Free The Children

[AussieSheila]

Oh! I'm glad you've signed, I hope they're free soon too.

B)

[Billy_Dean]

I'm going to do a bit of research on figures j2, before I post again. But let me say this, millions of refugees from these countries have been given shelter in neighbouring countries. A few 10's of thousands have come our way, or your way, or any other way. People talk as if they are going to overwhelm us, this isn't the case.

I'll post the figures when I get them, maybe you can Google around too, the UNHCR would probably be a good place to start. I'll do it in the morning. Too tired.

[Billy_Dean]

BTW, if anyone would like to put this link in their sig ...



... copy this code and paste it in sig control panel.

[URL=http://www.PetitionOnline.com/dtention/petition.html][IMG]http://server4.uploadit.org/files/021203-sig02.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

[j2k4]

Originally posted by Billy_Dean@3 December 2003 - 13:45
I'm going to do a bit of research on figures j2, before I post again. But let me say this, millions of refugees from these countries have been given shelter in neighbouring countries. A few 10's of thousands have come our way, or your way, or any other way. People talk as if they are going to overwhelm us, this isn't the case.

I'll post the figures when I get them, maybe you can Google around too, the UNHCR would probably be a good place to start. I'll do it in the morning. Too tired.

No need, Billy.

That they make it here at all proves the point I was trying to make.

[J'Pol]

Are the people imprisoned in these camps, or are they free to leave the country ?

Can they leave Australia if they chose to ?

[Biggles]

A worthy cause.

We have exactly the same problem in Scotland with children kept in fairly grim old prisons awaiting "processing" (which appears to take forever).

Anti-immigration is a particular hobby horse for one or two reactionary tabloids over here and the political powers are too weak-willed to face off releasing a pretty small number of families with children into the community so that they can actually go to school etc.,

Incidently, it is not surprising that if one were to look through a few back issues of these papers from circa 1930s one would have the edifying sight of reading how good that nice Mr. Hitler was. The more things change the more they remain the same - as the French are given to saying (only in French).

[AussieSheila]

Originally posted by J'Pol@4 December 2003 - 05:41
Are the people imprisoned in these camps, or are they free to leave the country ?

Can they leave Australia if they chose to ?

I think they are free to leave as long as they are willing to go home. They are not free to leave the detention centres otherwise. At one stage the government was offering refugees a cash incentive if they chose to go home. Which was really ridiculous because they were running for their lives, why would a small amount of cash make any difference to the situation they left? I don't think that scheme worked all that well.

OK, found some more information.

In late July, the UN Commission on Human Rights issued a report saying that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers, including children, in remote locations breached UN treaties and was inhuman and degrading. In response, Ruddock said the report was flawed and that it ignored the fact that people in immigration detention had arrived in the country illegally and were free to return home at any time.

I guess that answers that one.

Returns to Afghanistan On May 16 2002, Australia signed an agreement with Afghanistan’s then-interim government providing for the voluntary return and reintegration of Afghans who had either failed to qualify as refugees or were still in the process of having their claims adjudicated. Australia would provide Afghans in either group with $1,100 each ($2,000 Australian) or up to $5,600 per family ($10,000 Australian), as well as airfare and support services, if they accepted the offer within 28 days of being denied refugee status.

Ruddock said that more than 1,000 Afghans would be immediately eligible, and that the offer would subsequently apply to more than 3,500 Afghans with three-year TPVs once those visas expired. According to Ruddock, the cash and other incentives would give Afghans “real choices” about what to do upon return to post-Taliban Afghanistan. Asylum seekers who rejected the offer and were eventually denied asylum would be sent home without the cash, he added.

The offer applied to Afghans who, as of May 16, 2002, were in the detention facilities of Nauru, the excised territories, or mainland Australia. Mainland asylum applicants with pending cases were required to withdraw their claims in writing to be eligible for the offer. However, asylum applicants could wait until their application is decided and would still have 28 days after being notified of a negative decision (or, for those who appeal, 28 days after the appeal is denied) to accept the offer.

IOM administered the reintegration package and distributed the cash assistance upon the returnees’ departure for the Afghan capital of Kabul.

By year’s end, more than 300 Afghans had accepted the reintegration package. Of those, 274 had returned from Nauru and 40 from mainland Australia.

SOURCE

The source is the U.S. Committee For Refugees website and has a lot of information about refugees world wide. It's worth looking at, and has plenty of facts and figures (BD ).

[J'Pol]

Thank you - so to say free them is actually incorrect, because they are free to go whenever they want.

I agree that Australia has a singular immigration policy, it used to be my sig. However it is not actually imprisoning children.

[AussieSheila]

Yes, they are. You are absolutely right.

B)

[Alex H]

Originally posted by J'Pol@4 December 2003 - 00:21
Thank you - so to say free them is actually incorrect, because they are free to go whenever they want.

I agree that Australia has a singular immigration policy, it used to be my sig. However it is not actually imprisoning children.

Unfortunatly in many cases its "You're free to go home and face the death squads", or sit in a tin shed in the desert waiting to find out if your asylum application is sucessful. If the government is not imprisoning children, why can't they just walk out the gates? They have to stay with their parents, and the parents are imprisioned.

And as someone said before, yes I do know quite a bit about it. I've been to Villawood, my friends have been to Woomera and Baxter, and I've spoken to lots of people who have been to the rest of the centers. And, while I don't want to make any assumptions about what life was like in a Nazi concentration camp (I was pointing out the similar look and genteral environment of steel bars and razor wire), having been to a detention center myself, I can say that it was not a pleasent experience, people coming up to you, tugging and your clothes begging for help. "Please tell your Prime Minister we just want happy life. Back home is no good." I saw the welts on a guy's back from where the Taliban had beaten him, and and the welts on another guy's back from where the detention center guards had beaten him for yelling that he wanted to be let out. And the marks looked the same, whoever did the beating.

I worked on a play called "Woomera", back when asylum seekers were front page news. The theatre got bomb threats, the actors got death threats and we had ASIO agents snooping around. It stired up a shit storm, but it helped a lot of people get a better understanding of the situation.

And Phillip Ruddock is a C*NT. He was the official legal guardian of people under 18 in detention centers, but at the same time he was the minister responsible for implementing the policy of mandatory detention. The biggest conflict of interest in the world.