By Asher Hirsch This article is part of our April and May focus on Art and Human Rights Sometimes, when I have the courage and my camera with me, I ask people on the train if I can take their photo. Usually this doesn’t turn out to be so interesting, and often I never use […]
By Meleesha Bardolia. This piece is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. People are sitting on the edge of Victoria Street, hunching over, legs angling apart. Saving their threads from psychedelic splatters of tandoori and dollops of tzatziki, Melbournians perch outside the Queen Victoria Night Market and feast. Entering the corridor […]
Earlier this year, five deaf writers presented Through Deaf Eyes at the Melbourne Writers Festival, a unique performance featuring deaf writers telling their stories in Auslan. Developed and directed by the deaf community, this groundbreaking work turns the tables and challenges the conventions, as Auslan interpreters translate this beautifully expressive language back to the audience. […]
For just a few seconds, Yoga believed that she was back home in Sri Lanka but then she understood she wasn’t. Four days ago their ramshackle fishing boat ‘Kumudu Kumari’ ran out of fuel and foundered in the middle of nowhere but an Australian Customs aerial patrol had traced them and a passing merchant ship […]
By Penny Gibson. This short story is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. The apartment smelt of stale cigarette smoke when Bedar arrived. He stared around him in silence as Jerry busied himself with bags of food. “Last fella was a smoker,” he said. “You a smoker?” Bedar nodded. What had […]
By Ellena Savage. A version of this article previously appeared on the Tharunka website, and was the winner of Tharunka Non-Fiction Writing Competition. It is May, 2009. A cold, clear night; frost will set over the tips of lawns before dawn. I wait at a bar for my new boyfriend, Ishmail, an attractive Eritrean-Australian I met though […]
By Emilie Zoey Baker. This piece is part of our September focus on Women’s Rights. See all of this month’s articles here. We were told it was a party, that there’d be heaps of people there. We were stoked ’cause they said the whole team was putting it on. Me and Michelle follow Carlton. We went […]
This article is part of our February theme, which focuses on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. Our first piece for our February theme, Prisoners’ Rights, is a moving audio work which reminds us of the humanity of those we […]
Blink is a short story inspired by the recent eviction of Occupy Melbourne from City Square. Click here to read an eyewitness account of the eviction by our Editor-in-Chief, Andre Dao, with an accompanying photo gallery. Adam didn’t blink from the high pitched screams. His eye simply pressed harder against the viewfinder, making sure the […]
Thanks to our friends at Voiceworks we’re pleased to present the following article by Bridget Chappell, a young Australian writer, on the criminalisation of sex work in Iraqi Kurdistan. As Chappell points out in her piece, one of the major arguments put forward to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was widespread human rights […]
The following story is based on true events. It contains very graphic imagery which might shock some readers. It is not recommended for younger readers. It was late as Rochelle crossed the main street towards Mosman Park. She left behind the flickering streetlights and entered the unlit path of the park, dragging her fingers through […]