Campaign Resources

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As the hunger strike is over, we are no longer updating this blog.

There are a number of ways to stay updated with the ‘Justice for ASIO Refugee campaign’:

MEDIA: Tamil Refugee Council

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MEDIA RELEASE: Tamil Refugee Council Press Office

CHOMSKY, KENEALLY CALL FOR END TO INDEFINITE DETENTION OF REFUGEES

18 April, 2013

Melbourne, Thursday – Two world-renowned authors, American Noam Chomsky and Australian Thomas Keneally, have called on the Australian Government to end indefinite detention of refugees after a 10-day hunger strike ended at the Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne.

“The true measure of the moral level of a society is how it treats the most vulnerable people,” Chomsky said in a message this week to the Tamil Refugee Council in Australia.

“Few are as vulnerable as those who have fled to Australia in terror and are locked away without charge, their terrible fate veiled in secrecy. We may not be able to do much, beyond lamenting, about North Korean prisons. But we can do a great deal about severe human rights violations right within reach.”

The hunger-strike by 27 refugees who have been detained for between three and four years because of negative ASIO-assessments ended late yesterday. “We decided as a group that our bodies were too weak to go on,“one refugee said. “The Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Government could not talk to us about ending our detention while we were on a hunger strike. We say to her now: We have finished, so are you willing to talk?”

Keneally, a vocal supporter of refugee rights, said it was wrong to treat refugees differently to Australians.
“If any Australian citizens were treated as these people are, with detention, humiliation and denial of rights, we too would make protests to assert the justice of our cause – just as these present refugees have done,” Keneally said.

“A previous prime minister, Bob Hawke, in the late 1980s, permitted 43,000 Chinese students to stay here, if they chose, after the Tiananmen massacre.

“No detention was necessary, no years behind wire for those offered asylum by the PM. I refuse to believe therefore that the present detention and long-winded processing of Tamils and others is necessary. Some of these people are in the same, if not greater peril, as were the students of 1989.”

A spokesman for the Tamil Refugee Council, Aran Mylvanagam, said yesterday the fight for the release of the ASIO-rejected refugees would continue, with a rally tonight at 5.30 p.m. outside the Dandenong branch of the Immigration Department at 76 Thomas St., Dandenong.

“There are 56 of these people detained indefinitely by the Government because of so-called adverse security assessments. They cannot see these secret reports to challenge them. It is an outrage that people can be locked away forever by Government decree without any legal recourse,” he said.

“We are proud of these brave hunger-strikers who put their lives on the line to end this unjust situation. We shall be continuing our campaign to get some justice for these people for as long as it takes the Government to end its inhumanity and cruelty.”

For further information contact Trevor Grant 0400 597 351

Hunger Strike has ended, Struggle for release continues

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UPDATE: Tonight 27 refugees at MITA decided to end their hunger strike. The group of men — consisting of 15 Tamils and 2 Burmese Rohingyas — had gone 10 days without food, and the first five days without water as well. Four had been intermittently hospitalised during this period. The hunger strike stopped after a meeting between Paris Aristotle, a representative from DIAC and the 27 refugees on hunger strike. As a result, the refugees will meet with a representative from DIAC this coming Friday.

The campaign to call for their release into the community is not over. There will be a vigil in the city, outside the State Library, this Friday @6PM. Please come and show your support for the 56 men, women and children who continue to be subjected to indefinite detention.

Here’s the message from tonight’s solidarity vigil:

strength

MEDIA: Statement from the Tamil Refugee Council

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TAMIL REFUGEE COUNCIL PRESS RELEASE
BANNED GREENS SENATOR LASHES GOVT OVER ASIO REFUGEES
Melbourne, Wednesday 17 April 2013
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has lashed Federal Government inaction on ASIO-rejected refugees after being barred by the Immigration Minister from visiting the hunger-strikers at the Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne.
“Some of these individual’s are really knocking on death’s door and they are suffering hugely. It is time for us to put down the hard political rhetoric and start thinking about the need for compassion and care,” she said of the 27 refugee hunger-strikers, now in the 10th day of a protest against their indefinite detention because of adverse ASIO assessments.
“I am concerned for the welfare of these people. They have been kept in the dark for over three years. They haven’t had a proper legal process. They’ve been denied access to the information that the Government and ASIO are believed to have against them. They haven’t been given a proper and fair legal process. This just seems more of the same.
“I think it is really important to keep them as hopeful as possible. At the moment they are in an absolutely deteriorating state. And they feel totally helpless, isolated and cut-off. “We heard the Prime Minister only two days ago absolutely dismissing their concerns, and not understanding that when people take this desperate action it is because they are absolutely at their wit’s end.
“My concern is that the Government simply does not care about these people, in the sense that this has been going on for nearly four years, and these hunger strikers are just a group, 27 of a group of 56, which also includes families.”
Speaking to Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National, Senator Hanson-Young agreed that her plans to visit the protesters during a trip to Melbourne were scuttled by Immigration Minister, Brendan O’Connor on departmental advice “because negotiations with the hunger strikers were delicately poised.” It is the first time she has been banned from the detention centre, where she has visited several times in the past.
Senator Hanson-Young, an outspoken advocate for refugees and a long-time critic of Government policy on asylum-seekers, was told late yesterday that she would not be allowed to come into the detention centre while the protest continued. However, the Immigration Department has permitted the Government’s adviser on asylum seekers and refugees, Paris Aristotle, to visit the hunger-strikers at least three times in the past week.
One of the hunger-strikers who had been told earlier in the day about Hanson-Young’s visit expressed disappointment when told late last night of the ban on her. “She is a person who actually cares about us and they won’t let her in. Why would they do that ? Are they scared that she might bring some positive focus on to us ?” he said.
Aristotle spoke to the hunger-strikers at length again yesterday. Refugees reported that he has been trying to get them to give up their protest, saying that the Minister for Immigration Brendan O’Connor will not consider their demands while they are involved in a hunger strike. “We pointed out to him that the Government has promised us nothing for four years. Meanwhile we are rotting inside these prison walls for doing nothing but asking this country for help. This is why we have resorted to this hunger strike, and why we are determined to carry on,” one of them said.
The Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, said yesterday that the UK and New Zealand solved the problem with refugees with adverse security assessments by appointing a special advocate for them. “I have a bill before the parliament already that would do exactly what Gillian Triggs is talking about,” said Hanson-Young. “ I’ve offered it to the Government. I’ve said we will give you the numbers to get these things through. Let’s actually move to a more caring approach to people who we already accept have suffered torture and persecution. All we are doing to them now is compounding their suffering.”
One of the hunger strikers who was taken to hospital on Monday suffering kidney problems returned to the group yesterday after treatment. He was the fourth man to be hospitalised. All have returned to the protest.
The 27 refugees – 25 Tamils and two Burmese Rohingyas – have been on a hunger-strike since last Monday week, demanding that they be released into the community. They have been held in indefinite detention for between three and four years because of ASIO assessments that brand them as threats to national security. The refugees contend that these assessments are wrong, and ask for the chance to prove them so. The ASIO Act, though, prevents refugees from having the same right as Australian citizens to challenge ASIO reports, leaving them locked in a legal black-hole they say is slowly crushing their minds and bodies. “We have no life in here. We are the living dead,” said one hunger-striker. “We are determined to keep going on this protest until there is resolution one way or the other.”
For further information, contact Trevor Grant 0400 597 351

EMAIL: Update

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More than 500 people have now sent an email to Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor and Attorney General Mark Dreyfus via our email campaign. The email urges the Minister to release the 56 people found to be refugees in need of Australia’s protection, who have been subject to prolonged detention due to adverse ASIO assessments, into the community. Let’s keep the pressure up! Please share the link to the email campaign with your friends and networks.