From Andrea Callaghan Just sent this to all senators. Email addresses in comments below. I urge you to write a letter to the too. Emails below. Does anyone have the list of House of Reps, with semicolans to make it easy to copy n paste. Dear Senator I urge you to do all in your power to stop governments on both side of the fence to stop playing political football with the lives of Refugees, who are people, just like you and me. The people on Manus Island came here to seek our protection from persecution. They came here in the hope of safety. These people have, in many instances, experienced persecution and horror since birth in their home lands. Now Australia is responsible for persecuting them also. On Nauru and Manus there have been reports of attacks on asylum seekers by the local people, and by the paid employees of Multinational Security Forces. Minister Scott Morrison has lied to the public on many occasions in the past and he is doing so now again, understating the severity of the situation there. The reports to refugee activists are alarming and tell more of massacres. It is now his responsibility to keep the asylum seekers safe. This is a most grave situation. I believe the protests by the asylum seekers are understandable since they get given such little information, they are caged like animals indefinitely and they have done nothing wrong. It is not illegal to seek asylum. These people’s trauma is being retriggered. Many of us have no idea of their experiences. Their protests do not warrant G4S staff belting them into submission, and in some cases killing and seriously injuring them. People have a right to protest cruel and inhumane treatment. The reason people from countries like Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran leave everyone they know & love and a culture they also know & love is often to save their life. Below I write in the first person so you might feel it more. I implore you to place yourself in their shoes for a moment. Imagine that as an asylum seeker you have seen all the members of your family brutally killed in front of you by an (government)authority; or you have been hung by the skin and muscle on your back from a huge hook in a jail for hours, and the authorities do this a little bit each day; or you have your head forcibly plunged into water so that you think you will die of drowning repeatedly; or you have been badly beaten twice, to within an inch of your life with metal wire, and you are told your torturers will be back, they don’t come back for a year, but every day you wait in fear, and when they do come back you only just survive the beating, and you can do nothing but wait for the next visit because there is no where safe to run to; or you have been raped by 15 men for 3 hours in a dark room with cloth stuffed in your mouth so you can hardly breath, and this happens on a regular basis and you cannot leave as you are a prisoner; or your come home to find your whole village has been massacred. Your neighbours heads places on the bridge as you enter your village. Or you live with planes overhead and anyone of them might drop bombs, so the past 10 years you have lived dodging machine guns or dodging bombs, or you have living with shrapnel in your body that daily reminds you of the land mine that killed 11 of your friends around you.... ... ...so you leave your country alone, you survive the very very dangerous boat trip to Australia – because Australia is a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees, so you think you will be safe there. And then you are punished by being put on a desert island for coming to Australia, and your mind is going now, you are deeply deeply depressed, no hope, no end to this torturous life, because you though you would be safe on arrival in Australia and you have been on Nauru or Manus or locked up in the middle of the desert for 12 months, with fences around you just like a jail, and you have no idea whether your will get a visa, whether you will be believed, whether your visa claim is in process, no- one will say what is happening, and people all around you are hanging themselves. This is what we are talking about. The people we treat this way are people, just like me and just like you. 90% of those who come to Australia by boat (which is NOT ILLEGAL) are found to be Refugees requiring our protection. We should not damage them more when they arrive, many of them have experienced the things above. Stop playing political football with some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Bring the asylum seekers back to Australia and close Manus and Nauru! I look forward to your reply about why, if you are representatives of the Australian Labor or Liberal National Party, you feel justified in locking up and detaining and refusing Permanent Protection Visas for these, some of the most vulnerable people in the world who have, in fact committed no crime. I would like to know if you have read the governments own information about the myths surrounding asylum seekers. https://aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/bn/sp/asylumfacts.pdf or this very comprehensive article glennmurray.au/australia-boat-people-illegal-policy. I would like to know if you have read the Refugee Convention – specifically Article 31 of the Refugee Convention prohibits states parties from imposing penalties on refugees who, when coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, enter or are present in their territory without authorisation, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and can show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. This Article recognises that refugees have a lawful right to enter a country for the purposes of seeking asylum, regardless of how they arrive or whether they hold valid travel or identity documents. Article 31 also prohibits states parties from restricting the freedom of movement of refugees who arrive without authorisation, with the exception of restrictions necessary for regularising their status. Source: refugeecouncil.org.au/f/who-conv.php As Minister Morrison seems not to understand these matters, once you have read them you may feel inclined to speak to him about these important breaches of the convention that are taking place day in day out in Australia. As you are in Office of the Federal Parliament of Australia is incumbent on you to take the time to education yourself on matters of such grave importance, as on Manus, as I write this, vulnerable people, are likely being harmed or killed on Manus Island. None have yet had their claims for protection completed and some have been there for well over one year. I wonder what you would do in this situation? Andrea Callaghan
Posted on: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 22:18:36 +0000
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