Although Pakistan is not a signatory to the treaty, the UN’s Refugee and Migration agencies have appealed to Islamabad to reconsider. What has prompted Pakistan to pursue a path that will cause so much human suffering, and is so contrary to established norms?
Pakistan’s mass expulsion of Afghans is a historic tragedy. By Johann Chacko, The National
"Simone" arrived on a remote island to help asylum seekers.
But she witnessed something there that convinced her to leak over 2000 documents.
Reporters Paul Farrell and Maddison Conaughton investigate what happened.
OCTOBER 28 – NOVEMBER 3, 2023 | No. 473
The disclosure contained fewer syllables than the number of people trapped within it. The line was as short and unwilling as a secret: “There are currently 13 on Nauru.”
Speaking at Senate estimates, Michael Thomas, a first assistant secretary in the Department of Home Affairs, explained that 11 of those people arrived last month. “Those new arrivals were taken to Nauru in September this year.”
Thomas would not say where the people were from. He refused to say if any of them were children. “Just to characterise where the process is at: the group, at the moment, are going through the initial reception processes, which include identity, immigration, health and quarantine processes, managed by the government of Nauru.”
There was less detail than even the Coalition offered during its last term. The people involved have no nationality, no gender, no age. They are faceless, a non-people invented by this dreadful system.
“At this stage,” Thomas said, “providing more detailed information on the cohort may have implications for our international relations with Nauru and for individual safety and privacy issues as well. So I’d like to take that question on notice so we can provide you with as much detail on the cohort as is possible and appropriate, considering those factors.”
In the same hearings, it became clear an unknown number of people had been brought to Australia from Nauru and “detained as unlawful non-citizens”. They are locked up somewhere, with the government unable to say why.
“To be released into the community requires ministerial intervention to either grant them a visa or place them into residence determination,” Thomas said, “so a risk assessment process is undertaken at that point to make a determination about the best placement for them.”
Labor promised this brutality during the campaign. It long ago abandoned the humanity of refugees. One of the Albanese government’s first acts in office was a boat turnback.
In the past, politicians spoke of deterrence. They pretended these terrible decisions were made to prevent worse ones. They presented a false choice between torture and drowning.
The argument has always been strained, a sly justification of the country’s darkest impulses. It is even less credible when the torture is done in secret. The whole point of deterrence is that it is conspicuous. Without that, it is only cruelty.
The politics of this is simple. Labor continues the perversion so the Coalition cannot accuse it of ending the perversion. It is a kind of moral spiral. James Paterson, the shadow minister for Home Affairs, could scarcely contain his excitement. “Once again Minister [Clare] O’Neil and Labor have shown that they can’t be trusted to keep our borders safe,” he said in a statement, adding: “Only the Coalition can be trusted to keep our borders safe.”
The reopening of Nauru is the reopening of one of this country’s saddest wounds. It is a reminder neither Labor nor the Coalition has any real plan for refugees. All they have is a numb agreement to keep doing what they have spent the past few decades doing, trading lives for the narrowest of electoral gains.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 28, 2023 as "Reopening Nauru".
A 17-year-old boy is among a group detained inside the regional processing centre on the remote pacific island of Nauru.
He is one of 11 people, all Tamil speakers, who were taken to Nauru on September 7 under the offshore processing system set up by Australia.
These are the first people transferred to Nauru since 2014.
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They work alongside police to bridge the gap between officers and multicultural communities around the state.
VIDEO: Liaison officers are joining the ranks of the police in north QLD. ABC News
PNG’s chief migration officer, Stanis Hulahau, said the 64 refugees and non-refugees would leave PNG within weeks, with the majority of those to be resettled in New Zealand. Sixteen may be sent to Australia for medical treatment, he said, after discussions with his Australian counterparts.
But while government sources in Australia confirmed Hulahau’s outline, questions by the Greens senator Nick McKim to Department of Home Affairs officials on Monday revealed the Albanese government is far from providing assistance to the refugees.
The Australian Border Force has confirmed it sent 11 asylum seekers to Nauru in September, the first transfer to immigration detention on the Pacific nation in nine years.
The evidence to Senate estimates on Monday from the head of operation sovereign borders (OSB) confirms a report in Guardian Australia revealing the Albanese government sent asylum seekers to Nauru just months after the last people were removed from detention on the island.
The final group of refugees still held in Papua New Guinea a decade after being exiled there by Australia will begin leaving “within weeks”, the country’s migration chief has committed, saying the majority will be resettled in New Zealand, while those suffering acute health problems will be brought to Australia for treatment.
Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy talks to Andrew Giles, Australian minister for immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs. They discuss Labors’ anti-racism strategies, and how social cohesion in Australia is at a tipping point following a bruising referendum, and an escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
Therapeutic specialist, David Chikwuba, is among those pushing for more cultural competency training in the industry, in the hopes that fewer young people will boycott available support in fear of being misunderstood.
"Empowering [young people] builds their self-confidence and from my experience empowering them just notifies them of the skills and abilities that they already have within themselves," he said.
Rathi Barthlote knows the pain and anguish faced by refugee women.
Ms Barthlote has for the past four weeks been on a 640km walk with other refugees from Melbourne to Canberra to call for permanent residency and an end to uncertainty for 10,000 people.
"We are refugees who came to Australia seeking safety, but after a decade still do not have a clear pathway to permanent residency," she said, arriving in Canberra on Wednesday.
Refugee women call for government to walk with them. By Paul Osborne AAP, The West Australian
For the past four weeks, we’ve trekked 640kms across Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT to highlight the impact of visa uncertainty for refugees.
We’ve had countless blisters, and – much to our horror – more than our fair share of snakes to contend with.
But we have kept going, strong and united and filled with hope.
Refugees in Palestine. Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian-Australian author in Melbourne, describes her family’s struggle as they try to leave Gaza.
VIDEO: Palestinian-Australian describes her family’s struggle to leave Gaza. ABC News
The cut-through of mercenary, racist and Trumpist tropes reflected in the “No” referendum campaign has many people, including refugees, alarmed.
We are better than this. By Jane Salmon, The Australian Independent Media network
Refugee Action Coalition says refugees abandoned by Australia in Papua New Guinea are experiencing another round of distress.
Ian Rintoul says the 62 refugees left in Port Moresby have not been paid their food allowance on top of being threatened with eviction and no access to health services.
Mr Rintoul told RNZ Pacific's Lydia Lewis there is a real risk vulnerable refugees will be booted onto the street with no support.
On Manus Island asylum seekers were held for years in “Regional Processing Centres” but there was no processing, no information, just indefinite detention.
In 2019 all were moved from Manus Island to Port Moresby.
Ten years on, 80 refugees and people seeking asylum are still trapped in PNG.
The Albanese government came to power aspiring to a fair and humane refugee policy.
Grandmothers for Refugees are calling on the government to vigorously pursue its reform agenda, giving priority to bringing the remaining 80 refugees and asylum seekers from PNG to Australia while resettlement options are found.
TEN YEARS OF INHUMANITY, TEN YEARS TOO LONG. By Pauline Pannell, Fremantle Herald Interactive
Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley have doubled down on calls to cancel the visas of antisemitic protesters, despite the head of Australia’s spy agency warning that “inflamed language” may fuel community tensions.
The opposition leader and his deputy again called on the government to use character provisions in migration law to deport those responsible for antisemitic chants. Senior ministers urged the public to stay calm and let police do their work, and noted there was no evidence that the protesters making antisemitic comments were temporary residents.
Shah Nawaz Hussain was just 19 when he fled his home in Pakistan to Indonesia, to board a boat destined for Christmas Island.
He could have had no idea that what would follow would be a decade of living in Papua New Guinea, including years of detention on Manus Island under Australia's "PNG Solution".
After around eight years of policy paralysis and the biggest labour trafficking scam abusing the asylum system in our history, a scam that was largely neglected by Home Affairs Minister Dutton and his Secretary Mike Pezzullo, the Albanese Government has announced a $160 million package to “restore integrity to Australia’s refugee protection system”.
Nine’s Chief Political Correspondent David Crowe writes on the toxic nature of the debate with Peter Dutton already trying to deflect blame by claiming that Labor in Government has “allowed 105,000 asylum seekers into our country over the last 15 months”.
Albanese government addresses coalition-era asylum seekers surge. By Abul Rizvi, P&I
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