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News :: Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Law & Justice : Politics & Elections : Trade & International Relations : War & Peace |
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The pursuit of justice for David Hicks |
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by ke |
14 Apr 2006
Modified: 06:19:21 AM |
Adelaide-born David Hicks has been incarcerated in the United States' notorious military prison at Guantanamo Bay for over 4 years. Unlike other countries such as Britain which have successfully negotiated the return of their nationals, the Australian Government has consistently refused to negotiate for a fair deal for Hicks, who now faces trial under the controversial military commision system. Hicks, who has a claim to British citizenship, achieved a victory on 12 April 2006 when the British Court of Appeals dismissed the UK Government's attempt to overturn his citizen's rights. In Adelaide on the same day a public meeting was organised by Fair Go for David, bringing together Hicks' legal counsels and his father to update the large audience on the progress of the campaign to bring him home.
Read the legal updates at the public meeting
Fair Go For David |
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News :: Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Law & Justice : Police & Thieves |
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Willful neglect by DFAT of Australian imprisoned in Argentina |
by karin eliot
Email: karineliot (nospam) gmail.com |
03 Nov 2005
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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 sister
Stephen Sutton support website
Letter from Stephen Sutton
Photo caption: Stephen Sutton with his niece Dee, in Australia |
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News :: Nuclear issues |
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Green-Black Alliance reborn in Quorn |
by Rig
Email: sievx01 (nospam) yahoo.com.au |
28 Sep 2005
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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 . |
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Read the full article... (22 comments) |
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Everything is Not Fine and Dandy in Port Augusta |
by Rig
Email: sievx01 (nospam) yahoo.com.au |
09 Jun 2005
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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 |
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Read the full article... (18 comments) |
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News :: Civil Liberties & Human Rights : Refugees & Asylum seekers |
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Notorious isolation unit re-opened at Baxter |
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by adele indy |
24 May 2005
Modified: 10:19:15 PM |
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 wires
Ruddock 'in dark' on Alvarez
Personal Information Digest-Border Control and Compliance Division |
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