| Features of the Adelaide IMC |
| Published as of Friday, 24 February 2006 11:10:02 PM |
| Anti Racism : Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Law & Justice : Media : Refugees & Asylum seekers | | DIMIA conspiracy against Ali Bakhtiyari | | 09 Jan 2006 | #media_11687;left#The Bakhtiyari family are arguably the most high-profile and most vilified of asylum seekers to have been imprisoned for years under Australia's punitive system of mandatory detention. Ethnic Hazaras from Afghanistan, the family's cultural and national identity was challenged by the Federal Government, and used to cast doubt upon the family's credibility. The mainstream media were often complicit in the propaganda campaign against the Bakhtiyaris. Forcibly deported without proper travel documents to Pakistan in late 2004, the family now remain in a precarious position. Their case highlights fundamental problems in the system used for assessment of refugee status, including the government's wilful covering up of mistakes, by adding more lies and disinformation to already flawed information. One clear example of this is the process revealed by Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) member Giles Short in determining the case of Ali Bakhtiyari, who had originally been granted refugee status. Mr Short preferred to use 'evidence' gathered by Australian journalists from the Age and the Sun-Herald, over official letters from the Governor of the home province of the Bakhtiyaris.
Read more...
Making a Pakistani baby - the curious case of Mazhar Bakhtia...
Anomalies in 'translations' of Bakhtiari ID documents |
| Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Law & Justice : Police & Thieves | | Willful neglect by DFAT of Australian imprisoned in Argentina | | 03 Nov 2005 | | On 4 February 2003 Australian man Stephen Sutton was arrested in a joint Australian Federal Police/Argentine police operation in Buenos Aires. After being held for two an a half years without charge, he was finally convicted of drug trafficking, and sentenced to 11 years in an Argentine prison. This conviction was despite ANY drugs being found on Stephen or in his hotel at the time of the raid. Moreover, when Stephen was 15 he had a rare type of scalp tumour removed, and according to his family 'was never the same ... and seemed to stay in this age bracket'. This fact alone suggests it is more likely that, if indeed there is ANY connection between Stephen Sutton and the drug trade, Stephen was exploited by unscrupulous others, tricked into being an unwitting drug mule in what has been described as a 'transnational organised crime syndicate'.Now Stephen Sutton is seriously ill in prison with tuberculosis, and being denied basic health care. His concerned family have been consistently fobbed off by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and even threatened with imprisonment themselves under the Privacy Act for discussing their own frustrations with the system. Stephen's older sister Ann Cluse, from Salisbury Downs discusses her experiences dealing with government bureaucracies that appear completely uninterested in offering basic protection to an Australian citizen abroad in dire trouble. Does being in prison mean you have lost all human rights? Are there are other Australians imprisoned overseas enduring similar neglect from Australian Consular agencies?Is this a systemic problem?Read more.... background to Stephen Sutton's situation Interview with Stephen Sutton's sisterStephen Sutton support websiteLetter from Stephen SuttonPhoto caption: Stephen Sutton with his niece Dee, in Australia |
| Nuclear issues | | Green-Black Alliance reborn in Quorn | | 28 Sep 2005 | | As Australia’s uranium industry looks to expansion and the nuclear power debate ricochets around parliaments across the nation, Indigenous groups and environmental organisations concerned about the nuclear industry’s destructive impacts met in Quorn, in South Australia’s southern Flinders Ranges . |
| Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Environment : Indigenous Issues & Reconciliation | | Everything is Not Fine and Dandy in Port Augusta | | 09 Jun 2005 | | The Baxter immigration detention centre is an obvious blight on the image of this town, however there is a more deep-seated conflict. This is the intensification of policing operations aimed at the town’s Aboriginal population and the underlying racist sentiment that drives it.In February of this year a STAR force team was used against Aboriginal people congregating on an area of foreshore. The STAR force team was deployed at the request of the Local Council and police. The Council cited serious public order issues as the reason for this aggressive action, however in the context of Port Augusta’s history of white settlement and Aboriginal dispossession, this seemed like yet another act in a long line of racially motivated abuses by the white land-owning establishment |
| Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Refugees & Asylum seekers | | Notorious isolation unit re-opened at Baxter | | 24 May 2005 | | Just in case you were thinking that the release last night of 3 year old Naomi Leong from the Villawood immigration prison marks a change for the better in Australia's brutal and unyielding treatment of refugees, think again. The ghosts of Tampa and SIEV-X are not so easily dispelled. The notorious 'Red 1' isolation compound in Baxter Detention Centre is being used again, after being closed since the February release of Australian Cornelia Rau who had been wrongfully held there for over two months. Ask any asylum seeker who has been locked up in "Management" at Baxter about their individual experience and you will hear reports of humiliation, physical and mental cruelty, and deprivation of basic human rights. An African asylum seeker was forcibly taken to Red 1 compound last Saturday (21 May). He has not been able to make any phone calls since being placed in the compound. Baxter refugees staged a protest on May 23 to highlight the situation of the man placed in Red 1. Mira Wroblewski, National Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) spokesperson, said her organisation is extremely concerned about this development. "Detainees who are psychologically fragile after years of detention, are again being punished by being placed in isolation units." RAR is concerned that detainees who are put into Red 1 compound have no right of appeal, and their placement in this compound is under the control of individual employees of GSL, the company contracted by the Australian Government to run detention centres. "GSL is able to operate with secrecy and its actions lack accountability", said Ms Wroblewski. Meanwhile Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has used the controversial and illegal deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez to the Philippines 4 years ago to again push the barrow of the necessity of a universal identification system, claiming that its lack made it difficult to identify people who did not provide correct information to authorities. This is a highly spurious argument given the existence of extensive inter-linked government databases such as the Movements and Reporting System that contains details of ALL individuals' movements in and out of Australia, holding data from 1980. LINKS:Notorious isolation unit re-opened at Baxter freed from life in detention Cornelia Rau's first press conference (video)more Rau digest from mainstream wiresRuddock 'in dark' on Alvarez Personal Information Digest-Border Control and Compliance Division |
|
