Where
Why
* Free the refugees from the camps and prison-hotels
* Action for Afghanistan - 20,000 intake now
* Permanent protection not poverty
* Peace not militarism - stop the wars that create refugees
Refugees brought to Australia for medical care continue to be detained in the Park Hotel in Melbourne and in Australian detention centres. Some have been detained in Australia for close to three years, after almost six years detained offshore, in PNG and Nauru.
Many of them have physical and mental health problems that ongoing detention only makes worse.
Slowly some have been released but they were dumped into the community on final departure Bridging E visas that allow them to work but they receive no Centrelink support if they are unemployed. They have gone straight from the trauma of detention into poverty.
This cruelty is just the tip of the iceberg of Australia’s mistreatment of refugees. There are still over 200 refugees held on Nauru and PNG, excluded from Australia, and with little prospect of resettlement in a third country. The Biloela Muragappan family have been released from closed detention on Christmas Island but still cannot return home to Biloela because their youngest daughter, Tharnicaa, is being held in 'community detention' in Perth.
Australia refuses to provide permanent visas to refugees who arrived by boat meaning they are kept in a permanent state of limbo - with no family reunion or right to travel, and having to re-apply for their visas as they expire.
Refugees are human beings driven to flee their homelands because of persecution, war, and economic and environmental collapse, especially because of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, but also in Africa. Australian governments have fuelled these wars but refuse to help the refugees that the wars created. Australian troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, but the Coalition government has refused to establish a special intake for Afghan refugees or increase Australia's miserable annual refugee quota, abandoning many Afghans needing protection. Particularly affected are the thousands of Afghan refugees who came to Australia by boat but have only been granted Temporary Protection visas. With no right to family reunion, their families continue to live in danger.
This mistreatment of refugees must stop and our government must stop fuelling the wars that create refugees. Please join our rally and demand peace and justice for refugees.