Archives 2026

“Terry” (not his real name), an Iranian refugee on Nauru, sewed his lips together and began a hunger strike last Friday in protest against his deportation and the conditions on Nauru that threaten his life.

Terry was deported to Nauru on 6 May after losing his appeal in the TCXM High Court hearing. He has been hospitalised twice since because of his severe asthma condition.

Astonishingly, the High Court found that the law allowed the Australian government to remove Terry to Nauru, “despite the evidence that the medical services in Nauru are inadequate to manage his severe asthma on an ongoing basis”.

The court also found, “It can immediately be accepted that the harshness of the consequences of removal for TCXM (Terry) is increased by the real risk of premature death faced by TCXM due to the inadequacy of treatment in Nauru for his severe asthma.”

Labor’s deportation laws are in this case effectively a death sentence.

This is why all refugee supporters should join the World Refugee Day rally called by RAC on Saturday 20 June at 2pm at the State Library in Melbourne.

Complete contempt

As if to demonstrate the government’s complete contempt for the human rights of those they are deporting to Nauru, and particularly the rights of the disabled, on 27 May Labor sent a Libyan man, confined to a wheelchair, to the island prison camp.

There are no facilities for a wheelchair in the camp. The man cannot get out of his room without assistance from other detainees. He is unable to cook for himself; he has difficulty accessing the toilet; and he cannot clean his room or access the kitchen area used by the other detainees. He cannot go to the shops.

“Terry and all the non-citizens deported to Nauru must be returned to Australia. The deportation law is a fundamentally racist piece of legislation that allows extra-judicial punishment just because people are non-citizens,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney.

“Currently there are 12 people of the NZYQ cohort (where the High Court found that indefinite detention could not be justified) that the government has deported to Nauru.

“Yet the government is spending $63 million for just the first year of the deal with Nauru to warehouse those deported there. It is a horrendous waste of money and lives. Nauru should be closed.”

RAC organised an exhibition in November 2025 to celebrate 25 years of resistance by refugees and their supporters.

As part of the exhibition, RAC activists published a booklet, outlining the history and packed with illustrations.

Download the booklet here.

14 April 2026

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s announcement that Australia will impose a six-month ban on entry from Iran of visitor visa holders, affecting about 7000 people, is shameful.

It is a far cry from Bob Hawke’s granting asylum to thousands of Chinese in Australia when the Tiananmen Square massacre took place in 1989. It also stands in contrast to the welcome rightly given to thousands of Ukrainians fleeing war there.

The Labor government is deliberately denying the possibility of asylum to people who might desperately need it. It is a repeat of the Australian government’s refusal to process Iraqi refugee claims in 2003 because the US invasion was going to bring democracy.

Labor’s “control determination order” is callous in the extreme. And it continues Labor’s efforts to undermine human rights of asylum-seekers and the refugee convention.

Like Donald Trump deporting Iranians back to Iran late last year, the Australian government attempted to remove an Afghan asylum-seeker to Iran just before the US bombing started.

One Iranian mother of an Australian citizen was turned around at the Brisbane airport just before the bombing because Border Force deemed her an asylum risk.

There are about 82 Iranians in Australian detention. They should all be released. Hundreds of Iranian asylum-seekers are trapped in Indonesia by Australia’s 2014 ban on accepting refugees from there. They should all be brought to Australia, as should the Iranians still being held in PNG.

Iranians who were brought to Australia after being detained on Manus and Nauru in 2013 are still being denied permanent visas, as are many Iranian and other victims of the so-called “fast track” process designed to bar asylum-seekers.

Once again, Australia is denying asylum to the refugees being created by a war that the government is supporting.

RAC calls for the lifting of the visa ban and permanent protection for all Iranian asylum-seekers—and all asylum-seekers.