Roadside demonstration report
Open letter to the Prime Minister
Bellingen Market: Saturday 21st September, 9.00 am to 1.30 pm
A plea for help
Manus detainees transferred to Port Moresby
The Biloela family
Roadside demonstration report
Last
Thursday’s demonstration in Bellingen was hugely successful. We had a
record turn-out of supporters, which enabled us to create an impressive
presence on both sides of Waterfall Way. It was very heartening to
receive such overwhelming and enthusiastic support from passing
motorists. As at Coffs Harbour market the week before, it seems clear
that the recent publicity about the Biloela family has opened a lot of
people’s eyes to the reality and the cruelty of our government’s
treatment of asylum seekers.
Our next demonstration will take place on Thursday 19th
September from 2.30 to 4.00 pm on Hogbin Drive in Coffs Harbour. You
will find us at a new location on Hogbin Drive, aimed at avoiding
disturbance to the local children’s centre at our usual location. To
find us, drive past our usual location, and past the airport. You will
find us about 80 metres before the next roundabout on the left-hand
side, near the Bunker gallery and opposite the racecourse. There is
plenty of off-road parking nearby. We hope that some of you will join us
to help to maintain the recent momentum.
Open letter to the Prime Minister
The
open letter to the Prime Minister, signed by 1500 RAR supporters, is
now on its way to Canberra. Over half the signatures were collected by
our RAR group at the markets in Valla Beach, Bellingen and Coffs
Harbour, with the remainder collected by a number of RAR groups around
the country. The letter, you will recall, urges our government to accept
the offer of the New Zealand government to resettle 150 refugees
annually from Australia’s offshore detention centres. If the offer had
been taken up when it was first made, there would by now be no refugees
in offshore detention! The covering letter to the Prime Minister,
together with explanatory letters to Kristina Keneally (Labor) and Nick
McKim (Greens) can be found on our blog.
We will launch a new open letter at our next market.
Bellingen Market: Saturday 21st September, 9.00 am to 1.30 pm
A reminder that our next market stall will be at Bellingen Market on Saturday 21st
September. We have been allocated site E27, which you will find not far
from the Ford Street entrance. If you can help out on our stall for an
hour or two, then please let Mike know by emailing him at: mandm.griffin2@bigpond.com.
The markets present a great opportunity for us to interact with the
public, in addition to meeting up for a good chat with fellow RAR
supporters.
A plea for help
Many
of you attended the recent fundraiser in Mylestom to support a local
asylum seeker family. As a result, the support group is now preparing
for the next stage, which is to resettle the family in suitable
accommodation in Coffs Harbour. Please see their message below.
RENTAL ACCOMMODATION WANTED
IN COFFS HARBOUR
We have almost raised enough money to assist the asylum seeker family of mother and three children from their one-bedroom cabin in Repton to find a place to live in Coffs Harbour.
If you know of anyone who would be willing to rent a flat to this family at a reasonable price, please get in touch with us.
You are invited to make a small regular weekly/monthly donation to our account to support this move.
The Repton/Mylestom Friends of Refugees
Margaret
Annika
Manus detainees transferred to Port Moresby
It
appears that all the remaining asylum seekers and refugees have now
been moved from Manus island to Port Moresby. Our government will no
doubt want to claim that the several hundred men involved are no longer
detained. That, of course, is patently not the case. Many of them are
imprisoned at the Bomana facility, and the remainder are accommodated in
a number of motels around the city. They are not free to leave PNG, and
the situation in Port Moresby is dangerous for them. Refugee advocate
Ian Rintoul had this to say about the transfers: “PNG is not a
resettling country, it’s not safe. The people who have been actually
living in Port Moresby, many of the people I have spoken to have been
assaulted, not just once but some four or five times, have been robbed,
have been threatened with guns and knives. I also expect there will be
much worse medical conditions. There are no mental health services to
speak of in Port Moresby at all.” One of the refugees, Shaminda
Kanapathi, stated: “Our greatest fear about this relocation to Port
Moresby is that people will no longer be aware of our situation and we
will be forgotten. We want the people to know that moving to Port
Moresby is not a durable solution. As long as we are in PNG, we are not
settled and we are not safe.”
The
reality for the men who are now in Port Moresby is that it is only
their location that has changed. They are not free, they are detained
indefinitely on PNG, and they have not been offered any hope for their
future. Their suffering continues. No government spin can alter that.
The Biloela family
This
family’s treatment over the past year and a half has opened the eyes of
many people to the intransigence, the inhumanity and the utter lack of
compassion of our government. On the back foot, both the Prime Minister
and the Minister for Home Affairs have sought, with the help of their
friends in the Murdoch press, to paint the family as undeserving of our
compassion, and as a potential threat to national security, should they
be allowed to stay. Much has been made of the fact that the family has
been found not to be genuine refugees. This overlooks two important
matters. Firstly, when the Coalition came to power, it quickly abolished
the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT), which had been established to give
failed asylum seekers a comprehensive opportunity to have their cases
reviewed, including the ability to present new evidence and to be
properly represented. The RRT overturned departmental rejections of
claims in about 30% of cases. By contrast, the RRT’s replacement, the
Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA), which is an inferior
decision-making body, has overturned just 13% of cases. Serious
questions about fairness in the process of assessing the Biloela
family’s case have been raised, but not considered. The second issue is
that the Australian government considers that it is safe for Tamils to
be returned to Sri Lanka, a view that is not widely supported,
particularly if the asylum seeker has had any past contact with the
Tamil Tigers.
In
addition to the above, there remains the Minister’s discretion to
intervene and to allow the family to remain in Australia on
compassionate grounds. The two young children were born here, and the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child requires the best interests of
the child to be a primary consideration in any decision affecting them.
The two children have evidently developed strong ties within their
community in rural Queensland, and have never been to Sri Lanka. It is
not, therefore, difficult to mount a strong and principled argument that
it is in their best interests to remain in Australia.
The
Minister, David Coleman, should grant the family visas to remain in
Australia on the principled legal basis that it is in the best interests
of the children to do so.
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