Haydar al Rahal arrived in Australia on August 13, 1999. The immigration department has refused al Rahal asylum — not because he didn't have well-founded fear of persecution if he was returned to Iraq, but because he spent time
-
-
For the past 18 months, through a brutal policy of deterrence by force, the federal government has been able to temporarily isolate Australia from the reality that vast numbers of people in the Middle East and South-East Asia are
-
It is ironic that a new law giving the ASIO secret police agency draconian powers was passed on June 26, a day after the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Orwell. If he were alive today, Orwell would have had some great
-
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush are facing inquiries into allegations they fabricated evidence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to win public support for going to war. In
-
Getting a visa to stay in Australia depends on who you know and who you pay money to, rather than the veracity of your claim. That's the conclusion to be drawn from the "cash for visas" scandal currently engulfing immigration
-
Last July, two children asked the Family Court to make the immigration minister release them from detention, because it was harmful to their welfare. The judge, however, found in October that the court did not have jurisdiction
-
There are 437 asylum seekers imprisoned in camps funded by the Australian government on Nauru, 169 of them children. Forty-nine people have been granted refugee status, yet are still waiting to be accepted for resettlement by a
-
During the month of April, 85 of the 264 Iranian asylum seekers held in Australia's detention centres — those who have exhausted all avenues for appeal — were given a letter explaining that the memorandum of understanding (MOU)
-
A new 28-page booklet has been produced by the Western Australian Refugee Alliance which provides a good introduction to the issue of SIEV-X, the boat which sank in international waters on October 19, 2001, killing 353 of its
-
At the start of a new century, the world has entered a new and frightening "age of terror", the world's ruling elite tells us. The attack on Manhattan's Twin Towers supposedly "changed everything". There is a "real and present
-
On May 19, ABC television's Four Corners program presented a damning expose of the horrors that went on behind the razor wire of the Woomera immigration detention centre before its closure in mid-April. In the first half of 2000,
-
A surprise tax cut in this year's federal budget, released on May 13, saw the corporate media happily seize on one of the least significant elements of the Howard government's eighth budget. The question the media should have been