Newborn babies should not be separated from their mothers. But the Immigration Department did just that to newborn Ferouz and his mother Latifar, a 31 year-old Tamil refugee – even though Ferouz was sick and in hospital. Now mother and child are to be sent back to traumatic and unsafe conditions in Nauru.
- Please sign and share our online petition here http://chn.ge/1ieFBAi
- Below are photographs of Latifar, and baby Ferouz. Pictured are Latifar, her husband Niza, their 7 year-old daughter Habiba, four year-old son, Muddin and baby Ferouz. (Second photograph: Max Riethmuller)
This cruelty is typical. A heavily disabled 4 year-old Tamil child is also currently being threatened with being sent to the intolerable and dangerous conditions of Nauru or Manus Island.
These children and their parents have committed no crime. They deserve Australia’s support. Manus and Nauru are not fit for healthy adults, let alone for traumatised children. Monash University child abuse expert Professor Chris Goddard has characterised locking up children as ‘organised and institutionalised abuse’. On Nauru, asylum seekers are kept in tents in an exposed and unsanitary environment that Amnesty International has called ‘deplorable’ and ‘unacceptable’. It will be impossible to care for an infant on Nauru, which even lacks adequate running water, health care, and shelter. On Manus, asylum seekers live in snake-infested conditions exposed to rampant physical and mental health problems, malaria, inedible and often cockroach-ridden food, and woefully inadequate access to health care.
These vicious human-rights abuses are being perpetrated in our name. They are unjust and unnecessary as well as cruel. Australia does not have a refugee problem, and never has had. Both major parties have vied to outdo the other in their war on refugees. But things have never been so bad as now, under Abbott and Morrison. Morrison has made it clear that the government will stop at nothing to inflict maximum suffering on asylum seekers trying to come to here, declaring that anyone able to get on a boat will be sent to Nauru.
The government’s asylum policy doesn’t just affect refugees: it affects ordinary Australians too. If politicians succeed in promoting cruel, unjust and illegal policies against the most defenceless and dispossessed people in our society, they will find it even easier to oppress other disadvantaged groups – welfare recipients, single mothers, Indigenous people. How the government treats refugees affects our whole society. Already politicians’ obsession with refugees has led Tony Abbott to condone Sri Lanka’s widespread torture practices.
The worsening injustices against asylum seekers will only be reversed by a concerted campaign of public pressure. Join the Refugee Action Coalition to demand that Latifar, Ferouz and other unwell refugees be allowed to stay in Australia, as a first step to abolishing offshore processing and detention entirely.
Update: Court action to prevent Latifar and Ferouz’s removal to Nauru has been launched in Brisbane. A decision is due this Friday 29 November at 3pm Queensland time.