For the Asia-Pacific, which has experienced most of the world’s disaster-related movements, finding workable solutions is especially urgent. Between 2010 and 2021, there were, on average, 19 million internal displacements each year in the region, nearly 80 percent of the global total.
Expanding refugee protection for a changing climate. By Jane McAdam, P&I
Mohammad Zaki Rezayi fled Afghanistan with the hope of finding a pathway for his family to join him in Australia 12 years ago.
VIDEO: Afghan refugee reunites with family after more than decade. ABC News
Australian policy was to send any underage crew members on asylum seeker boats home to Indonesia, but police instead relied on a deeply flawed and now universally condemned method of wrist X-ray analysis to wrongly deem them adults.
Children as young as 12 were sent to maximum security adult prisons in Western Australia and the Northern Territory on the basis of the flawed evidence.
Michael Sukkar, the Shadow Minister for Housing’s claim is overblown.
In the 15 months for which official data was available at the time of the claim, the number of migrant arrivals minus departures was roughly three times the number of homes built.
However, experts consulted by Fact Check said it made little sense to compare the net arrivals figure — which includes families and children — with building completions, as not every migrant or new addition to the population requires a separate home.
More than 90 per cent of net arrivals were people on temporary visas, and roughly half of the total were temporary students.
University staff have been threatened with deep job cuts because of the federal government’s proposed international student cap, raising concerns the controversial policy is being weaponised as an “excuse” to slash jobs.
The draft bill, introduced to parliament last month, would give the education minister powers to set a maximum number of new international student enrolments. Leading policy experts have described it as a “recipe for chaos”.
Safety and Health after Arrival (or SAHAR, also an Arabic woman’s name) is the first Australian study to test universal screening for intimate partner violence and response in settlement services.
This three-year project, led by the University of Wollongong, was funded by the Australian Research Council and SSI, one of Australia’s largest resettlement organisations. We introduced and evaluated culturally tailored screening for intimate partner violence at four settlement support services.
In practice, this meant routine screening for abuse and giving women a wallet-sized information card in their language with key messages and useful contact details, irrespective of whether they had disclosed abuse.
My name is Farhad Bandesh. I am a human being first. Then, I am an artist, a musician and a wine-maker. Lastly, I am a refugee.
I am one of the people who could end up in jail, if the deportation bill became law.
I came to Australia by sea in 2013 seeking safety. I am Kurdish and, while I was raised in Iran, I have no country. Iran does not recognise me as a citizen; I am labelled as stateless. War and persecution against the Kurdish people continue.
The podcast of Refuge: Viet Thanh Nguyen & Shankari Chandran is now available to listen on demand.
"What does it mean to be included in a military industrial complex that wants to be the global hegemon? We as refugees, we come to the United States, we're expected to be grateful for what? To become settler citizens on indigenous land? And to become the alibi for the exercise of an imperial machine?'" – Viet Thanh Nguyen
In recognition of World Refugee Day 2024 go beyond media reports in this discussion of the refugee experience with Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen (A Man of Two Faces), Miles Franklin-winner Shankari Chandran (Safe Haven) and refugee law expert and advocate Daniel Ghezelbash.
NEW PODCAST | Refuge: Viet Thanh Nguyen & Shankari Chandran, UNSW, Sydney Writers Festival
Labor looks to have effectively shelved its bid to introduce extraordinary immigration powers and offer greater religious protections.
The government and opposition are in a stand-off over both proposals, with the Coalition demanding changes to both.
There have been renewed calls to scrap a controversial amendment to the migration act, with claims it could lead to indefinite detention and separation of families. Critics of the proposal have used the start of Refugee Week to bring attention to the bill which is currently before the Federal Senate.
Renewed calls to remove controversial migration act amendment. Reported by Tys Occhiuzzi, SBS News
Abul Rizvi accuses major parties of ‘short-termism’, saying Labor’s approach to immigration is ‘unsustainable’ while Coalition’s would be ‘pure chaos’.
Ghulamreza Haidari left Afghanistan in 2012 because he feared for his safety as a Hazara man and hoped he could settle his family in Australia. He's still waiting.
Their son Ali was 7 when he left, he is now 20.
Ali didn't know the alphabet then and now is trained as a teacher. His father says the pain of missing so much of his son's life is unimaginable.
After the Taliban claimed power in 2021 , Ali was fired and his mother Jamila has been practically housebound due to the government's restrictions on women.
This year’s Refugee Week theme of Finding Freedom, with a particular focus on Family, invites us to reflect on the resilience, strength, and unity that is the refugee experience. It’s also a celebration of the transformative power of familial bonds, both by birth and chosen, in the face of adversity.
To mark Refugee Week, all donations to the Asylum Seekers Centre will be matched. This means every contribution will be doubled, providing even more support for those seeking safety without a safety net.
Reflecting on Family and the Journey to Freedom this Refugee Week, Asylum Seekers Centre, Sydney
June 20 is World Refugee Day, which is dedicated to the millions of people around the world who have been forced to leave their homes to escape conflict, disaster or persecution. We find out what it means to be a refugee and meet some young people who are making a new life in Australia.
World Refugee Day. Reporter : Michelle Wakim, Behind The News, ABC
On World Refugee Day, join refugees and people seeking asylum and celebrate and acknowledge their strength and resilience.
World Refugee Day Telethon on Thursday 20 June powered by Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, Mellbourne
Barely a week goes by when the Department of Home Affairs isn’t under the blowtorch of media or political scrutiny. The question is, should one department have so much power? Today, chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper Karen Barlow, on the inner workings of the super department.
Moz (Mostafa Azimitabar) is a two-time Archibald finalist recognised as one of Australia’s best portrait artists. But while he lives here, works here and undeniably loves this country, as an asylum seeker there’s a real chance that he might never call Australia home.
Archibald Finalist's fight to call Australia home as an asylum seeker. Interviewed by Hamish Macdonald on The Sunday Project, (Channel 10)
At least 117.3 million people, or one in 69 individuals worldwide, remain forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations, according to a report released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today.
Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of all refugees came from just five countries: Afghanistan (6.4 million), Syria (6.4 million), Venezuela (6.1 million), Ukraine (6 million) and Palestine (6 million).
Globally, the largest refugee populations are hosted by Iran (3.8 million), Turkey (3.3 million), Colombia (2.9 million), Germany (2.6 million) and Pakistan (2 million).
Forcibly displaced population doubles to 120 million over the past 10 years. By AJLabs, Aljazeera
Welfare and garrison services at the detention centre is run by US private prisons operator MTC, which has a $420m contract with the Australian – not the Nauruan – government.
…. let us go instead to Papela, an impoverished fishing village on the eastern edge of Indonesia’s Rote Island, and inside the home of fisherman-turned-smuggler-turned-fisherman, Dahlan Karabi. (That’s him, second from the left in the above photo, taken by my Indonesian colleague Amilia Rosa.)
The house is built from cement bricks that don’t all quite fit together (“too many mosquitoes”) and is covered by a corrugated iron roof (“you can see how I live”). We drink sweet, milky coffee served by his gracious wife Aminah, who waits by a curtain that divides our smoking area from peeking grandchildren.
He has invited us around to learn about the troubles facing local fishermen, and we are soon on the subject of people smuggling. It is a live prospect among these assembled men; everyone needs to pay the bills somehow.
At 60 years of age and with health problems, Karabi, for now, has put smuggling behind him.
It comes with some amusement to my colleague, Amilia, when Karabi confesses to having had a hand in an infamous 2015 event she covered with journalist Jewel Topsfield.
The smuggling mission was carrying 65 asylum seekers to New Zealand when it was intercepted by Australian officials. The story became remarkable, however, when Jewel and Amilia revealed that Australia had paid the smugglers wads of cash to turn the boat around, leading to calls for a Royal Commission. It was a big and difficult scoop. Karabi chuckles at Amilia’s reaction – small world and all that.
The men gathered at the house deny any involvement in two separate and successful boat runs of illegal immigrants to Australia this year, but they know who we need to speak to. “There are two [groups of] people who know how to actually get to Australia and back undetected,” says one of the men, Kasim. “If it’s not us, it has to be the other guys.”
The “other guys”, according to these guys, are from a dot in the southern South-East Sulawesi islands, so small not even Amilia has heard of it. In the car back to our hotel in Ba’a we make the call to bin our other plans and try for Maginti Island instead.
The next few days are a blur of flights, airport waiting lounges and hot and sweaty ferries that inch us variously through Kupang, Denpasar, Makassar, Kendari and, eventually, to Muna Island. Getting to Maginti requires paying the brother of the head of a village to fire up a small fishing boat and rustle up a crew.
Waiting for us (locals have been making phone calls) is the hospitable but evasive Ali Imran – one of two chiefs on the island – along with dozens of curious locals. Selfies ensue. I am the first Westerner to visit Maginti for years, possibly decades, Imran explains.
In his living room, he says the market for fresh fish collapsed during the pandemic and fish stocks are on the decline from unsustainable practices. He bats away the Rote islanders’ allegations of people smuggling. While his fishermen have no choice but to go to the Australian coast for a pay day, they don’t take immigrants – at least, not any more.
As for having exclusive knowledge about how to reach Australia for its valuable sea cucumbers, also called trepang, he says this is rubbish too.
“Once we had a successful journey, everyone started imitating,” he says of the trepang runs. “It has now spread to all the regencies around us.”
“If there’s ever people smuggling activities to Australia, they keep saying, ‘It’s the Maginti people’. But I am very certain there is no one from Maginti Island who actually smuggled people this year.”
Gratified by the islanders’ warmth but dejected at the apparent dead-end, we head back to Muna Island, where a surprise arrives at our hotel in the form of three Indonesian officials. Since meeting us the previous day, they have decided they don’t like the look of my (valid) journalist visa.
They eventually leave (thankfully without me). The details of what happens next must be omitted to protect certain identities, but unknown to us or these officials at the time is that their bizarre interrogation has set in motion a series of happenings that leads to Bombana regency – next door to Maginti Island – and to people smuggler, Ali Sarwano.
Sarwano (not his real name) was among the trio who successfully evaded Australia’s Border Force in February to drop 39 South Asian asylum seekers near the Western Australian bush community of Beagle Bay.
Imran was mistaken. Sarwano’s two colleagues were, in fact, from Maginti, just like the Rote islanders suspected.
Sarwano (not his real name) was among the trio who successfully evaded Australia’s Border Force in February to drop 39 South Asian asylum seekers near the Western Australian bush community of Beagle Bay.
Imran was mistaken. Sarwano’s two colleagues were, in fact, from Maginti, just like the Rote islanders suspected.
Australian authorities tend to brand all people smugglers as “evil”, lumping the desperate, small fish with the profit-making whales. The 30-something Sarwano (he does not know his exact age) accepted the job for only $3000 to pay off debts at the local shop. He regrets his choice, not least because of the wrath of his wife and mum. He does not strike me as bad. Just a desperate young man.
You can read more about him here and here, and watch our joint investigation with 60 Minutes here.
On Rote Island, Karabi had told us that the futility of trying to make a living from fishing close to home was driving men to the illicit trades of trepang, shark fin, fish and people.
He has two requests. One is for compensation for the 2009 Montara oil spill off the coast of Western Australia that he says irreparably ruined fish stocks. The other is for our government to allow boats fitted with engines inside the “MOU box”, a large patch of Australian waters agreed between the two countries via a memorandum of understanding, where cross-border fishermen can operate legally. With the aid of power, they can avoid deadly reefs.
“By limiting the engines, they are killing us. Literally killing us,” he says.
One of the group at Karabi’s house, Kasim, told us he would add people to his Australian trepang runs for the right money.
“We are trying to tell our story,” he says. “We need the governments in Australia and Indonesia to know the problems and the truth.”
I spoke to lawyer Greg Phelps about the Rote islanders’ plight. He represented local seaweed farmers in a successful class action against the oil company, and is a wealth of on-the-ground knowledge. Phelps says he would have loved to have run a case for the fishermen – whom he believes were even more affected than the seaweed farmers – but the team had the best chance of success running a narrow case.
Beyond the issue of environmental damage, he is also troubled by the Australian policy of burning illegal boats.
“You’ve got all these out-of-work fishermen because they’ve lost their boats, and out of work because of Montara,” he says. “It put all these experienced skippers sitting out there under a f***ing palm tree in the village rather than being out there in their own boat. It’s the perfect environment for the real smugglers to come along and prey on them.”
Of course, it is complex. To truly “stop the boats”, however, perhaps the Australian government must consider complementing its ocean deterrence approach with strategies that offer a future and hope to Indonesia’s fishermen.
Until next time,
Zach Hope
South-east Asia correspondent
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