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Weekly Refugee Posting
Neither the interim nor the final reports on Reza Berati's death will be made public. Witnesses have given graphic accounts of the killing and state that PNG guards and locals, and Australians working at the centre, were involved. Efforts to investigate the night of the violence have been hampered by G4S management refusing police interviews, the inability to guarantee the witness safety, thanks to the repeated deportation of their lawyer.
The first refugee assessments will be delivered to Manus asylum seekers within a month, according to Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. PNG has agreed to take all those found to be refugees. Australia's High Court will hear a case that could shut down Manus.
Meanwhile, G4S security guards plan a class action suit against the company for alleged misleading recruitment. A former Salvation Army worker at the camp has strongly criticised the charity's work on Manus as lacking training and accountability.
Asylum seekers involved in a class action suit after their details were published online have been transferred from Villawood to remote Curtin, just a day before their case returned to court. Protesters made a great effort to prevent further transfers, but were unsuccessful.
The Human Rights Commission's inquiry into children into detention is underway. There are over 900 children detained on the Australian mainland. Some have been held for over nine months but have only received two weeks' education during that time. One former child detainee told the inquiry: "If you're in Afghanistan [and] the Taliban want to kill, they just shoot at you and you will die easily. But in Australia, they will kill you slowly with your mind."
FactCheck: Children in detention: Is Australia breaching international law? (Yes.)
Morrison visited Cambodia last week to continue discussing the possibility of that country taking refugees who reach Australia. A long-serving Cambodian politician has warned against becoming part of the "Australian policies of dumping refugees". Human Rights Watch has expressed its concern about the "very, very hushed" negotiations. ETA: Emeritus Professor Carl Thayer: "Sending them to the authoritarian country with political instability is a bad idea."
Australia opposes UN resolution to conduct war crimes inquiry in Sri Lanka
Baby Ferouz and family have been moved from Brisbane to Darwin despite an attempt to block the transfer in the High Court.
Free immigration advice service for asylum seekers dumped by Federal Government
The Senate has killed a second attempt to reintroduce a Temporary Protection Visa.
Customs and Defence's joint internal review on incursions into Indonesian waters has been obtained under Freedom of Information laws, but with large sections redacted; Labor and the Greens have called for the release of those sections. The government's refusal to state how many boats it's turning back make Tony Abbot's celebration of 100 days without a boat arrival meaningless, since we don't know how many boats are still leaving Indonesia. One possible explanation of the incursions is that asylum seekers' safety contradicts the need to keep out of our neighbour's waters: as Senator Hanson-Young put it, "Cutting a leaky wooden boat adrift more than 12 miles from a coastline that you can't see is inherently dangerous."
Passengers describe drama of turning asylum seeker boats back
ETA: ALP powerbroker Sam Dastyari lashes party's asylum seeker policy: "I think that future generations will look back on this period in our history with the same sense of embarrassment that we look back on the White Australia Policy." ETA: Labor MP Melissa Parke has called for the party to end support for offshore processing.
The first refugee assessments will be delivered to Manus asylum seekers within a month, according to Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. PNG has agreed to take all those found to be refugees. Australia's High Court will hear a case that could shut down Manus.
Meanwhile, G4S security guards plan a class action suit against the company for alleged misleading recruitment. A former Salvation Army worker at the camp has strongly criticised the charity's work on Manus as lacking training and accountability.
Asylum seekers involved in a class action suit after their details were published online have been transferred from Villawood to remote Curtin, just a day before their case returned to court. Protesters made a great effort to prevent further transfers, but were unsuccessful.
The Human Rights Commission's inquiry into children into detention is underway. There are over 900 children detained on the Australian mainland. Some have been held for over nine months but have only received two weeks' education during that time. One former child detainee told the inquiry: "If you're in Afghanistan [and] the Taliban want to kill, they just shoot at you and you will die easily. But in Australia, they will kill you slowly with your mind."
FactCheck: Children in detention: Is Australia breaching international law? (Yes.)
Morrison visited Cambodia last week to continue discussing the possibility of that country taking refugees who reach Australia. A long-serving Cambodian politician has warned against becoming part of the "Australian policies of dumping refugees". Human Rights Watch has expressed its concern about the "very, very hushed" negotiations. ETA: Emeritus Professor Carl Thayer: "Sending them to the authoritarian country with political instability is a bad idea."
Australia opposes UN resolution to conduct war crimes inquiry in Sri Lanka
Baby Ferouz and family have been moved from Brisbane to Darwin despite an attempt to block the transfer in the High Court.
Free immigration advice service for asylum seekers dumped by Federal Government
The Senate has killed a second attempt to reintroduce a Temporary Protection Visa.
Customs and Defence's joint internal review on incursions into Indonesian waters has been obtained under Freedom of Information laws, but with large sections redacted; Labor and the Greens have called for the release of those sections. The government's refusal to state how many boats it's turning back make Tony Abbot's celebration of 100 days without a boat arrival meaningless, since we don't know how many boats are still leaving Indonesia. One possible explanation of the incursions is that asylum seekers' safety contradicts the need to keep out of our neighbour's waters: as Senator Hanson-Young put it, "Cutting a leaky wooden boat adrift more than 12 miles from a coastline that you can't see is inherently dangerous."
Passengers describe drama of turning asylum seeker boats back
ETA: ALP powerbroker Sam Dastyari lashes party's asylum seeker policy: "I think that future generations will look back on this period in our history with the same sense of embarrassment that we look back on the White Australia Policy." ETA: Labor MP Melissa Parke has called for the party to end support for offshore processing.