Weekly refugee posting

Better late than never! (Part one of two.)

Good news first, and I quote: "Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has revoked his cap on protection visas for asylum seekers rather than face a High Court challenge... Mr Morrison imposed a cap on the number of protection visas [which] would have prevented any new visas from being issued to asylum seekers before July 2014". (The buying of boats has also been abandoned as a strategy.)

ETA: The capping of protection visas was a peevish response to the blocking of the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas by Labor and the Greens - another piece of good news.

Also, lawyers have applied for citizenship for baby Ferouz.

Merry Christmas: Pregnant women in immigration detention are not receiving adequate obstetric care and are losing their babies as a result. Professor Caroline de Costa writes: "I spoke to two women who had recently lost their babies in Darwin; both stated that prior to their babies’ deaths they had presented to the clinic with complaints (decreased fetal movements, baby stopping breathing) that would be taken seriously in a general medical context anywhere else in Australia. Both had been turned away from the clinic over several days."

The Medical Journal of Australia reports that (and again I quote): "In 2011, asylum seekers in immigration detention in Darwin had a high prevalence of unmet health needs and substantial levels of psychiatric morbidity. The primary health care provided to them was inadequate." The situation obviously hasn't improved since then.

ETA (thanks, hnpcc): Fifteen doctors write letter detailing 'gross departures' from medical norms towards detainees on Christmas Island. The Immigration Minister vaguely disputes their findings, but the head of the AHRC states: "The report is carefully written and fully supported by examples and cases that are referenced as evidence... It is chilling in its objective scientific clarity in detailing individual cases."

Meanwhile, the twelve-member Immigration Health Advisory Group, a board of experienced experts, has been dissolved and replaced by a single advisor to the government; and the Salvation Army's contract to provide humanitarian services on Manus and Nauru has been terminated. Mr Morrison declined to specify who will replace them.

Retired Major General John Cantwell warns of the danger of PTSD to Navy personnel rescuing asylum seeker boats or recovering the bodies of the drowned.

Weekly refugee posting

(Part two of two.)

Amnesty International has published a report on conditions on immigration detention on Manus Island, This Is Breaking People. They describe it as an "excessively cruel and costly prison-like regime", in which detainees are held in "cramped compounds" in "stifling heat", without shade, shelter, or privacy, subjected to verbal and physical abuse, and denied adequate medical care and even water. One dormitory violates the UN Convention against Torture. Gay men are subject to threats and mistreatment.

The Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, visited Nauru and remarked that accommodation for asylum seekers was "better than mining camps in Australia". However, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young stated that Bishop "only went to the admin block and where all the staff stay. She didn't actually visit the detention camps themselves. What she saw was the shipping containers that are purpose-built to be accommodation blocks for staff. They're not what refugees are sleeping in." (ETA: Bishop has admitted this, essentially confirming that she was lying to voters.) An opinion piece by Hanson-Young describes conditions for children at the camp.

About 70 asylum seekers, including many children, were taken to Christmas Island last Sunday. Two adults and a toddler died last week when their boat foundered off Java. Two weeks ago, 27 Rohingya asylum seekers arrived on Christmas Island and went undetected for three days.