If you are following this website, you are probably interested in the topic of asylum seekers. Most probably, Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.

Arrival of SIEV 258 to Christmas Island

Source: Diac Image Library

This is a round up of the latest articles about Australia’s asylum seeker policies, from a variety of publications. These writers are far more proficient than I am, so I am sharing what I have been reading with you. I hope you will find these articles as informative as I have found them. And as horrifying.

Asylum seeker resettlement deals ‘not just about safety’: UNHCR

Speaking on the 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, Mr Turk rejected Mr Morrison’s claims that the convention, which he said had saved millions of lives, needed revision. What was required, he said, was “proper application and implementation, practical co-operation and burden-sharing”.

He said the convention required Australia to not return refugees to unsafe territories, and also to ensure asylum seekers and refugees had freedom of movement, education, access to health care and labour rights.

Asylum seeker policy swaps deaths at sea for annihilation on land

Fairfax Media has published footage showing security guards at Manus Island attacking asylum seekers. There is evidence of the use of guns and machetes by Australian-employed guards. Of course, we had the recent death of Reza Barati on Manus Island, with attempts to stymie inquiries outside the control of the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments.

Australia’s asylum policies repeatedly criticised by UN officials at conference

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regional protection adviser, Tom Vargas, said that sending refugees to Cambodia was not a “durable” solution for refugees.

“A real solution is not to send them to a country that is still recovering from a horrible civil war that killed millions of its people … It’s not in the spirit of resettlement as far as I can tell,”  href=”http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/un-representatives-criticise-abbott-governments-boat-towback-policy-20140423-zqxz1.html”>Fairfax media reported him saying.

Visiting concentration camps in Utopia

 “You can’t just continually blame the government in a democracy. The Australian peoples’ hands are not clean in this either,” he said.

Touché.

“A concentration camp is ‘a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents’, etcetera,” George said. “That is precisely what detention centres are”.

“They are not ‘processing centres’, because there are asylum seekers being held in indefinite detention because they are ‘Stateless Persons’. What ‘process’ can they go through other than being granted a nationality?

Asylum seeker boat turn-back questions going unanswered by Government, says UNHCR

UNHCR regional representative James Lynch says people from seven boats that have been returned to Indonesia recently told the UN agency they made it to Australian land or at least its territorial waters.

He says if that is true, Australia’s responsibility is to allow them to be processed as asylum seekers.

Papua New Guinea nationals attacked asylum seekers on Manus Island

There are also images that show no action was taken to rope off the scene of Mr Barati’s killing before evidence was either compromised or completely cleared away, including the rock that witnesses say made sure he was dead.