaysia doesn’t recognise refugees and simply treats them as illegal migrants, deporting asylum seekers back to danger. Malaysia also canes asylum seekers and refugees.

“In Indonesia, the situation isn’t much better. Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN Human Rights Convention. Recently, an Afghan asylum seeker was beaten to death inside a detention centre.

“The inhumane mandatory detention regime in Australia is no justification for offshore processing. Mandatory detention has to end. Offshore processing, including on Christmas Island, also has to end.

“Australia should provide safe passage to Australia for asylum seekers, alleviating the need for asylum seekers to use the services of people smugglers.”

Facebook event!

Refugee Action Collective Victoria is proud to host a public forum to challenge the anti-people smuggling rhetoric dominant in Australian politics.

Seeking asylum by boat is not a crime. However, those who assist asylum seekers to reach Australia’s shores via informal travel arrangements have been systematically demonised by both Labor and Liberal parties. This is backed up by mandatory sentencing laws for anyone found to have participated in people smuggling. Hundreds of poor Indonesian fishers, including dozens of minors, have been jailed for the mandatory 3 years in Australia. The criminalisation of people smuggling, combined with the militarisation of Australia’s borders and the impounding and destruction of boats intercepted, is what makes the boat journey to Australia so needlessly dangerous.

This important Refugee Action Collective forum comes at a time when there is growing concern over the treatment of people smugglers. Ten judges have now expressed their concerns out over mandatory sentencing and a bill introduced by The Greens to end mandatory sentencing of Indonesian crew has been referred to a Senate committee and will likely come back to Parliament in late March.

Speakers:
Arnold Zable – Award-winning writer and refugee advocate
Sarah Hanson-Young – Federal Greens Senator
A lawyer for Indonesian fishermen
Peter Farrago – Refugee Action Collective member and former people-smuggling
Nockie Le – Vietnamese refugee

For more information contact Liz Walsh mob 0405 736 265 or refugeeactioncollectivevic@gmail.com

National convergence on Darwin, April 6-9

Why Darwin?
Darwin is rapidly becoming Australia’s detention capital. There are now three detention centres in Darwin with up to 1000 asylum seekers. When the newly opened centre at Wickham Point is complete it will have capacity for 1500 people alone. Chronic levels of self-harm and protest have put the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) in a state of perpetual crisis. The convergence this Easter, centred on Darwin, with simultaneous protests at other detention centres around the country like Villawood in Sydney, can again focus attention on the reality behind the wire.

Melbourne Rally at Broadmeadows Detention Centre

2pm Easter Monday April 9
Meet in the Hungry Jacks car park on the corner of Sydney and Camp Roads

With over 4,500 refugees in detention including over 500 children, Bowen’s promises look more false than ever. As well as the unrealised promise to release all children by June last year, Broadmeadows Detention Centre was supposed to be converted to a low-security hostel facility for families but instead, the start of 2012 has seen the detention centre right in Melbourne’s suburbs reach new levels of despair. Refugees have been on hunger strike, have sewn their lips, attempted suicide and many refugees recognised as such have not been given visas due to the long and unjustifiable wait for ASIO security checks. Worse still, some refugees will languish in indefinite limbo due to unaccountable and unappealable negative security checks. The one glimmer of hope, bridging visas, has fallen far short of the promised 100 detainees released a month.

This detention centre needs to be shut down and the refugees inside need to be released into the community.

His friend told Serco and medical staff that he was concerned about his friend and warned them. Serco responded after the incident which was too late. Now they are checking up on him every 30mins. This news comes as updated department figures are released showing 4783 including 528 children are still detained.

“We are concerned that this man is not drinking water. It is absolutely appalling that we are locking innocent people up to the point that they would do this to themselves. Our refugee policy is rotten to the core and must be dismantled immediately. Anything short of that is just inhumane,” Daniella Olea, Refugee Action Collective member and regular visitor.

The lip-stiching follows a hunger strike, of up to six detainees, a few weeks ago where one man was found lying by a fence refusing to move.

From the RRAN website:

Around 40 refugee supporters from the Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN) travelling to Leonora this weekend have been shocked to discover children who have been in detention for over a year when they visited the remote Western Australian detention centre.

Around 140 unaccompanied minors have been moved in recent weeks from Christmas Island and Darwin to the detention centre. The RRAN activists have called for the immediate release of the children from detention.

“We were told that children and families were going to be out of detention by the end of June last year, but Leonora is proof positive that even six months later, the government has not lived up to the promise of getting children out of detention. It’s a scandal”, said RRAN spokesperson Victoria Martin-Iverson.

“These kids are not recent arrivals. A majority of the 40 kids we managed to see have been in detention over a year. Yet, they are either still waiting for their second interview or have just had their appeal hearing. One seventeen year-old Hazara asylum seeker has been in detention for two years and only had his second interview this week! How is that possible?

“We were shocked to find that Serco guards referred to them by number. How dehumanising is that? One guard came is asking ‘Is 176 in here?” Another introduced a young Mohammed as, “Here is 428; he speaks good English.” Perhaps more shocking – some of these kids have signs of self harm on their bodies.

“We have serious concerns. They are not going to school; teachers are meant to be coming into the detention centre – but even that hasn’t happened yet, six weeks after they have arrived here.”

“We eat, we sleep; we eat, we sleep. We are very tired,” one Hazara told the Perth visitors.

“We were told in town that the no asylum kid has been to the library since the families were moved out of Leonora,” said Victoria.

“We are also concerned that there seems to be a large number of untrained MSS guards at Leonora, and that we saw them with direct client contact responsibilities with the children in detention. We thought that having untrained guards in such contact is in direct conflict with guidelines for children in detention. There is a serious question whether Serco or the Immigration Department is breaching its duty of care by using untrained guards.”

The RRAN cavalcade will be leaving Leonora around Sunday lunchtime (29 Jan) to make the return journey to Perth.

Videos from Zeb Parkes are found below.

Facebook event

The Australian government is currently attempting to deport Afghan Hazara asylum seeker, Ismail Mirza Jan, to Afghanistan. Never before has an Afghan national been forcibly removed from Australia to Afghanistan.

This would be a new low in Australia’s refugee policy, with the Labor Government sinking even further than the Howard Government in pursuing deportations to danger. Even high-ranking ministers in the Western-backed Afghan government have questioned Australia’s right to forcibly repatriate Afghan asylum seekers from Australia. If Ismail is deported, this will open the way for the deportation of scores of Afghan, and potentially other, asylum seekers – back to war torn countries, impending danger, or even a death sentence. Two Tamil asylum seekers, Emil and Vithuran, too were only saved from deportation by last minute legal action in December.

Recently Ismail received a temporary reprieve when the Federal Magistrates Court questioned whether he received “procedural fairness” by the Australian government in their attempts to deport him. Ismail’s deportation case will come back to the High Court on February 8. The refugee rights movement, and all those who oppose this move to forced deportations, have a short window of opportunity to build a broad campaign against the forced deportation of Ismail, and the terrible precedent it would provide for further deportations.

The Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) condemns the Department of Immigration for moving Ali Abbas to Adelaide prior to his court case challenging ASIO’s adverse security check. Abbas is set to face the Federal Court on Monday morning. He remains his detention despite being given refugee status.

We are concerned about how this affects Ali’s court case, possibly isolating the 18-year-old refugee from his lawyers as well as his support network of fellow detainees and refugee advocates on the outside that are visiting. RAC Victoria had planned to hold a solidarity rally outside the Federal Court on Monday morning. But it is now unclear where the case is being held and whether Abbas will be present.

“I have been visiting Ali Abbas for 3 months and before that, for 6 months. Ali has been moved over 6 times. This is outrageous. He had been asking to be transferred to Darwin for ages as there are children there. Why did they move him now or why did they move him to MITA [Broadmeadows] or Adelaide? This is just adding to his mental state. How much more can we torture this child? We demand his freedom now,” said Daniella from the Refugee Action Collective.