En Passant

As the brutalisation of refugees on Manus Island becomes obvious, more and more Australians want them brought here, I write in Independent Australia

Manus Island shows us there can be no “business as usual” anymore. Shut down our cities to shut down the concentration camps. Bring them here.

Enough!   The island is quiet, tonight The overlord stalks the fence Enforcing the peace that is not Through water, food, Electricity, and denial   Despair remains And determination To fight, to dream, to win We see you from our balconies Of love and fear We are not there But here And nothing changes, yet […]

Apparently, it is Australian values to blatantly lie and incite hatred towards asylum seekers, I write in Independent Australia

This is a Facebook post from Behrouz Boochani on what happened on Manus Island. Three refugees and some Australian officers have been injured seriously. A refugee from Sudan has been injured in his head and another Sudanese man injured in his chest. A Pakistani refugee has been injured in his stomach and is urinating blood. […]

We demand that those on Manus and Nauru all be brought to safety, to the Australian mainland, to be processed fairly in the community.

Even a slight familiarity with history would help the head of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection Mike Pezzullo and others understand that the offshore and onshore detention centres are in fact classic examples of concentration camps. Pezzullo is not about historical truth; he is about denying the truth of history. If we as a society were to call these detention centres what they are, concentration camps, then the reality of Australia’s actions would become clear.

The Refugee Action Committee in Queensland has called a solidarity protest in support of the brave staff at Lady Cilento Hospital for 12 pm on Saturday. If you are in Brisbane get along to this most important protest to let the 267 men, women, children and babies under threat of deportation to Australia’s concentration camps on Manus Island and Nauru stay and to begin the campaign to close down Manus and Nauru. Let’s spread the protests and build a people’s movement for the refugees. Make sanctuary a reality.

With news coming through that Immigration Minister Peter Dutton today said that ‘the federal government would not be “blackmailed” into allowing pregnant asylum seekers at Nauru’s detention centre into Australia for medical treatment’, I revisited Ian Rintoul’s article on the war on refugee women on Nauru. Writing a week ago in the magazine of the revolutionary socialist organisation Solidarity, Ian says, among other things:

‘The shocking ABC 7.30 story highlighted just two rapes of Somali women. There are many more. Women freed to live in the community are now the victims of a reign of terror supported by the policies of the Australian and Nauruan governments. There were serious illusions that new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would at least modify offshore processing—but the gloss is quickly wearing off… Nauru is not even a gilded cage—it is a house of horrors. Both Manus and Nauru must be closed.’

To read the whole article click here.