Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Australia. AGAIN.

[dreamer_easy]

Right. Just as a Liberal friend of mine warned could happen, the Rudd guvmint has not followed through on its promises to end mandatory detention of asylum seekers, a policy which is needless, cruel, expensive, and illegal.

Even the Libs stopped detaining children. Right now there are 20 children, without their parents, held on Christmas Island. This violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a legally binding agreement that Australia ratified in 1990.

Please take a couple of minutes to email or, better still, write to Immigration Minister Chris Evans, asking him to release the children from immigration detention at once:

Email contact form for Chris Evans

Senator the Hon. Chris Evans
PO Box 1322
West Perth WA 6872

Please drop him a sentence or two even if you're not in Australia - international opinion counts! If there's a mention of it in your local media, please mention that (and leave me a link if possible). Thanks folks!

Comments

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Done.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I thank you!

[ajponder.livejournal.com]

The information doesn't seem to have reached NZ yet. Almost certainly it's just a matter of time (we like slagging off Aussie human rights records). The last thing I can see was 18 Jan http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/01/18/1245985a5816 which was pretty upbeat. Hopefully it's just a hiccough, and a tiny bit of pressure will help sort things out, governments can be monumentally slow with things like that -- unless their arm is up behind their backs.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I've written to tell him I'm disappointed in his government. I wish I could have said I'm shocked, but I'm not.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Ta for writing. I'm hoping this is just incompetence, not malice.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link. The early signs were so positive that I'm hoping it's just slowpokery.