En Passant

  The Age, Monday 9 July

The Turnbull Government has earned world-wide condemnation again for its treatment of children in detention, this time refugee children and women on Nauru. The Guardian’s leaked reports show a scale of abuse far worse than Don Dale. John Passant reports in Independent Australia.

With news coming through that Nauru refused to provide visas to Amnesty International to investigate the appalling conditions in our gulag there, maybe the time has come for the ABC’s Four Corners to apply for visas to travel to the Island.

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.

A 34-year-old Iranian refugee on Nauru was savagely attacked by two Nauruans on Saturday night, 5 March, around 10pm writes the Refugee Action Collective Sydney. The dangers for refugees on Nauru form the backdrop to the on-going “Let Them Stay” campaign calling on the Turnbull government to allow the 267 asylum seekers presently in Australia from Nauru and Manus Island, to remain in Australia. “There is no prospect for enduring protection or care for asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru,” said Rintoul, “The 267 must be allowed to stay and the camps must be closed.”

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.

Socialist group Solidarity have just issued this statement on one way forward for the refugee movement. To read the article click here. Let them stay, close the camps: How can the refugee campaign win?

Just another case of a male authority figure not believing a raped woman. Unusual eh?

The one tactic the refugee movement hasn’t tried to date, apart from activists undertaking essentially stand alone actions, is arguing for and then trying to mobilise the thousands who turn out to rallies around a specific call for civil disobedience. My suggestion is that the left begin agitating to occupy the centre of the capital cities until Abyan is bought back to Australia for medical treatment and try to build just such a movement in the next week.

On Friday evening the Turnbull government chartered a plane and sent Abyan* – a raped, pregnant 23 year old refugee – back to Nauru, without receiving medical care.1