By Sivan Barak. Every Friday night for the past 60 weeks I’ve driven out of the ‘ghetto’, over the river, just 32 km south, to the far away land of Broadmeadows. It’s a weekly participation in a macabre ritual, the antithesis to Melbourne’s dubious title, ‘most livable city’. During these visits I witness what I can only […]
The Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia was used for the mandatory detention of asylum seekers between 2002-2007. In 2003 detainees protested and set fire to the facilities over the Easter Weekend protests. This happened again with worse results in 2005, but then Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said that acts of vandalism and self harm […]
The Refugee Council of Australia has issued the following statement (3/2/17), of which the AJDS is signatory, along with countless other organisations: We, as a coalition of organisations and community groups from around Australia, are writing to express our concern regarding the humanitarian crisis that Australia has created. Successive Australian governments have managed and funded offshore […]
Last year Behrouz Boochani wrote in the Guardian about arriving in Manus Island: “Twenty-eight months ago, with a shattered body which was ravenously hungry and deeply wounded, with bare feet and exhausted soul, I made the trip to the soil of free territory, to Australia. It was four days after the announcing the 19th of […]
The AJDS recently distributed the following letter widely. Among our recipients were Malcolm Turnbull, Josh Frydenberg, Michael Danby, Mark Dreyfus, Mike Freelander, Stirling Griff, Peter Dutton and Shayne Neumann. We implore these parliamentarians to vote against proposed legislation that will make Australia’s asylum seeker policy even more cruel than it already is. We’ll keep you posted […]
We share with you the following initiative from Love Makes a Way: Join us in a Powerful Act of Truth-Telling! Can you sense change is coming? In response to the #NauruFiles, refugee advocates from all different organisations have been holding vigils, rallies and peaceful acts of civil disobedience to let the Government and Opposition know […]
Like many around the country, members of the AJDS were appalled watching the Four Corners episode last Monday which told the stories of the brutality of Don Dale prison. Although these stories have been previously reported on and shared – particularly by Aboriginal peoples, groups, and media – it was this airing which captured the […]
Read “Jews, Refugees and the (im)possibility of history”, an insightful piece by Max Kaiser, about the formation and reformation of Jews For Refugees, published in Overland earlier this month: A few years ago I received a phone call from the current Energy and Resources minister, Josh Frydenberg. He called me in response to an email I had sent […]
What’s your background? Sounds like the beginning of a joke: A librarian, a therapist and a textile designer walk into a detention centre… Our background is homo sapiens. To which detention centres have you been going and for how long? There are two centres in Melbourne, Maribyrnong and Broadmeadows. We have been visiting for two […]
“It must end,” said Dr June Factor about the detention of children. Their plight was the motive behind a program started in order to connect with children and families in detention, give them hope, inform people about their deplorable fate and advocate for their release. AJDS co-founder, June Factor also founded Befriend a Child in […]