By Sonia Nair. Human rights’ stories centred on child protagonists have become increasingly prevalent, as writers delicately trace the exploitation of their civil liberties and the ensuing acceptance and desensitisation that accompany these atrocities in a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, deprivation and barbarism. Sudanese writer Majok Tulba did it in Beneath the Darkening Sky with […]
By Alana Lazdins. In his exhibition, My Dad the People Smuggler, Australian artist Phuong Ngo recounts through film, interview and photography the story of the Vietnamese diaspora caused by the military victory of the Vietnam People’s Army in Saigon, and the subsequent rise of communism in 1975. Ngo’s father helped refugees to flee communist Vietnam, […]
By Sonia Nair. “People smugglers are engaged in the world’s most evil trade and they should all rot in jail because they represent the absolute scum of the earth. People smugglers are the vilest form of human life. They trade on the tragedy of others and that’s why they should rot in jail and in […]
By Alana Lazdins. The exhibition, ‘Protest! Archives from the University of Melbourne’, at Leigh Scott Gallery in The University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library features photographs, written histories and a wide range of ephemera documenting student activism on campus during the 1960s–1970s. The exhibition locates student dissent as the catalyst and driving force behind multiple political […]
By Jessica Szwarcbord In our second review of human rights in the media we look at Victoria’s new trial plan on how to deal with “aggressive beggars”, asylum seekers arriving in numbers more than double this time last year, and rock art at risk in the face of uranium mining. A new trial by the […]
By Athena Rogers. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, millions of Cambodian men, women and children were forced into the countryside where, if they survived starvation, disease and the brutality of the Comrades, they were forced to tend the rice fields day and night. Patricia McCormick’s Never Fall Down recounts the story of […]
By Jessica Szwarcbord. Paula Gerber and Melissa Castan, of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, have pulled off an editorial feat. They have birthed a five-hundred-and-fifty-five page monster and managed to make her a kind one. Contemporary Perspectives on Human Rights Law in Australia is a more interesting read than the typical law textbook […]
In its most recent exhibition, The Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre brings together over twenty artists to explore the complex issues relating to women and sport. The exhibition is the first of its kind amongst contemporary arts venues to deal with the sensitive topics of gender-stereotyping, sexualisation and femininity of women in sport. The centre has kindly provided […]
By Sam Ryan. Welcome to our first monthly review of human rights in the media – what’s being reported and how? To kick off we take a look at coverage of children self-harming in detention and Geert Wilders’ visit, as well as minority representation on Australian TV. Children self-harming in detention On 18 February the Darwin […]
By Rose Hunter. I should start with the disclaimer that I’d never heard of the “West Memphis Three” before I saw this film, nor of the documentary series that told their story, the Paradise Lost trilogy. However, this meant that the documentary style and revelations in the film were all the more convincing when delivered as […]
By Maya Borom. In 1865 the very fabric of American society was being pulled apart by civil war. The southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of the South in protest against President Abraham Lincoln’s proposed 13th Amendment to the US Constitution that would abolish slavery. Vicious fighting and enormous […]
By Maya Borom. On 2 May 2011 United States Navy Seals transgressed into Pakistani territory and successfully assassinated Al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader, and the most wanted man in the world, Osama Bin Laden. The operation and its outcome was the realisation of a decade of what can be aptly described as global terrorist hunting that stretched […]