Category Archives: Australian immigration and asylum

SIEV X disaster: Iraqi man charged in Australia in connection with deaths of 350 people

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Maythem Radhi accused of being part of syndicate that charged 421 mostly Iraqi and Afghan refugees for place aboard Indonesian boat

An Iraqi man has been charged in Australia with people-trafficking in connection with the drowning deaths of more than 350 asylum seekers in the 2001 SIEV X tragedy.

Maythem Radhi, 43, was arrested at Brisbane airport late Friday after being extradited from New Zealand and has been charged with “organising groups of non-citizens into Australia”, police say.

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Scott Morrison grilled on Coalition funding for new dam – politics live

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Anthony Albanese asks PM why he’s raising hopes on dam support. Plus Jacqui Lambie raises concerns over Turkish invasion. All the day’s events, live

Because it is only “radicals” who care about the climate, apparently.

#owningtheleft

Labor's declaration of a climate emergency is just a sop to the superglue protestors and radical greens. Labor remains desperate to receive the support of the radical activists despite what they've said since the election. Labor can't be trusted to fight for jobs.

Tony Burke jumps up to congratulate Tony Smith on the integrity award he received today (have a look a few posts down and check out Kenneth Hayne’s speech) and thanks him for some of the difficult decisions he took during the medevac debate (you may remember that Smith stuck to the parliament rules, and ensured the parliament had a vote, and also ordered the solicitor general advice Christian Porter was relying on to shut down the debate, be tabled – which revealed the advice was not iron-clad).

Scott Morrison then gets up to add his congratulations, and a few in Labor respond with “now you think about it” to which Morrison gets very upset and accuses Labor of politicising the moment.

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Asylum seekers approved for medevac transfers detained in Port Moresby

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More than 50 men, including Benham Satah, who witnessed murder of Reza Barati, have been held for two months

Asylum seekers who have been approved for medevac transfers to Australia are among 52 men who have been locked up in Port Moresby detention without access to phones or lawyers for the past two months.

Among those detained is Benham Satah, the Kurdish Iranian man who witnessed the murder of Reza Barati in 2014, and who was allegedly about to be transferred to Australia for care.

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Peter Dutton appeals federal court ruling over medical transfer of refugees

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Lawyers for refugees say case important given the government wants to repeal medevac legislation

Peter Dutton is seeking to appeal in the high court a federal court ruling relating to dozens of medical transfers of asylum seekers and refugees.

The government argued the federal court had no jurisdiction to hear cases brought on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers in offshore centres on Manus Island and Nauru, who were seeking urgent medical transfer to Australia.

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Home affairs data ‘gives lie’ to Coalition’s refusal to let Biloela Tamil family stay

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Fifty-two refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention have received temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas

Some 52 refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention have received temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas, according to new statistics that fly in the face of the Morrison government’s refusal to allow the Biloela Tamil family to stay.

The home affairs department has revealed to a Senate inquiry that of the 3,127 people classified as “illegal maritime arrivals” who have been taken to a regional processing country since 2011, some 52 have received visas and now face legal limbo if banned from permanent settlement in Australia.

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Biloela Tamil family’s deportation blocked until at least Friday

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Federal court in Melbourne extends injunction preventing the removal of the family from Christmas Island to Sri Lanka

Two Tamil asylum seekers and their Australian-born daughters will remain on Christmas Island until at least Friday afternoon after the federal court extended the injunction preventing the Australian government from deporting them back to Sri Lanka.

Priya, Nadesalingam and their two Australian-born children Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, were sent to Christmas Island over the weekend after the court granted an injunction until 4pm on Wednesday preventing the government from deporting Tharunicaa until the application had been heard.

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‘We’re a polite town’: rage in Biloela as Tamil family’s fate in Peter Dutton’s hands

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Nadesalingam, Priya, Kopiga and Tharunicaa were given a five-day reprieve – then moved to Christmas Island

The officers came in the early morning.

On 5 March last year, Australian Border Force officers accompanied by Serco guards stormed the modest Biloela home of Tamil husband and wife Nadesalingam and Priya, and their two Australia-born daughters Kopiga, 2, and Tharunicaa, then just nine months old.

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Biloela Tamil family’s deportation to Sri Lanka prevented by last-minute injunction

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Peter Dutton says family of four ‘not owed protection’ after they were removed from deportation flight in Darwin thanks to court injunction

A Tamil asylum-seeker family whose deportation was halted in mid-air on Thursday night do not deserve protection from Australia, Peter Dutton has said.

The family of four were put on a non-commercial flight from Melbourne bound for Sri Lanka about 11pm on Thursday.

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Asylum seekers held in Papua New Guinea blocked from talking to lawyers or doctors

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Inquiry hears that asylum seekers detained in PNG do not have access to phones, preventing medical evacuation

Asylum seekers held in a Papua New Guinean detention facility are being prevented from talking to lawyers and doctors, blocking them from medical evacuation to Australia approved under new medevac laws.

David Manne, the executive director of Refugee Legal, told a Senate inquiry on Monday that he had lost contact with one client who had been approved for urgent evacuation weeks ago but was then detained at the Bomana detention facility in Papua New Guinea.

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The asylum seekers held in a PNG prison have a choice: return to death or literally rot in jail | First Dog on the Moon

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They have already been suffering in inhumane conditions for six years. All this is well known and makes no difference

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Book charting grim life at offshore refugee ‘prison’ sweeps Australia’s literary prizes

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The Kurdish-Iranian author, who wrote using a smuggled phone, receives awards by Skype because he remains in detention

Behrouz Boochani is one of Australia’s most-celebrated contemporary writers. Last week, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist won a A$25,000 (£14,000) national biography award for No Friend but the Mountains, a book judges described as “profoundly important”. It wasn’t the first prize the book had received in Australia: it has now won the Victorian Premier’s Literary award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary award and the Australian Book Industry’s non-fiction book of the year.

One critic described it as a “masterpiece,” another called it “the standout book of the year” and another, novelist Michelle de Kretser, said it was “lucid, poetic and devastating”.

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Behrouz Boochani wins National Biography award – and accepts via WhatsApp from Manus

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Judges call Kurdish Iranian writer and refugee’s memoir an ‘astonishing act of witness’

The Kurdish Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani has continued his sweep of the Australian literary prize landscape, winning the $25,000 National Biography award on Monday – yet another award the refugee was unable to accept in person, as he enters his sixth year of detention on Manus Island.

Boochani’s autobiography No Friend but the Mountains tells of his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat, and his subsequent imprisonment on Manus Island by the Australian government, which continues to refuse him entry.

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Stories of home and homeland: ‘We make Australia, we are all Australian’

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The migrant experience has changed since the European postwar exodus. Five immigrants share how they made a new home

Pictures by Noel McLaughlin

The word immigrant stems from the Latin root, migrare – to change or to move from one place to another. Australia, where 28% of the population was born overseas, owes its transformation from a British colony to a cosmopolitan modern country to the presence of people from other places who’ve arrived here to build new lives.

The following stories represent five moments during the trajectory of the past five decades of Australian immigration – from the last wave of postwar European immigration to the focus on humanitarian arrivals in the 1980s to the present, a period during which aspiring Australians on temporary visas struggle to put down roots. Each of the stories is accompanied by a photo of an object, something important that reminds them of their homeland.

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Repealing medevac would be ‘a wicked thing’, Centre Alliance says – politics live

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Rebekha Sharkie says if the government is successful in repealing the legislation it will cause ‘needless harm’

On the ensuring integrity bill, Rex Patrick says there are political elements to the bill it can’t support:

The aim was to deal with misconduct and there is no question that has been in the union movement.

I have seen the fairly significant sheet of judicial rulings against some of the unions and in some instances we have some very conservative, considered judicial officers stating things like this union is simply using the fines, treating the fines as the cost of business.

Rex Patrick is speaking to Patricia Karvelas on Afternoon Briefing and says while Centre Alliance supports the intent of the temporary exclusion order bill, it will abstain from voting for it, because it can’t support it in its current form.

Labor will be passing it, although it has raised its own concerns.

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Labor supports exclusion orders for foreign fighters – politics live

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Opposition will try to introduce amendments but if that fails it will pass the bill. All the day’s events, live

tl;dr - shut the hell up.

I'm also told @ScottMorrisonMP told backbenchers who have been out and about on issues, including, lately, superannuation, to calm their farms and work through party processes. Words to that effect @AmyRemeikis #auspol

You know what it absolutely is not, and was never, going to be? A third chamber.

I'm told @SenatorMcGrath raised constitutional recognition in today's party room meeting. He asked what the position was. @ScottMorrisonMP and @KenWyattMP told him the voice could be many things & constitutional change wouldn't be radical @AmyRemeikis #auspol

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Greens senator Nick McKim deported from Manus Island

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Tasmanian member says he was asked to leave after trying to visit East Lorengau transit centre

The Greens senator Nick McKim says he was deported from Manus Island because he “simply stood on a public street and asked politely” to see conditions in a refugee and asylum seeker transit camp.

The Tasmanian senator arrived back in Australia on Saturday after he was told to leave Papua New Guinea on Thursday night.

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Judge accuses Australia of putting relationship with Nauru before the law

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Judgement follows failure to transfer seriously ill refugee under medevac laws

A federal court judge has excoriated the Australian government, accusing it of putting its relationship with Nauru ahead of complying with court orders and federal law.

The judgement by Justice Debra Mortimer was published on Friday, after the government failed to comply with a 14 June order to transfer a refugee with “serious medical and psychiatric issues” to Australia under the medevac laws.

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Former Manus Island detainee tells UN ‘human beings are being destroyed’

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Abdul Aziz Muhamat delivers a plea for urgent action to the Human Rights Council

Since Abdul Aziz Muhamat left Manus Island for the last time, he has climbed a mountain in his new home of Switzerland, and then returned to advocating for the resettlement of the hundreds of men and women he left behind.

The Sudanese refugee spent more than six years in Australia’s offshore processing and detention system in Papua New Guinea, before he was granted residency in the European nation earlier this month.

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The USA is imprisoning people it finds undesirable. Australia has already lived this nightmare | Jason Wilson

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To disestablish these camps anywhere, we need to oppose them everywhere

Australia’s economy is increasingly in the doldrums, but our leaders can point to a successful export of their own devising. In the US, the Trump administration is bedding down and expanding its network of punitive refugee camps. Like Australia’s, they have a dual function: as a deterrent to pursuing the right of political asylum, and as a political weapon.

Australia’s nightmare, like the USA’s, has been long in the making. It is a bipartisan creation. Labor, under Paul Keating, instituted the policy of mandatory detention. John Howard did much of the work of shaping it into permanent nightmare, and of turning the issue of refugees into a cudgel with which to smite political opponents.

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Paladin contract for Manus Island should be cancelled, PNG’s new PM says

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James Marape says foreign contractors should not be doing work that locals can do

Papua New Guinea’s newly appointed prime minister wants Australia to cancel its controversial contract with Paladin to deliver services on Manus Island.

James Marape, who became prime minister after the resignation of Peter O’Neill last month, told PNG’s parliament on Tuesday he would summon Australia’s diplomatic head of mission “to provide an explanation”.

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