Today, Thursday 15 November, refugee activists from Sydney University are staging a sit-in at Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek’s office.
“We are seeing a crisis of the Labor government’s creation unfold on Nauru,” said Domenique Sherab, spokesperson for the Sydney University Anti-Racism Collective. “Labor’s Pacific Solution is already worse than Howard’s. Plibersek and other Labor left Ministers say they support the policy that stops deaths at sea. But the asylum seekers on Nauru say it is killing them. They don’t call it Nauru, they call it ‘Nauru hell’. Nearly 300 refugees staged a 12 day hunger strike that ended on Tuesday. Six Iranians are continuing to refuse food. And one man, Omid, is on his 35th day of a hunger strike. His life is in danger.
“But the government has persistently denied the severity of the conditions and the protests on Nauru. They are condemning refugees to live in tents in tropical heat, and reports from the island show that medical care and access to phones and the internet are routinely restricted.
“We are here today to make very clear that Labor’s Pacific Solution does nothing to save refugees’ lives. The blame for any permanent physical and psychological damage caused to refugees on Nauru lies squarely at the feet of the government. As Minister for Health, it is shameful that Plibersek has said nothing about these conditions.
“When the government pushed through legislation to excise the entire mainland of Australia from the migration zone in recent weeks, something not even Howard could do, they proved again their concern is not asylum seekers lives’, but a determination to outstrip the Liberals in punishing refugees,” said Sherab.
Meanwhile, three Fijian refugees at Villawood Detention Centre are staging a roof-top protest to prevent two detainees from being forcibly deported back to Fiji, and a refugee with an ASIO negative security clearance has begun a hunger strike in Melbourne.
“The government’s policy is built to destroy the bodies and minds of refugees. Students and community members are occupying Plibersek’s office today to demand that refugees on Nauru be brought to Australia to have their claims processed immediately, as they are demanding, and that all refugees be settled in the community.”
Contact Domenique Sherab on 0423 368 383
