The death of a refugee at Villawood Detention Centre is the latest indictment of the bipartsian cruelty towards refugees in Australia. Pip Hinman reports.
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre
Activists organised a vigil for a young Malaysian student who died in the Villawood detention centre, reports Stephen Langford.
A car cavalcade calling for an end to detention and to free the refugees from Villawood Detention Centre was organised on May 30, reports Coral Wynter.
Sivaguru Navanitharasa, a Tamil refugee who fled Sri Lanka in 2008 and who has been detained for nearly 10 years, now faces a new challenge: overcoming cancer.
The Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) released this statement on May 7.
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Refugee advocates have serious fears for the welfare of Omid, a 24-year-old Iranian refugee from Nauru, who has been on hunger strike for more than 30 days.
His condition has significantly deteriorated since he was hospitalised a couple of weeks ago. He has reached a critical stage in the hunger strike with growing concerns that he may have already suffered some long-term damage to his health.
For nine months I have volunteered at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney.
For the past few months, an African woman has also been visiting the centre. She is Somalian and was once in detention in Villawood. Before that she was on Christmas Island, and before that on Nauru.
On this day we all sat together laughing, as volunteers do. This was the first time I had properly spoken to her. She seemed happy, calm and free.
More than 200 detainees at detention centres in Villawood in Sydney and Maribyrnong in Melbourne, were on hunger strike for five days from January 15–19 in protest at visitor restrictions announced by Border Force.
Beginning January 22, visitors will have to give five days’ notice of any visit and fill in a five-page form, with actual visits restricted to one-on-one.
Visitors will be required to provide 100 points of identification.
Refugee activists have maintained watch at Villawood Detention Centre to stop the deportation of Saeed (not his real name), a 60-year-old Iraqi man, since March 22.
Through the hot days and cooler nights activists have been at each of Villawood’s three entrances, checked every leaving vehicle to see if Saeed is being deported and issued regular calls to action and updates on Facebook livestream in support of Saeed.
Anti-deportation activists were unable to stop the deportation of Tamil refugee Raj Kumar (not his real name) on August 31.
At short notice, refugee rights activists and members of the Tamil community gathered outside Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney to protest the deportation. An application for an interim ban on the deportation was filed but not heard in time to prevent the deportation.
A Tamil man in Villawood detention centre is facing imminent deportation to Sri Lanka today, Thursday 1 September.
At short notice, several refugee rights activists and members of the Tamil community gathered outside Villawood Detention Centre to protest the deportation this morning.
Lawyers have filed for an injunction in the courts, and are waiting for the verdict.
Raj Kumar (not his real name) is 46 year's old and has spent four years in detention.
Two of his brothers have been killed in Sri Lanka.
Iranian refugee Majid Rabet could not hold back his tears as he recounted the details of the suicide of his best friend, an Iraqi refugee, in Villawood Detention Centre.
“I was the first person who went in the bathroom and saw he hanged himself. I lifted him upwards to keep him alive, but he was already dead,” Majid said.
More than 100 asylum seekers in detention on Manus Island have signed an appeal to Europeans for help. They say that just like the asylum seekers in Europe, they have fled war and persecution and like them they need safety and resettlement. They request European countries “to urge the Australia government to cease the illegal detention of us…”
Almost 1000 refugees and asylum seekers are indefinitely detained on Manus Island and a similar number, including families with children, are on Nauru.
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