Ranjini akka,

I am glad to see the support you are getting, I wish freedom for you and your children as well as all my brothers and sisters.

May it all end well.

Lets hope this is the first step to treating all in Australia as human beings. Good luck Ranjini.

Today the High Court ruled that the denial of Visas on the grounds of adverse ASIO assessments is invalid. 

While this is fantastic news, we must remember that the Government is still in a position to change the laws. The court also ruled that M47 was afforded procedural fairness, which is a concern as it means the Government still does not have to tell people why they are detained.

We urge the Government not to shift the goal posts on these vulnerable people, and we look forward to them adopting a more humane approach to refugees.

Laswyer David Manne has called the result a “significant victory” and urges the Government to reprocess and grant his client freedom.

More to come as we get responses.

Click here to view the ABC report

On THE EVE OF HIGH COURT DECISION on INDEFINITE DETENTION:

FOR MY TAMIL FRIENDS & ONE OTHER. Wistful, Wishful Thinking. Thinking. Never-ending Thinking. Hoping. Why Must We Hope? Dare to Hope. Have to Cope. Waiting for a Positive Decision.For JUST ONE POSITIVE DECISION. A JUST POSITIVE DECISION. The Ultimate Decision, The Life-Saving Decision. Of faceless judges &; fateful arguments, On Evidence Presented, Evidence Discounted – Evidence Accepted. Rejected Again. Rejected Yet Again. Rail Against Bias &; Ignorance. Never Quite Hopeless. Nightmares Pursuing Despairers, Running, Hiding, Awaiting Disaster. Panic, Pounding, Cold Fear. Powerless. The Tortured, Having Fled Torture Subjected to Torture.

Lesley

UPDATE: We have had confirmation from the High Court that the findings will be handed down at 2:15pm Friday October 5.

This Friday we believe the High Court  will hand down its findings on David Manne’s challenge to indefinite detention. 

It has been over 4 months since Ranjini was first taken into the Villawood Detention Centre. After 4 months of relentless campaigning, hundreds of letters and cards and countless sharing of Ranjini’s story – 7 people will now decide on the legality of indefinite detention.

Although this case does not directly concern Ranjini – the finding will establish a precedent which will have an impact on her freedom.

Of course, regardless of what the court says – Ranjini and her family, as well as the other 50+ people in her situation, still need us.

They need us to be loud – they need us to convince our leaders that Australia can be better than this. 

This Friday – all of Ranjini’s supporters must be louder than ever!

This Friday is Freedom Friday. 

Use your voice, use social media and traditional media to send a message. Tell your friends that their Government is locking up innocent people without trial. Call a radio station, write a newspaper, make a Youtube video.

We will be Tweeting and sharing your Freedom Friday efforts all week.

#FreedomFriday – Australia can be better than this. 

Those with legal training may find the case transcripts interesting – they can be read here.

Yesterday, two senior Liberal MP’s – Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop – held a press conference to announce their belief that Australia should send all Sri Lankan asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka without hearing their claims. 

This extraordinary announcement is perhaps the most significant step away from basic human rights in Australia’s history and deserves nothing less than a full and unqualified retraction.

Ranjini’s case is just one of the many examples of people who have been granted asylum in Australia, people who have been found to be genuinely in fear of their life, who would be sent back to their death under this heartless proposal.

The danger that still exists in Sri Lanka was evident only a few months ago, when a deported Sri Lankan citizen went missing upon his return home. Mr. Morrison and Ms. Bishop must consider how many people they will send to their death in order to avoid the cost of assessing these claims.

Whilst they will likely mention the tragedy of drowning at sea, it is worth considering the desperation that would force someone to get on a boat.

They also make the point that the Sri Lankan civil war has ended, which apparently makes it impossible that anyone should be persecuted. This leaves us with two possible outcomes, either Sri Lanka is now safe enough as to make fleeing it on a boat unnecessary (believe it or not, people actually like to live in their own country), or, if that is not the case and people are still getting on boats in Sri Lanka – what is there to suggest that, if we close the door entirely, people will not simply continue their boat journeys to alternative countries such as New Zealand?

Either way, the proposition that this will save lives is laughable.

The greatest deterrent we have to stop people getting on a boat hundreds of kilometres of unforgiving ocean – this policy will only ensure that Sri Lankan people in danger will die further away from us, without hope.

 

Letters For Ranjini congratulates the Commonwealth and Immigration Ombudsman on the recommendations it made last week concerning adverse security assessments. 

Their report, available here, “notes with growing concern the increasing number of people held in immigration for two years or more who have been found to be owed protection but have received an adverse security assessment from ASIO”. They have recommended that the Government “give the utmost priority to finding a solution that reconciles the management of any security threat with its duty of care to immigration detainees”.

The report echoes the message that we have campaigning under for the past 3 months and we support them in urging the Government to finding a solution that better manages national security with basic human rights.

We are particularly concerned with details in the report that go to the mental state of people being held in these conditions. In particular, one man who has been detained since 2009 who “feels that staying in detention in killing him. He advised that he could have died in one day in Country A but here in detention death is gradual”. 

We would also request some clarity from Minister Bowen regarding his in response to this report. We speak specifically to the Minister’s response to the report on the man mentioned above, in which he states.

“This person’s current place of detention is his preference.”

We would be very interested to hear from the Minister the options from which he selected this preference? It seems unusual that a man would choose a place where “death is gradual”, unless of course the other option was a less gradual death?

Anthony Bieniak. 

It is not often that the geopolitical situation meets the local in such a cruel and devastating way as we have seen over the last couple of weeks. Yesterday in Sri Lanka they noted the third anniversary of the cessation of the internal conflict, yet the week before last at a suburban primary school in my electorate—at Mill Park Primary—two young kids were picked up by their mother and stepfather. They were taken with those parents to a meeting at the immigration department. The stepfather waited in the waiting room as the mother and two children went to be interviewed, as they thought. They returned to the waiting room to inform the stepfather that they were to be sent to Villawood detention centre, the mother having got an ASIO security clearance that did not warrant her remaining in community detention. Think of the circumstances of that new family. A woman that had come to Australia and was adjudicated as a genuine refugee now finds that, because of this ASIO assessment, she can no longer stay in the community. At present, she is in a housing unit at Villawood. She is under severe pressure. The two young boys have not returned to school yet, and this is having a devastating effect on them.

We have to raise the question: why is it that we continue to not have a procedure where the ASIO clearances can be questioned? There have been a number of suggestions. At the ALP National Conference it was voted unanimously that the government required a national security legislation monitor to propose how adverse security assessments of asylum seekers could be reviewed in a way that protected ASIO sources. The parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s immigration detention network also asked that we look at ways that the ASIO Act could be amended to allow for administrative review of these assessments without compromising national security. As theAge editorial of last Friday says:

The process for review would need to balance human rights against national security, but the task is hardly beyond the capacity of Australia’s experts.

For this family, I hope that we can find a way that we can get through this mire. Why is it that two young children have been radicalised by a decision made by an agency of this government? I hope that the government takes note of the situations like that of Ranjini Perinparasa and does something to allow these clearances to be looked at so we can balance the human rights and national security requirements.

Download a PDF of the speech from HarryJenkins.com

The below speaks for itself:

QUESTION TAKEN ON NOTICE
BUDGET ESTIMATES HEARINGS: 21-22 MAY 2012
IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP PORTFOLIO
(BE12/0362) Program 4.2: Onshore Detention Network
Senator Hanson-Young (L&CA 60) asked:
In relation to the case of Ranjini Perinparasa and her two sons, was any advice
sought from any child psychologist in relation to that removal of her children from
their local school?
Answer:
No.

The government has claimed that this Pacific Solution 2 is ‘Hard-headed, not hard-hearted’. 

We think that there are many people inside Villawood who would care to disagree, and it up to us to speak on their behalf.

Help us send a message, find your local MP on Facebook and send them this image. They can’t ignore us forever.