asylum seekers

On Sunday January 13th, a dozen people went to Quai Branly Museum, in Paris, where an Aboriginal art exhibition was taking place.

The text below was distributed there as a leaflet and a banner was put at the entrance, blockading the access to the Museum for some time. On the banner, it was written «L'Australie traque et enferme / Vive la révolte / à Nauru comme ailleurs», which means «Australie hunts down and incarcerates / Long live revolt / in Nauru and everywhere».

Judge Stephen Scott during sentencing of an Iranian-Australian (to 14 years) for his role in assisting Asylum Seekers to our shores (others mistakenly ill-define this as 'people-smuggling') said that there were greater risks for Asylum Seekers fleeing by boat than there are in if they remained in the country they were fleeing from.

The sentenced man was jailed for his part in several voyages in assisting people to Asylum, one which tragically ended in the 2010 Christmas Island disaster where thereabouts 50 people drowned.

Gerry Georgatos
Basarnas, the Indonesian search and rescue agency has for more than a decade informed the Australian Government that it does not have the boats, nor the quality of vessels, or the resources to manage ocean rescue, and Basarnas has long asked Australia for provision of quality vessels and resources in order to assist in search and rescue and in order to monitor its ports for boats departing.

On Jun 06, 2012 former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser delivered the 2012 Whitlam Oration to the Whitlam Institute in Sydney. Despite the chasm of differences and political ambitions of Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam they are both a far cry from the bottom of the barrel politics and personal ambitions of some our nation's contemporary crop of most prominent politicians.