NAURU AND GILLARD'S PACIFIC SOLUTION:
WHAT'S THE HUMANITARIAN ALTERNATIVE?
When: 4:30pm, Tuesday 2 October
Where: Graham Cornish Rooms, second floor union house
Facebook: Click attending http://www.facebook.com/events/349393245149129/
WITH GUEST SPEAKERS:
Adam Bandt MP,
Greens member for Melbourne
Dr Savitri Taylor,
Author of "Waiting for Life to begin: The plight of Asylum Seekers Caust by Australia's Indonesian Solution" and Director of Research in the School of Law at Latrobe Uni. She has recently published an opinon piece on the expert panel available here:
http://inside.org.au/wicked-problems-and-good-intentions/
Kate Durham,
Journalist and artist who visited and made a BBC documentary on Nauru under Howard's Pacific Solution. See here for more info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/2279330.stm
Julia Gillard’s latest Regional Solution is a refashioning of John Howard’s Pacific Solution. Under the new policy, all processing of refugees and asylum seekers - including unaccompanied minors without a legal guardian - will now occur on third-country offshore destinations.
Overcrowded, overgrown and unsanitary prison camps on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea will be re-opened for refugee detention. The impact of Pacific Solution 2.0 will be detrimental to the welfare of refugees. Nauru is already reported to be full to capacity only weeks from the announcement of the new policy, and Manus island is predicted to become full in a couple of weeks. Like under the Howard years, refugees will potentially languish indefinitely in offshore camps, which will no doubt result in an increase in mental and physical health issues.
It is clear that the deterrence and the ‘out of sight out of mind’ outlook that has been adopted by the Gillard government as a response to recent deaths at sea runs counter to any idea of protecting the welfare of refugees, and is an open denial of Australia's international obligations towards protecting refugees.
Join Campus Refugee Rights Collective and our guest speakers for a discussion proposing an humanitarian alternative and a strategy for how we can win refugee rights.
Hosted by Campus Refugee Rights Collective. CRC meetings every 12pm Tuesday on the South Lawns. Look out for the a-frame!
This meeting will be the Inaugural General Meeting of the Campus Refugee Rights Club for UMSU affiliation purposes. If you support the work we do, come along and help us get affiliated!
For more info contact Katia 0403 570 199 or Jimmy 0433 611 346