Refugee advocates have condemned Chris Bowen\u2019s proposed toughening of the character test for asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul described the announcement as a retreat to the discredited Temporary Protection Visa policy of the Howard government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw what TPVs did under the Howard government and Labor rightly got rid of them. It’s a severely retrograde step, a step backwards to the worst days of the Howard government,\u201d Rintoul said.<\/p>\n
Mr Rintoul said temporary visas would cut asylum-seekers off from their loved ones. \u201cIt potentially inflicts a life sentence on not just the asylum-seeker but their families, which is out of all proportion to any crime they may or may not be convicted of,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is scandalous that the government is contemplating more punitive laws,\u201d said Mark Goudkamp, from the Refugee Action Coalition. \u201cThe only solution to the current crisis is for the mandatory detention policy itself to be abandoned altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cImprisoning people the moment they ask for Australia\u2019s help, and keeping them locked up for years makes events like last week\u2019s at Villawood inevitable,\u201d Goudkamp continued. \u201cAustralia is the only Western country to apply a mandatory detention policy. It is cruel, unnecessary and in no one\u2019s best interests.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTalk of criminal acts by asylum seekers is completely misplaced. Anyone genuinely concerned about wrongdoing should be pointing the finger at the Australia\u2019s mandatory detention policy, which inflicts protracted psychological and physical abuse on innocent people. There have been five suicides in Australia\u2019s detention network since September.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s approach to refugee policy was strongly criticized at a Refugee Action Coalition rally outside Villawood Detention Centre yesterday, where three asylum seekers are continuing their roof-top protest. The rally was attended by 300 people demanding an end to cruelty to refugees, and was addressed by a wide range of speakers from medical, church, community and union groups.<\/p>\n
Psychiatrist Dr Michael Dudley, chairperson of Suicide Prevention Australia, described the government\u2019s imprisonment of more than 1000 children as \u2018wilful, systemic child abuse\u2019. Similar criticisms of mandatory detention were made by the Uniting Church\u2019s Francis Milne and Jenny Diamond, head of the NSW Teachers\u2019 Federation.<\/p>\n
The Refugee Action Coalition is organizing a further protest outside Chris Bowen\u2019s Fairfield Office this Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Refugee advocates have condemned Chris Bowen\u2019s proposed toughening of the character test for asylum seekers. Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul described the announcement as a retreat to the discredited Temporary Protection Visa policy of the Howard government. \u201cWe saw what TPVs did under the Howard government and Labor rightly got rid of them. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-874","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\/874","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=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}