Letter: To: Pat.Conaghan.MP@aph.gov.au, Subject: Detention of asylum seekers

Dear Mr Conaghan,

A Biloela family of refugees

M... Griffin has shown me your email reply, dated 5-8-2020, to his email of 27-7-2020 (Seven years too long).

I must take issue with you on several issues in your reply.

You make the point, on several occasions, that these people detained in onshore and off-shore detention facilities are illegal, have attempted to arrive in Australia illegally, or are attempting to subvert our immigration system. If what they have done is illegal can you please point out to me which law of the criminal code they have violated? Have any of these asylum seekers been charged with this crime? Have any of these asylum seekers been tried for this crime?

Refugees locked up indefinitely in Mantra Hotel Melbourne

Under international law (specifically the 1951 Refugee Convention) it is not illegal to seek asylum if one has a well founded fear of persecution. So, arriving in a leaky boat and claiming asylum is not illegal. I understand that Australia is a signatory to the Convention so it appears to me that it is the Australian Government that is acting illegally by refusing asylum to those in our detention system who are genuine refugees.

Under international law, immigration detention is supposed to be administrative and temporary, not punitive. I believe that this is the thrust of Mike Griffin's letter, that the continued detention of these people for seven years can be considered punitive. I despair that our laws descend into a state where punitive measures are considered normal, that everyone is considered to be a potential criminal trying to "flout" or "circumvent" the law, rather than trying to seek the justice in any particular situation.

You also state that refugees have the option to return to their own country. I think you will find that the reason they have been classified as refugees is because they cannot return to their own country.

Free Mantra refugees

You state that these people can choose to reside permanently in Nauru or PNG. I do not think that either of these countries is a safe place to reside. The Smart Traveller website does not make PNG out to be particularly safe. For people fleeing persecution it is not a viable option for most of them.

I have watched the evolution of Australia's asylum seeker policy over the past twenty years and it is as depressing as it is inhumane. International migration is an issue to be managed, not a problem to be solved. It does nobody any good to keep the people in our detention centres in a continuous state of punitive incarceration. We could save a lot of money and the LNP could gain a lot of kudos by finally taking responsibility for the situation and settling all these people into the community. Just do it quickly and quietly and move on to more important issues.

I would hate to be so cynical as to believe that the continued detention of vulnerable people was for political purposes.

Free refugees from Australian detention

Your claim that Australia has one of the most generous humanitarian programs in the world can not go unchallenged. While not wanting to denigrate the good work that is done in this area it is also true that foreign aid has been cut severely over the past seven years by the LNP federal government. While we accept less than 20,000 people through refugee migration per year it pales into insignificance to the four million displaced Syrians currently residing in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Whatever good work we do is poisoned by the petty and vindictive way we treat asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

Some new thinking is required by you and your government to resolve this issue.

Regards,

Dr Peter XXXXX

VALLA

Fair go for Refugees

Free the Mantra Hotel hostages

Letter re refugees held in hotels during Corvid-19 pandemic

Dear Minister Tudge,

These are difficult times for the Australian people, and the government deserves credit for the actions that it has taken to date – notwithstanding the Ruby Princess debacle – to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control.

There remain, however, a number of vulnerable groups who are at

serious risk of contracting the virus and spreading it in the community. I am particularly concerned about the plight of asylum seekers, many of whom are living in crowded detention centres and APODs  where social distancing is well-nigh impossible. The Mantra hotel in Melbourne is a case in point, and was discussed recently in a RN interview with Dr David Isaacs. He explained that these places are inherently unsafe and that the inmates face the real danger of contracting COVID-19. Many of the men in the Mantra hotel have been held there for up to nine months, awaiting, but largely not receiving, the medical care for which they had been evacuated from PNG. This is plainly unacceptable. Dr. Isaacs described the situation as “unforgivable”, and I agree with him.

Could you please explain why the government will not release these people into community detention, where many of them have family, friends and other community members who can help to support them?

Could you please explain why the government chooses to spend up to $350,000 per annum keeping a single person in detention, when they could spend their time in community detention at a fraction of the cost? This is surely a serious and negligent waste of taxpayers’ money. Money which could be used elsewhere to support our communities in these uncertain times.

I urge you to take the necessary and urgent steps to release all asylum seekers currently awaiting medical attention or the determination of their claims for protection into community detention.

Yours sincerely,

Mike

Valla Beach, NSW

Australians want to open their homes to locked-down refugees. The government should let them : The Guardian

"by Craig Foster

I’ll take them.

At a time when real decisions are being made about social worth, of who will be left out or left behind, it is refugees and asylum seekers along with international students and migrant workers who capture the ugliness of “us and them”.
Working every day in essential services to feed the vulnerable exposes the true nature of our response. Students who prop up our universities, kids whose parents entrusted us with their academic futures and immediate wellbeing, left destitute and hungry. A million migrant workers, who toil to keep the country operating, going without. You’re only good for what you provide to us, after all, we’re not real friends.

But it is not only they who suffer, it’s our own concept of self. A virus that reduces humanity to one, that penetrates all artificial barriers, brutally exposes the differences that we refuse to overcome.

Similarly, the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is not an abstraction that relates to a group of humans here and offshore, it’s central to the very concept of Australia. It’s the true test.

Everything we have done to the thousands of people on Manus and Nauru, in Villawood and Mantra, speaks directly to me, you, us. Do we protect their rights, see ourselves in them, recognise the commonalities between all races, minorities and human beings?
Treating each other well, our families and children, friends and colleagues, doesn’t validate our humanity, that’s easy. Child’s play. There’s social pressure to conform, workplace legislation and anti-discrimination laws to force compliance, our own social and economic interests directly impacted.

The real test is when there’s no social capital, no personal gains to make. When speaking up for marginalised people will cost friends, business, social influence, will we stand by and let people die? Will we pen them for seven years and continue to turn a blind eye?
Now as we, like they, are detained, will we acknowledge the hypocrisy of what we’ve done? While they fled for their lives and we said “that’s not right, they should get in line”. When threatened, we punched on for a bog roll. How exactly did we go with “lines” and “queues” when our loved ones were at risk?

While they sit in small rooms for 23 hours a day, locked up for seven years for no crime, in fact for asserting their human rights, we talk about our mental health and how suffocating it is to be caged. Will we still look away as they rot, day after day, from the inside out?

We talk about using our time to learn, reconnect with family, educate ourselves and prepare for our next assault on the economic dream, when they scream just to walk free, without guards at their door.

And when we assess worth in a stimulus package and talk about keeping others safe by staying home, we’re not talking about everyone, are we? We’ve let prisoners out into the community because they’re us gone wrong, but refugees, who are at the most severe risk with chronic health conditions and compromised immune systems, well, they’re different. Like the students. And migrant workers.

But no, they are us. The truest version. Australia is not Sydney 2000, America’s Cup, our bushfire response, or our togetherness against Covid. We are asylum seekers and refugees, we are the damned because we’ve damned them, we are the medicated because we’ve ruined them. We cannot take pride in the way we help those who reflect us, if at the same time we ruin those who are condemned by the concept of who we purport to be.

Refugees in Port Moresby told me that they imperilled their loved ones’ lives because they believed Australia to be a place of democracy, human rights and of people who care. An El Dorado of egalitarianism. Where people struck out in pursuit of humanitarian gold, and died in the attempt.

I still believe passionately in who we are, and what we sell. I’ll never give up on that dream. But we’ve proved them wrong for seven years. It’s time we proved them right.

Like the 9,900 members of I Have a Room who have offered to house all those detained in immigration centres around the country at severe risk of infection, I will give my house to people that have become our national conscience.

I will fly Mostafa Azimitabar and Farhad Bandesh, two Kurds who’ve endured hell for seven years that we have turned into husks of people and who are my friends, to Sydney at my own expense, house, feed, clothe and take responsibility for them during Covid-19 and recently made this offer to the Australian government.

I’ll pay a bond if necessary, and they’ll live exactly as they should. As my brothers. Family members. As equals.

And I call on the Australian government to release the 1,440 immigration detainees into the care of fellow Australians who feel the same way.

Because that was the vision that you and I inherited for Australia, and for which they risked their lives.

• Craig Foster is a former Australian footballer and now television analyst for SBS and Amnesty human rights and refugee ambassador
  
  Read the original The Guardian article by Craig Foster