Detention at Manus Island was not the same as detention at Auschwitz, writes Jordana Silverstein. But the historical insights from those who were in those places echo through time, across generations.
The mounting urgency about asylum seekers trying to reach the UK by boat does not sweep aside the need for reasoned and rational policymaking.
Protesters holding a vigil last year for deceased asylum seeker Hamid Khazaei, who died in a Brisbane hospital due to an infection at the Manus Island detention centre in 2014.
Darren England/AAP
A Senate report details the high need for refugees on Manus Island and Nauru to be able to seek medical care in Australia. The fate of the medevac law now rests in Jacqui Lambie’s hands.
Migrants in immigration detention are turning to hunger strikes as a weapon of last resort.
Igor Kisselev/Shutterstock
Hungry for dignity, migrants are resisting their cruel detention using the only tool left available to them.
The medevac law was passed to streamline the process for emergency medical evacuation of refugees from Manus Island and Nauru. Thirty-one people have been transferred since its passage.
Refugee Action Coalition
With parliament sitting next week, the home affairs minister is pressuring Labor to support a repeal of the medevac law. But the law has worked just as it was intended.
Little has been done to help the millions of refugees from Myanmar, Venezuela, Syria and other troubled countries find permanent resettlement options.
Nyein Chan Naing/EPA
Current responses to the world’s refugee crisis are inhumane and ineffective. We propose five ways forward to help the world’s most vulnerable people.
PNG not only wants to end the Paladin security contract on Manus Island, it’s demanding Australia find a permanent solution to the refugee crisis.
Joel Carrett/AAP
A refugee policy built on deflecting the issue, rather than confronting it, is not sustainable. We cannot continue to ‘contract out’ our international obligations.
Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie during general motions in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in 2017.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Dutton continues to insist the government could be compelled under the medevac legislation to transfer criminals, although the legislation gives the minister power to veto people on security grounds.
Iranian Kurdish poet Behrouz Boochani, a long term detainee on Manus, wrote about the cruelty he witnessed in detention in his book, No Friend but the Mountain.
Amnesty International via AAP
It’s critical that the Australian government take a new direction in refugee policy and move beyond its tired rhetoric of deterrence as a justification for detaining refugees on Nauru and Manus.
Morrison will make announcements around the handling of medical transfers of refugees.
Lukas Coch/AAP
If the government really intends to “reopen” Christmas Island in any major way, it could find itself spending a lot of money there on few if any people.
Phelps has only been in parliament since she won the Wentworth by-election but she has got one big win under her belt.
Lukas Coch/AAP
If the government feels it is on the rack over the amendments, Labor also is in an awkward position, and at least one of the independents finds herself in the spotlight.
The Prime Minister has been anxious over the last two days to hose down talk that a government defeat on the bill could lead to an election.
Rob Blakers/AAP
Morrison declares the amendments, based on a proposal from independent Kerryn Phelps, would leave the government powerless to stop the entry of a paedophile, rapist or murderer.
Pryke told The Conversation "the desire for a convergence of China into the international liberal order seems like a bit of a fantasy now.”
US Vice President Mike Pence with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Australia’s Scott Morrison were among the leaders of the 21 economies making up APEC.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Summit season is usually a bit of a bore - worthy subjects lost in acronyms and diplomatic niceties. Not so this year as US-China tensions tore at the fabric of multi-lateralism.
Saturday’s disaster in the Wentworth byelection, in which refugee policy was an issue, underlined the political necessity of making.
progress.
AAP Image/ Refugee Action Coalition
Morrison remains wedged between his Liberal right wing ideologues and mainstream voters. The right claims to speak for the “mainstream” on climate (and other things) but it doesn’t.