http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/11/austra13964.htm

Human Rights Watch, whose Middle East arm is so busy documenting all the Israeli and Hizbollah war crimes at the moment, has had to turn its attention to Australia as the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 winds it way through Parliament.

The Bill was approved by the House of Representatives yesterday 79-62, but with three Liberal Party members voting against the motion (Petro Georgiou, Judi Moylan and Russell Broadbent). Bruce Baird abstained, as did John Forrest, who immediately resigned as National Party chief whip. The number of government members who have crossed the floor in the ten years of Howard government could, until yesterday, have been counted on one hand.

The Bill enters the Senate on Monday. There’s a very good chance that it will be voted down.

Here’s a report from today’s Sydney Morning Herald. (Parlinfoweb is down at the moment, but once it’s back, I’ll link to some of the speeches from this week’s House of Reps debate.)

Who was Amal Basry and why do we mourn her passing?

Amal Basry, who died of breast cancer in Melbourne last Saturday, was one of approximately 68 survivors of the boat now known as SIEV-X (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel Unknown) which sank on 19 October 2001 in the Indian Ocean with the loss of 353 lives, refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan fleeing to Australia.
Senator Andrew Bartlett (Dem, Qld) has paid tribute to Ms Basry in his blog, while there is a detailed account of her story by Marg Hutton on her Sievx.com website.

The SIEV-X tragedy, which occurred in international waters but within Australia’s aerial border protection surveillance zone, is one of the biggest scandals of the John Howard years, as his government not only attempted to fudge the location of the sinking in order to avoid responsibility, but has refused to hold a proper investigation.

Read the chronology of events on Sievx.com and be angry, very angry, at a government whose arrogance and negligence has caused so much damage to Australia’s reputation and so much heartbreak to so many lives over the past ten years.

And give thanks for the courage of Amal Basry and the others who survived that horrendous disaster.

Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.

- George W Bush, Mobile (Alabama), 2.9.05 (source)

Football stadia have been symbols of the worst moments in their nations’ history in a few countries over the past four decades. In Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq, football stadia have been the scene of torture and public executions. The New Orleans Superdome stands as a monument to a different kind of torture and death, the result of governmental incompetence and neglect.

Thousands of people entered the Superdome, seeing it as a place of shelter from the hurricane outside. They would never had expected the betrayal of trust, the indifference of the institutions responsible for the safety and security of all American citizens.

It can be argued that it is still not the time to play politics and point fingers over issues such as the existence of global warming, the deployment of National Guard troops to Iraq, the tampering with the path of the Mississippi River and so on. But one cannot ignore the screamingly obvious - that government at federal, state and local levels have all failed to cope with a catastrophe which was always a risk.

I mean to say, a large city built below sea level in a hurricane belt - where was the disaster plan?

It’s not political to say that Bush’s display of leadership over the past week has been utterly dreadful. His speech from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday was described in a New York Times editorial as one of his worst. His major priority on Thursday was to bring in daddy and Bill Clinton as celebrity fundraisers. And on Friday it was important to single out the loss of Senator Trent Lott’s mansion as a symbol of the Gulf Coast homeless.

Vice President Dick Cheney was on holiday in Wyoming until Thursday, when he returned to Washington DC. I have seen no evidence that he has done anything since then, let alone provide leadership and support to the people of New Orleans and beyond. But maybe he is hot on the trail of irrefutable evidence that the Iranian government was responsible for Hurricane Katrina.

When the time for inquest arrives, there should be a litany of senior administrators and public servants held responsible for criminal negligence over the tragic debacle of the past week (and, of course, still going). Is it too much to ask for the President to be impeached on charges of manslaughter?

You’ve got to hand it to John Winston Howard - when he’s not blatantly lying about events he’s doing his darndest to shift the blame onto others. I don’t think I’ve seen anything for quite a while that encapsulates the John Howard mindset better than this exchange from last night’s 7.30 Report on the ABC. It comes during an interview by Kerry O’Brien about the Government’s announced changes to mandatory detention for asylum seekers:

KERRY O’BRIEN: Well, in that same regard you talked on Friday about hindsight. You’ve had alarm bells going off all over the place over years. You’ve had serious psychiatric warnings, quite serious ones, from whole groups of psychiatrists, particularly about children, you’ve had the Human Rights Commission, you’ve had other groups saying - and having made the admission that the changes are - not just overdue but long overdue, which suggests a long period, have you stopped to ask yourself how many of these children now face life as seriously damaged human beings, not to mention their parents?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, Kerry, perhaps their parents should have stopped to ask themselves whether they should have tried to come to this country in an unauthorised way in the first place.

(Full transcript is here.)

Human rights groups in Australia proclaimed Thursday, September 9, 2004 as a National Day of Shame. The following is a press release from Rural Australians for Refugees:

No crime but life imprisonment

Peter Qasim and Eidriess Abdulrahman Al Salih are two of 13 stateless asylum seekers who face indefinite detention in Australia. They are currently in Baxter Detention Centre.

Australia has refused their requests for asylum but the countries of their births will not take them back. Up to 80 other countries have also refused their pleas for a home.

On 6th August the High Court decided that the Migration Act allowed for the indefinite detention of asylum seekers. In response to media questions, Minister Vanstone said her discretionary power to grant visas served as a safety valve. However, on 31st August she told the 13 stateless asylum seekers that she had reviewed their cases and would not be giving them visas.

‘What is my crime?’ asks Peter Qasim. ‘I asked for asylum after my father was killed and I was tortured by the security forces in Kashmir. It was a mistake to ask people who didn’t want me, but I have already been punished for my ignorance longer than some murderers and my sentence has no end. Please give me freedom, send me anywhere. You can’t ask a human being to live the rest of his life locked up.’

Late last year Eidriess Abdulrahman Al Salih had his statelessness graphically demonstrated. Al Salih, who was born in Kuwait to Sudanese guest-worker parents, was subject to a bungled deportation attempt by the Department of Immigration. He spent 13 days in detention in South Africa and Tanzania while the Department of Immigration tried unsuccessfully to deport him to Sudan or Kuwait. Eventually he had to be returned to Australia.

‘After proving that he was stateless Al Salih wasn’t given asylum, but locked up again. Now the minister has thrown away the key,’ said RAR spokesperson Kris Latona. ‘Does she expect that he will die an old man in detention? Will he serve 60 years for being stateless?’

On September 9th Peter Qasim starts his 7th year of detention. Refugee supporters and human rights groups have declared it a National Day of Shame and will hold rallies across Australia.

See also the Peter Qasim Appeal, which includes downloadable petitions and flyers, also Sydney Indymedia’s coverage.