Witness to our journey
Yhonnie Scarce is an Australian artist specialising in glass-blowing. Since graduating from the South Australian School of Art in 2004 her work has given a voice to a number of Indigenous issues
Racism – Page 14
Taking the mark: homophobia and the AFL
“I figured out that I was gay when I was about 12 or 13 years old,” Ball said. “I fought it for a very long time, and it took me quite a while to come to terms with it because I felt that I would be letting my … community down.” Jason developed his football […]
Playing by the Rules – in sport and life
By Paul Oliver. This article is part of our March theme, Sport and Human Rights. A coach has no access for her wheelchair to get into the local clubhouse. A spectator yells racist remarks at an Aboriginal player during a footy match. A team excludes a gay athlete from making the rep teams because it might […]
“Changing a Whole System”: Racialised Policing in Melbourne
By Michael Green This piece was originally published on the Wheeler Centre website. Last week, the State Coroner began an inquest into the death of a young man whose body was found in the Maribyrnong River. The hearing didn’t make it halfway. On Friday the coroner, Ian Gray, suspended it, directed police to reinvestigate on […]
Why do Muslims hate freedom of speech?
By Mohamad Tabbaa. This article is part of our February 2013 focus on Religion and Human Rights. “Why do Muslims hate freedom of speech?” This question is becoming increasingly common in many parts of the world, and has been raised recently in Australia in regards to the anti-Muslim film of 2012. It is now again […]
Lincoln – Mid-Week Review
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 […]
Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home – Mid-Week Review
By Sonia Nair. A corpus of 27 highly eclectic accounts that expound upon the themes of migration, dispossession, racial oppression, hybrid identities and the fluid concept of home, Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home chronicles the incredibly important migrant experiences that have come to underline the fabric of Australia’s multicultural society. As editors Kent MacCarter and […]
Don’t Go Back To Where You Came From & Euthanasia IQ2 Debate – Mid-Week Review
Reviews by Sonia Nair and Jessica Szwarcbord. Multiculturalism and euthanasia are two hotly debated topics, and the subjects of our two reviews this week – Tim Soutphommasane’s book Don’t Go Back To Where You Came From, and the recent, fiery Intelligence Squared Debate on the question of euthanasia. Book: Do’t Go Back To Where You Came […]
A Man Like Ishmail – Police, Relations and Race
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 […]
Musings on the Hijab
By Zoya Patel. This piece is part of our September focus on Women’s Rights. See all of this month’s articles here. This article originally appeared on Zoya’s blog, The Coconut Chronicles. One topic I’ve always been a bit shy of writing about when it comes to cultural differences is the hijab. The hijab is essentially […]
Racial profiling, violence against women and income management: the human rights wrap up
Police accused of racial profiling Concerns are mounting over African and Muslim communities being unfairly targeted by police in street patrols. Tamar Hopkins, a lawyer from the Flemington and Kensington Legal Centre in Melbourne’s inner-west, says that the police may actually be breaking the law themselves if they are in fact racial profiling. Sydney based […]
Anti-racism, traditional Indigenous law and religious vilification laws: the human rights wrap up
Australia’s Anti-Racism Strategy is launched Led by the Australian Human Rights Commission, Australia’s National Anti- Racism Strategy, Racism, it stops with me, was launched last week calling on all Australians to say no to racism. The strategy “sets out a three year plan for Government to work with community partners to combat racism across schools […]