On July 19, 2013, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stood beside Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O鈥橬eill and said in a classical Rudd pretentious drone: 鈥淵ou won鈥檛 be settled in Australia. You鈥檒l be sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea for reprocessing and resettlement.鈥
Effective immediately, everyone who came by boat seeking asylum would never be given protection in Australia.
More than 100 people attended a public meeting called by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) on July 24 to discuss how to break bipartisan support for offshore processing. The discussion focused on ways to change Labor Party policy.
Chairperson Margaret Sinclair read a message from Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus, who said Australia has a "responsibility to take a greater number of refugees than we do". She said the current intake is "shameful".
Speakers at Newcastle鈥檚 refugee week rally on June 24, including Rafi, a detainee on Manus Island who spoke via telephone, called for activists to keep up the pressure on the government鈥檚 inhumane refuge policies.
Gleny Rae, Go back to where you came from; Fr Rod Bower, Gosford Anglicans; Dr Kate Murton, Doctors for Refugees; Keira Dott, Students Against Detention; Ian Rintoul, Refugee Action Coalition; Rafi, from Manus Island via telephone; Councillor Therese Dole, Newcastle City Council and others spoke about maintaining the rage.聽
At the closing of the on June 21 in Tiquipaya, Bolivia, social movements called for a 鈥渨orld without walls,鈥澛爓hile Bolivian President Evo Morales urged social movements to adopt the progressive proposals of the gathering's final declaration, which dubbed the migration crisis as just one symptom of neoliberal globalisation.聽
Refugee Art Project is a not-for-profit community art organisation that holds art workshops for asylum seekers and refugees 鈥 both within the Villawood detention centre and in its studio in north Parramatta.聽Eila Vinwynn spoke to Safdar Ahmed, who founded the group about its work and aims.
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The Australian Refugee Action Network (ARAN) held its inaugural conference on May 20-21 at the Australian National University in Canberra. It brought together more than 150 activists and representatives of 48 refugee advocacy and activist groups from around the country.聽
Participants included a large number of activists from Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) groups. RAR held its own national meeting over the conference, and elected a new leadership. The proposal to form ARAN came out of discussion at last year鈥檚 RAR conference.
Two asylum seekers who had been detained in Australia's offshore detention camps spoke at a forum organised by Refugee Action Collective Victoria on April 22.
Ravi, a Tamil asylum seeker from Sri Lanka now living in Australia, told the forum how he spent two years on Nauru after surviving a 22-day boat journey. He said he had left one "hell", as a former political prisoner in Sri Lanka, only to be sent to another "hell" on Nauru.
Victorian teachers, education support staff, academics, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals will take action over the first week of May to support refugees who have been detained by the Australian government.
The 鈥淏ring them Here鈥 action will involve four groups of unionists wearing T-shirts to work and elsewhere. The four unions will also hold a rally in the CBD.
The action was initiated by Teachers for Refugees (TFR), a rank-and-file group within the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU).
A year after the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ordered that the Manus Island detention centre be closed, people are still living in the same compounds and sleeping in the same beds.
In the latest protest, as tensions simmer inside the detention centre, guards hastily withdrew from Mike Compound on March 18 after a protest erupted in the mess area following Border Force renovations that made the serving area more like a prison.
This week, brave teachers from across the country will bring a message of hope to their class rooms. They will declare that they support refugees 鈥 and especially those on Manus Island and Nauru.
The simple act of wearing a T-shirt with the words 鈥 鈥淭eachers for refugees鈥 on the front and 鈥淐lose the camps, Bring them here鈥 on the back 鈥 is enough to reinforce to thousands of students that there is an alternative to cruelty.
The Refugee Action Collective organised a public meeting on November 7, addressed by Harry Wicks, who had worked as a carpenter at the Nauru detention centre and Bernard, a Malaysian who has done volunteer work at refugee camps in Malaysia.
Wicks said that Nauru, a small island with a population of 10,000 people, has a 90% unemployment rate.
Doctors and health professionals, with community support, have won a significant victory against the government鈥檚 agenda of suppression, fear and secrecy. Health professionals have been made exempt from the secrecy and disclosure provisions of the Border Force Act.