The Tamil Refugee Council released this statement on March 10.
* * *
The Tamil Refugee Council has condemned an early morning raid in which a refugee family was given just ten minutes to gather their belongings before being flown to Melbourne and detained at the Broadmeadows detention centre (Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation, MITA).
Around 500 refugees on Nauru have to Australian Border Force demanding a timetable for refugee resettlement, to be immediately resettled in Australia pending any further resettlement options and to reunite families that have been separated.
About 130 refugees will fly to the US in the next month: 40 refugees flew from Port Moresby on January 23 and the remaining 90 refugees from Nauru are scheduled to fly in February.
There have been numerous instances of human rights abuses since the Nauru detention centre was reopened in 2013 and then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that no refugee who arrived by boat would ever be settled in Australia.
The Guardian鈥檚 Nauru Files gave detailed accounts of children being assaulted, women sexually abused by guards and suicide attempts being laughed at.
A hallmark of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was responding to falling opinion polls by holding press conferences full of totalitarian imagery, announcing moves to weaken civil liberties or intensify persecution of refugees in the name of keeping Australians safe from the apparent existential threat of terrorism. His successor, Malcolm Turnbull, is trying to out-do him.
Just days after agreeing to pay Manus Island asylum seekers and refugees $70 million in damages for unlawful imprisonment and physical and psychological damage, the government has stepped up its punitive program to forcibly relocate the detainees.
Refugee activists from the Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance (WACA) hung a banner off the Channel 7 building in Melbourne鈥檚 Docklands on June 23.
The Channel 7 building is in direct line of sight of the Border Force headquarters in Customs House, where operational matters in Manus Island and Nauru refugee detention camps are managed.
The CFMEU told a Senate inquiry building materials containing asbestos, formaldehyde and cheap glass that explodes are being imported and used in Australian building sites.
Assistant national secretary of the CFMEU Construction Division Brad Parker said the Australian Border Force was seriously under resourced to intercept the arrival of dangerous building products.
Within hours of the Australian Border Force 鈥 Prime Minister Tony Abbott's paramilitary amalgamation of the Customs Service and immigration department 鈥 announcing on August 28 that they would be joining the Victorian police and privatised public transport operators in Operation Fortitude to check the visa status of 鈥渁nti-social鈥 elements on the streets of Melbourne, hundreds of protesters had gathered at Flinders Street Station and social media had exploded in outrage.
