Another person who came to Australia seeking safety and security died on Manus Island on May 22. The Rohingya man is the seventh person to die on Manus Island since Labor re-established offshore detention.
The man died after jumping out of a bus 鈥 it is being reported as a suicide. Doctors for Refugees had been calling on the government to bring him here for more than a year as he suffers from epilepsy.
About 100 people attended a forum on April 23 with the theme: "Change the rules for refugees".
The forum, organised by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC), aimed to show the links between the struggles for union rights and refugee rights.
Chairperson Lucy Honan, a member of RAC and the Australian Education Union, said that unionists and refugees are under attack by the same Coalition government. She noted that many refugees are themselves workers.
In the lead up to the Palm Sunday refugee rights rallies 麻豆传媒 Weekly鈥檚 Zebedee Parkes spoke to activists in the refugee campaign about the work they are doing in their communities and why they are coming to the rallies on March 25.
Seven protesters who staged a sit-in on November 3 at the Lonsdale Street headquarters of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection have avoided a conviction for trespassing on Commonwealth property. They were part of group protesting the closure of the Manus Island detention centre three days earlier.
A man waves over a roughly boarded fence, as a guard walks intimidatingly in front of it. A group of refugee protesters, sweltering in the hot sun in Leonora 鈥 a two day drive from Perth into the desert 鈥 wave back and yell 鈥渁zadi鈥, the Farsi word for freedom.
I am one of the protesters and I am filming the protest.
One week earlier, just before the start of my second year at university, I opened an email from an activist group advertising a 鈥淐aravan of Compassion鈥 to Leonora detention centre.
A few days later I was on the bus, barely knowing one other person.
Around the country, on March 25 (Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar), people will be protesting about the federal government鈥檚 ongoing cruelty towards refugees.
They will be demanding an end to offshore detention and boat turn-backs and for asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru to be brought to our shores and offered permanent protection.
Many readers won鈥檛 need a reason to join the protests, but here are three new ones.
Victoria聽Police are being used by the state Labor government to threaten and harass protesters who have been organising in support of asylum seekers on Manus Island. Activists described the behaviour of the police at a recent rally as state sanctioned violence.
On November 24, a neo-Nazi grabbed the rally microphone and began screaming into it that refugees were rapists and that they should not be bought to Australia.
Seven facts about the crisis in the Manus Island detention centre that the media refuse to report.
The crisis is deepening on Manus Island. The 600 men remaining at the former regional processing centre compound are being starved out, deprived of medical aid and having fences taken down around them as 麻豆传媒 Weekly goes to print. Notices have been posted at the centre saying that if the men do not vacate, they will be removed by force.
Refugee advocates occupied Melbourne鈥檚 Spring St on October 25 in solidarity with the asylum seekers of Manus Island, who have been abandoned by the Australian government.
The action was organised by (WACA), and .
More than 200 people participated in a rally and march for refugee rights on September 2. A similar rally was also held in Sydney.
The demonstration was organised at short notice by the Refugee Action Collective in response to the federal government's decision to end the $100 a week income support for people who were brought to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru for medical treatment and evict them from the houses they are living in. This will initially affect 100 people, but may eventually affect many more.
Hamed Shamshiripour, a 31 year old Iranian refugee, died on August 7 as a direct result of Australia鈥檚 detention system. He is the sixth man to die on Manus Island since the detention centre was opened in 2012, according to Monash University鈥檚 .