The Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, has once again shamed himself and disgraced his office with unsubstantiated, ill-considered and offensive claims about refugees.<\/p>\n
The Minister is quoted as telling 2GB radio, “Some people have even gone to the extent of self-harming and people have self-immolated in an effort to get to Australia. Certainly some have made false allegations.”<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister has no evidence that any of the self\u2013immolation attempts on Nauru had anything to do with \u2018an effort to get to Australia\u2019; None at all. He is seeking to trash the memory of Omid in particular. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a disgraceful attempt to cast aspersions on refugees and to shift attention away from his responsibility for the abuses that continue on Nauru. In light of the revelations and his comments, he should apologise and resign,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeter Dutton\u2019s comments are reminiscent of those he made during the election campaign asserting that refugees were \u2018illiterate and innumerate\u2019. Dutton is rapidly becoming the Donald Trump of the Turnbull government \u2013 willing to say anything that might get a headline, buy some votes and promote the government\u2019s anti-refugee policies,\u201d said Rintoul.<\/p>\n
\u201cDutton well knows that the government\u2019s own Moss review confirmed the reports of physical and sexual abuse that were uncovered in 2014. That review also exonerated the Save The Children staff who were the authors of many of the reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull know the reports are true.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are victims of rape and sexual assault whose mental and physical health has seriously declined because of the assault and medical neglect that have suffered on Nauru and because Dutton turns a blind eye to the truth of what is happening on Nauru.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike Don Dale, where Turnbull thinks he can use a Royal Commission to shift the blame onto the NT government or onto NT prison staff, a Royal Commission into the abuses on Nauru could only point to the complicity and the responsibility of the Australian government.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, has once again shamed himself and disgraced his office with unsubstantiated, ill-considered and offensive claims about refugees. The Minister is quoted as telling 2GB radio, “Some people have even gone to the extent of self-harming and people have self-immolated in an effort to get to Australia. Certainly some have made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}