New Zealanders are disproportionately affected by section 501 of Australia’s Migration Act, which allows foreigners to be deported if they’re deemed to pose a threat to the nation. Julie Hill spoke to three ‘501s’ about life in detention and after deportation. Anya Weta is Māori, but she knows little about New Zealand, having moved with … Read more
Canberra’s offshore detention camps can be seen as an example of ‘necro-politics’, argues Janet McAllister. This week, The Spinoff published Amnesty International’s piece calling for New Zealand to protest Australia’s offshore detention centres, and then The Guardian published mountains more evidence of abuse and atrocities on Nauru. It costs Australia billions of dollars every year to violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so spectacularly. But simply … Read more
We have rarely seen such a sustained, and successful, attempt to hide abuses from the outside world as the Australian government is perpetuating right now in its ‘offshore detention’ policy, writes Amnesty International’s Grant Bayldon There is a basic principle of human rights work: when lawyers, families, journalists, doctors and official monitors are prevented from … Read more
On the second anniversary of her migration to the Lucky Country, Di White is moved to tears by Chasing Asylum, an acclaimed new film about Australian refugee policy. It’s been two years since I moved to Australia. I arrived on a plane on 4 June 2014. I remember the day well. I was moving between … Read more
In Geneva this week, Australian delegates appeared in a grey convention room as the UN Human Rights Council conducted its official Universal Periodic Review of the country’s human rights record. You can watch the whole thing, as it unfolded in the Palais des Nations, below, though it’s only fair to warn that it’s mostly tedious, … Read more
Christmas Island made headlines in 2001 when the Norwegian ship MV Tampa attempted to land more than 400 asylum seekers on the Australian territory, an island nestled beneath Indonesia with a resident population of less than 2,000. For years before and after the island had been a target for so-called “boat people” travelling from Asia … Read more