Refugee Upate: Nauru

(Just glancing back through the scores of bookmarks I've never managed to post. What I do post is the tip of the iceberg, and what's reported is only the tip of an even bigger iceberg.)

We Care Nauru continues to send all manner of necessities to the refugees there.

Protection Denied, Abuse Condoned: Women on Nauru At Risk Report (Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, 22 July 2016)

Refugees attacked 'on a daily basis' on Nauru, human rights groups say (3 August 2016)

Refugee who broke arm on Nauru has suffered loss of movement in his wrist and fingers, lawyer says (ABC, 10 september 2016)

I've worked in most conflict zones. I've never seen such high rates of trauma as on Nauru (GA, 26 August 2016). "Health problems are simply not being addressed. I spoke with people who suffered several heart attacks, major complications from diabetes, kidney diseases, untreated broken bones, and infections. In most cases, they only got blood tests and Panadol."

'You are terrorists, you make bombs': racist taunts help keep Nauru refugee kids out of school (SMH, 29 July 2016)

Nauru allegations should be included in child sex abuse royal commission, human rights groups say (ABC, 12 August 2016)

Nauru has denied visas to Danish politicians on a fact-finding mission and to Australian MP Andrew Wilkie and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. The Danes were told explicitly by Nauru that they were barred for criticising the treatment of refugees.

Protest gatherings are illegal on Nauru. Refugees continue to protest from behind the fences.

ETA: Some of those older bookmarks: Pakistani refugee in Nauru allegedly hit on head with baseball bat (ABC, 20 July 2015) | One family's brutal journey to Nauru (Canberra Times, 10 June 2016)

Refugee Update

Child detainee mental trauma will last, immigration healthcare provider warns (GA, 18 January 2016)

The impact of refugee detention: a true story (Independent Australia, 12 June 2016)

'We are the forgotten people': the anguish of Australia's 'invisible' asylum seekers (GA, 13 April 2016) "Nearly 29,000 asylum seekers are in Australia on temporary 'bridging visas'. These people may be free from detention but – with many denied education, healthcare and the right to work – they remain locked in desperate poverty and with no idea what their futures hold." | Turnbull Government confirms over 28,000 asylum seeker cases unprocessed (ABC, 11 April 2016) | 'Deliberate ploy': Refugees waiting years for citizenship under Turnbull government (AMH, 7 April 2016) The Saturday Paper (5 September 2015) describes this thus: Secret freeze on refugee citizenship processes.

Some good news, at least, when it comes to refugees given permanent visas: Most refugees feel welcome in Australia but housing among greatest hurdles (GA, 1 February 2016). Lotsa stats.

More stats, from the Refugee Council of Australia: Economic Migrants or Refugees?

Paris Aristotle, an advisor who helped put the Pacific Solution in place, has called on the goverment not to use refugees as "human shields" against people smuggling. "...in establishing these arrangements they were meant to be interim and short term and they were precursors into building a wider regional protection framework. It was never envisaged that we would leave people there for long long periods of time... while we have to deal with people smuggling and the government has been doing that, we also then can't resort to strategies ultimately that enable refugee children, women, and men to be used as some form of a human shield against people smuggling..." Aristotle is executive director of the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, which has issued a statement urging the government to resettle the refugees in offshore detention.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten says Labor 'open' to resettling refugees in New Zealand (GA, 24 August 2016) Personally I believe it's Australia responsibility to accept them, but the main thing is getting them the hell off Manus and Nauru.

We can resettle refugees in Australia and it's not just wishful thinking. This is how (GA, 5 September 2015) "Australia is also the only country to have deleted all references to the refugee convention from its domestic law. Instead, it has replaced them with a 'self-contained statutory framework' setting out Australia's own interpretation of its protection obligations under the refugee convention. International law makes clear that states do not have the right to auto-interpret their treaty obligations."

The eyes of the world: Australians rally against refugee detention centres (Al Jazeera, 28 August 2016)

The Science Behind Why Most Australians Feel Okay About Tormenting Asylum Seekers (junkee.com, 1 February 2016). How "moral disengagement" cancels out our shame and guilt, and how politicians use it.

A different type of detention (junkee.com, 31 August 2016). What asylum seeker detention looks like in Sweden. "I was surprised to see that [the centre] had no fences and no security guards. The doors weren't padlocked and the surrounds weren't barb-wired. As a foreign freelance journalist it was easy to access the centre, I just had to explain my photo project to the manager and I was free to go ahead with it as I felt necessary — no questions asked. They trusted me." Journalists are barred from Australia's detention centres because this might in a way our government declines to specify, assist people smugglers. (I guess the horror of voters would be more damaging than the horror of potential people smugglees.)

(no subject)

Watching Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart: Ryeo, a Web drama set in ancient Korea - around the start of the Goryeo kingdom, in 942 CE. ("Goryeo" is where the word "Korea" comes from.) The good boy prince slew an assassin, saving our twenty-first century heroine, who then worried he might get post-traumatic stress. "What is this 'seutresseu'?" he asked. At which point I realised with a little shock that, while modern Korean is full of English loanwords, in 918 English hasn't even been invented yet. People are still speaking Old English / Anglo-Saxon: "nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard", etc.

Mind you, IIUC in the Goryeo period, they spoke Middle Korean, which was tonal. The modern Korean our heroine would know, and which I'm struggling to learn, doesn't rock up until some time in the 1600s. (ETA: Apparently she can speak Middle Korean - but she can't read Chinese characters, lol.)

All of which is tbh loads more interesting than the idiot heroine's exploits. She's such a wet blanket it's difficult to understand why princes keep falling in love with her. In fact, the bad boy prince keeps threatening to kill her. Any time you're ready, mate!

ETA: OK, I'll pay this: the kid prince has fallen for her because she stood up to him (actually, she beat him up).

She thinks: "Has he possibly fallen for me? 'You were the first girl to ever treat me in that way.'"
He says: "You were the first girl to ever treat me in that way."
She says: "I didn't know they've been using that line for over a thousand years."