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Sometimes Australia’s asylum seeker news leaves you depressed and ultimately disappointed. Other times it leaves you so overwhelmed by ridiculousness that you’re reduced to silence, mouth gaping open as you look around for someone equally as perplexed. This week is the latter. Join us as the Hate Boat summaries the week that was in asylum seeker news so that you too can be left wondering “what the actual fuck?”
–The internet, what a ride. Just ask the Department of Immigration who after an online privacy breach last month will now be heading to the Federal Circuit Court. In February it was revealed that the confidential information of about 10,000 asylum seekers was released in a mass data breach. Over 40 asylum seekers are now preparing appeals against their deportation, claiming the data breach puts them at risk of persecution in their homelands. The information includes full name, nationality, location, arrival date, and boat, all of which they say could be used to persecute them if returned to their country of origin. The concerns of the asylum seekers refer back to non-refoulement, a clause of the 1951 Refugee Convention that states people seeking asylum can’t be sent back to known harm. It’s a cornerstone of the Convention, but means little considering Australia’s interest in following the agreement is limited at best.
–The Department of Immigration is addressing the issue of non-refoulement by simply allowing asylum seekers in to Australia so they can be free and contributing members of society. Nope, sorry I meant by pressuring them into signing documents waiving the department’s responsibility once they’re forced home. A Chinese woman detained at the Villawood Detention Centre claims staff of the department threatened to force her on to a plane if she didn’t sign the waiver. Originally the asylum seeker had exhausted her appeal options when denied asylum and agreed to return to China. That was before the data breach though, and now with the risk of her information being public the woman wishes to remain in Australia. “I am fearful of returning to China now that my confidential information may have been breached. I am afraid for my safety. I am afraid that I will be arrested and interrogated by authorities in China for making a protection visa application in Australia. This is the law in China,” the woman said in a statutory declaration.
–In another blow to the Abbott government’s religious credentials another Christian denomination has spoken out about the against with the current state of asylum seeker policy, particularly in relation to children under detention. The Uniting Church has hit out at the government’s treatment of asylum seeker children in detention and offered housing for kids moved to Nauru. The president of the Uniting Church Reverend Professor Andrew Dutney says there are about 70 children being moved to Nauru where conditions are poor. "We're simply wanting to offer the Australian government an alternative to knowingly harming these children and this kind of cold blooded willingness to put children in harms way… We watch with real concern, in fact, and alarm as the policies around asylum seekers have hardened over the last couple of governments," he said. At some point you have to put the obvious children and church jokes aside and consider that the offer would see asylum seeker children out of foreign detention and cared for in Australia.
–Those who have always wondered about working in a detention centre can now play along at home. A leaked document from the security company running the Manus Island Detention Centre highlights how to deal with the FAQ of detainees since riots ravaged the centre last month. The list of questions include your standard queries such as: “How can we feel safe here”, “Why doesn’t Australia care?”, and “Why can’t I sleep?”. The document is clearly designed to smooth over concerns of asylum seekers who, as you might expect, don’t feel 100 percent secure in detention facilities anymore. Thankfully nothing calms security concerns faster than an A4 page of manipulative and condescending rhetoric.
Follow Mitch on Twitter: @MitchMaxxParker