As more asylum seekers are being processed outside of the public eye there is a clear need for an independent medical panel to ensure that each person’s human right to sufficient physical and mental health care is being met, writes Chloe Potvin.
Rebecca Minty and Amy Rogers examine the implications of the Optional Protocal to the UN Conventional Against Torture OPCAT and call for Australia to ratify the treaty.
Is detention punishment? Is detention torture? Steph Murphy asks these questions and more in this article on the relationship between torture, violence, politics and detention.
Tom Greenwood has directed a short film about the story of Balan, a Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seeker living in western Sydney.
Maya Borom reviews Antony Lowenstein’s latest book, Profits of Doom, which examines the impact of multinational corporations taking charge of traditional government functions.
By Roxanne Moore and Alexandra Scott. We cheered when Rudd abolished Temporary Protection Visas. We celebrated when Rudd ended the Pacific Solution. His return to power restored our hope… then suddenly – BAM – hello Darkness, my old friend. Now what? This shrewd policy has left most of us in despair, grasping at arguments which […]
There has been some progress towards achieving due process for Australia’s “legal black hole” refugees.
By Benjamin Pynt. This article is part of our December 2012 and January 2013 focus on Asylum Seekers. Introduction Under the offshore processing regime, better known as the Pacific Solution Mark II (PSII), some asylum seekers are transferred to Nauru and Manus Island, where they face problems such as endemic antibody-resistant malaria, unsafe drinking water and inadequate […]
From 19-22 November 2012, a team from Amnesty International, headed by Amnesty’s Refugee Policy Expert Dr Graham Thom, conducted the first independent investigation of the Australian immigration detention centre in Nauru to determine the human rights situation on the ground.
By James Petty. The question of human rights in relation to coercive treatment for substance use is, unsurprisingly, complicated. The concept of “addiction” exists within a complex web of legal categories, medical science, social values and cultural practices, all of which work to colour the way we view these issues. In 2010 the Victorian parliament […]