Next
Roadside Demo - Thurs 18th May Nambucca Plaza 3pm
Next
Market Stall Bellingen Sat 20th May
25 Years
of Mandatory Detention
Roadside
demonstration report
Last
Thursday’s demo started well, with lots of support from passing motorists, but
sadly, the skies became blacker by the minute and after three quarters of an
hour, the heavens opened! Being fair-weather demonstrators, we had to beat a
hasty retreat. However, that was not before a delightful young person came
running from the Big Banana cafe carrying bottles of water for each of us. She
just wanted to say thank you to us for our efforts and to express her
solidarity with our cause, before rushing back to her work. How wonderful is
that?
Our next
roadside demonstration will take place on Thursday 18th May from 3.00 pm until
4.30 pm in Nambucca Heads. You will find us in the usual spot beside the
Pacific Highway, adjacent to the Plaza shopping centre. Let’s hope that the sun
shines!
Next market stall: Bellingen market, Saturday 20th
May
Please
note that our next market stall will be at Bellingen market on Saturday 20th
May from 9.00 am until 1.30 pm. The markets present a great opportunity for us
to remind people about the cruelty and inhumanity of offshore detention. It
would be great to welcome supporters old and new to join us, either for a chat
or to help out for an hour or two. If you can spare some time to help out, then
please let Mike know by emailing him at: mandm.griffin2@bigpond.com. If you remembered to print off the petition
sheet which was attached to last week’s newsletter, then you might have signed
petitions to bring along to the market to add to the growing number that we have
already received. We now have approximately 3500 signatures from RAR supporters
around Australia.
25 years
of mandatory detention, and counting
On 5th May
1992, legislation was rushed through parliament to prevent a group of Cambodian
asylum seekers from claiming refugee status in Australia. The immigration
minister of the time, Gerry Hand, assured parliament that the new law was “only
intended to be an interim measure”. The law provided that “boat people” must be detained and that
a court was not to order their release. All this, in the “national
interest”, a political claim which seemed to require no elaboration.
As we
know, the effects of this “interim measure” have been catastrophic for
thousands of asylum seekers who have sought safety on our shores over the past
25 years. Today, more than 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers languish on Nauru
and Manus island, many of them since 2013. As at 28th February 2017, a further
1,300 individuals are mandatorily detained in Australia, many of them for more
than four years.
At the
time that the legislation was passed, Gerry Hand insisted that the government
had no wish to “keep people in custody indefinitely”. Indeed, he said that he
“could not expect parliament to support such a suggestion”.
Yet here
we are, 25 years later, and the system is more draconian than ever, with the
Minister possessing unprecedented powers
to decide on the fate of individual asylum seekers. It is worth reminding ourselves that Minister
Dutton wields sweeping and unchecked powers that are beyond the review of the
courts. A recent report, released last week, calls for the minister’s current
powers to be reined in and for bills to expand them even further be halted. A
Fraser-era minister for immigration, Ian
Macphee, says in the report that he is “disgusted by the power accorded to
current ministers regarding the lives of people fleeing persecution”.It is
surely more important than ever to maintain our rage about the injustice, the
cruelty and inhumanity of our government’s deliberately punitive system of
indefinite detention.
Check out
the index of subjects on our blog
http://bellorar.blogspot.com.au
It
includes articles from many sources and letters to politicians and newspapers.
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Twitter
Account @RARBellingenNam
Email
address bellingen.rar@gmail.com
The
National RAR web site is at www.ruralaustraliansforrefugees.org.au
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