As children are airlifted from Nauru, a cruel and inhumane policy may finally be ending

If refugee and asylum seekers are not resettled in Australia, the humanitarian crisis will only worsen.
AAP/Jeremy Ng

Alex Reilly, University of Adelaide

Australia’s off-shore detention policy is unravelling. Predictably, after five years of detention, the mental health of adults and children who have been left in indefinite detention on Nauru is collapsing. On Monday, 11 children and their families were flown to Australia for urgent medical attention.

The New Zealand deal, under which some asylum seekers could be resettled in New Zealand as long as they are banned from ever coming to Australia, is now being seriously considered.

Good politics, bad policy

From the middle of 2013, when off-shore processing was re-started on Nauru and Manus Island, the Rudd government, and later the Abbott government, made bold and irresponsible claims that no asylum seeker attempting to enter Australia by boat would ever be resettled here.

This played well to an Australian public spooked by a dramatic rise in boat arrivals under the Rudd government between 2009 and 2013, and set the foundation for a policy that has systematically brutalised hundreds of innocent people.

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Read more:
Same old rhetoric cannot justify banning refugees from Australia

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The claim, in the name of deterrence, relied on hopes Australian governments would find places to resettle the asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru and Manus Island in other countries. But there was no plan as to where they might go and, predictably, resettlement proved very difficult.

An agreement with the Cambodian government failed because Cambodia lacks the capacity to resettle people of such different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Malcolm Turnbull seemed to have stumbled upon a resolution when the Obama administration agreed to take sone refugees from Nauru and Manus.

The current US administration has resettled 276 people from Nauru and rejected a further 148. There may be more resettlements to come, but there is no clear timetable, and it will be a resolution for only some of the 652 people remaining on Nauru.

Inexplicably, the Australian Government has repeatedly rejected an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 refugees there, fearing that people will take advantage of open migration between Australia and New Zealand and will end up resettling here.

Under renewed pressure from opposition parties, the government is reconsidering the New Zealand offer, but only if there is a travel ban preventing refugees ever coming to Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has drawn, once again, on the tired justification that to allow asylum seekers any right of entry to Australia may encourage people smuggling.

Why the people smuggling argument does not stack up

The people smuggling narrative does not withstand reasonable scrutiny. How much cruelty to innocent people on Manus and Nauru is really needed to stop the boats?

A comparison with the Howard years is instructive. From 2001 to 2008, of the 1,153 refugees and asylum seekers resettled on Nauru and Manus Island, 705 went to Australia, 401 to New Zealand and 47 to other Western countries. Most were resettled between 2002 and 2004.

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Resettling refugees in Australia would not resume the people-smuggling trade

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These resettlements were not followed by a resumption of the people smuggling trade. From 2002 to 2007, 18 boats arrived with 288 asylum seekers. In addition, one boat was turned back with 14 passengers.

What remained important for deterrence was the possibility of being detained offshore with no guarantee of being settled in Australia and New Zealand. Only when this possibility was removed (when the new Rudd government dismantled the Howard government’s offshore processing and turn-back policies) was there a dramatic spike in asylum seekers arriving by boat.

The message of deterrence is clear

The systemic cruelty of detaining refugees in offshore detention centres indefinitely has sent an unequivocal message to any asylum seekers who might contemplate seeking asylum in Australia by boat. No person would countenance subjecting themselves to the mental and physical trauma suffered by detainees on Nauru and Manus Island for the chance of receiving protection in Australia. And no parent would risk subjecting their child to a lifetime of mental illness.

The Australian government has proved its mettle. It is prepared to subject innocent people to the cruellest of punishments, to disregard basic principles of human dignity, and to ignore its obligations under international law. This is deterrent enough for any prospective boat rider.

Time to end an inhumane policy

It is well past time to resettle every refugee and asylum seeker on Manus and Nauru in Australia. If this is done while the policies of boat turn backs and offshore detention remain in place, this will not lead to a resumption of people smuggling operations. And if I am wrong in this, we can be confident of stopping the boats again, as the government did with startling effectiveness in 2001 and 2013.

It seems that the government may finally be softening its untenable hard line. With no other resolutions on the table, most of the refugees on Nauru and Manus must end up in Australia or New Zealand.

Until this happens, the mental health of refugees stuck on Nauru and Manus will continue to deteriorate, and courageous whistleblowers will continue to risk their employment revealing the brutality and trauma of conditions in detention.

All this pain and suffering, and economic cost, for a deterrent that is not needed.

Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Muslims in Pakistan Kidnap, Rape Christian Girl

Five men threatened to kill her unless her father allowed one to marry her.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, June 16 (CDN) — Five Muslims here kidnapped and raped a Christian girl after threatening to kill her unless her father allowed one of them to marry her.

Lazarus Masih said one of his three daughters, 14, was kidnapped on May 29 by five men identified only as Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali.

Police recovered her on June 6 in a raid on the home where she was being held, though the suspects escaped.

“They threatened that if I don’t get her married to Guddu, they would kill her,” Masih said. “One of them said, ‘We attended an Islamic religious convention, and the speaker said if you marry a non-Muslim or rape a non-Muslim girl, you will get 70 virgins in heaven.”

He said that when he and his wife returned from work at around 11 a.m. on May 29, their 14-year-old daughter was not at home; his other daughters had been at school and said they did not know where she had gone.

During the family’s search for her, they heard from Masih’s brother-in-law, Yousaf Masih, that he had seen five Muslim men follow her earlier that morning.

“In the morning around 7:30 a.m., I saw that [name withheld] and another girl were sitting in a rickshaw and five Muslim guys – Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali – followed the rickshaw,” Yousaf Masih told the girl’s father.

Family members said the suspects took her to a house near Islamabad, where they gave her a drug that rendered her unconscious, and raped her. A medical report confirmed that she was given drugs and raped.

Lazarus Masih, who lives with his daughters and wife in Mohalla Raja Sultan, Rawalpindi, filed a First Information Report at the Waris Khan police station on June 1 against all five men. He said Guddu, Kamran and Waqas sell and use drugs.

He also contacted advocacy organization Ephlal Ministry, which along with representatives of Life for All and Peace Pakistan met with police chief Mazhar Hussain Minhas and demanded immediate action for the recovery of the girl.

“This is a very sad incident, and we will do whatever we can to recover the girl,” Hussain Minhas told them.

Devastated family members said the girl remained frightened and was not speaking to anyone.

“It is such a shame that the religious leaders teach inhuman acts,” said the Rev. John Gill of Shamsabad Catholic Church. “This incident has ruined the life of an innocent child.”

The family formerly belonged to the Catholic parish but now affiliates with a Protestant church, New Life Ministry in Rawalpindi.

Report from Compass Direct News

Family of 17-Year-Old Somali Girl Abuses Her for Leaving Islam

Young Christian beaten, shackled to tree.

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 15 (CDN) — The Muslim parents of a 17-year-old Somali girl who converted to Christianity severely beat her for leaving Islam and have regularly shackled her to a tree at their home for more than a month, Christian sources said.

Nurta Mohamed Farah of Bardher, Gedo Region in southern Somalia, has been confined to her home since May 10, when her family found out that she had embraced Christianity, said a Christian leader who visited the area.

“When the woman’s family found out that she converted to Christianity, she was beaten badly but insisted on her new-found religion,” said the source on condition of anonymity.

Her parents also took her to a doctor who prescribed medication for a “mental illness,” he said. Alarmed by her determination to keep her faith, her father, Hassan Kafi Ilmi, and mother, Hawo Godane Haf, decided she had gone crazy and forced her to take the prescribed medication, but it had no effect in swaying her from her faith, the source said.

Traditionally, he added, many Somalis believe the Quran cures the sick, especially the mentally ill, so the Islamic scripture is continually recited to her twice a week.

“The girl is very sick and undergoing intense suffering,” he said.

Her suffering began after she declined her family’s offer of forgiveness in exchange for renouncing Christianity, the source said. The confinement began after the medication and punishments failed.

The tiny, shaken Christian community in Gedo Region reports that the girl is shackled to a tree by day and is put in a small, dark room at night, he said.

“There is little the community can do about her condition, which is very bad, but I have advised our community leader to keep monitoring her condition but not to meddle for their own safety,” the source told Compass. “We need prayers and human advocacy for such inhuman acts, and for freedom of religion for the Somali people.”

Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government generally did not enforce protection of religious freedom found in the Transitional Federal Charter, according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2009 International Religious Freedom Report.

“Non-Muslims who practiced their religion openly faced occasional societal harassment,” the report stated. “Conversion from Islam to another religion was considered socially unacceptable. Those suspected of conversion faced harassment or even death from members of their community.”

Report from Compass Direct News

A Chinese pastor secretly transferred to a labor camp

A Chinese pastor, currently serving a sentence for ‘illegal activities’ while leading his church, has been transferred to a labor camp in Henan Province, China, reports Michael Ireland, chief correspondent, ASSIST News Service.

ChinaAid says that on June 29, about 3 p.m., Pastor Dou Shaowen was secretly transferred to Shifo Re-education Through Labor Center in Zhengzhou city, Henan province.

The Christian human rights group says authorities still have not informed his family of his transfer. Pastor Dou is currently serving a one-year sentence of re-education through labor for ‘engaging in illegal activities’ because of his leadership of Rock (Panshi) Church.

ChinaAid says: “Pastor Dou was first arrested on June 14 when government officials raided and forcibly abolished and sealed Rock Church’s building, a house church in Zhengzhou city, Henan. Police arrested him, his wife Feng Lu and five other believers. Pastor Dou and Feng Lu received one-year re-education through labor sentences, while the five other believers were each sentenced to 15 days detention and a 500 yuan ($74USD) fine.”

ChinaAid goes on to say that Pastor Dou was held in Jinshui Branch Detention Center of Zhengzhou City until June 25, when at about 6:30 p.m., he was transferred to Baimiao Re-education Through Labor Center located on Wenhua Road, Zhengzhou city.

ChinaAid contacts reported: “He was given inhuman treatment in the re-education through labor center. When he wanted to talk to the police officers, he was forced to squat. He worked 18 hours a day from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. midnight. Over 70 people sleep in a room. Due to the hot weather and the poor sanitary conditions…some prisoners have eczema, herpes and other skin diseases. They have to work 18 hours a day without enough to eat.”

At about 3 p.m. on June 29, Pastor Dou was transferred to Shifo Re-education through Labor Center where conditions are reported to be worse.

According to a ChinaAid media update, authorities have permitted Pastor Dou’s wife, Feng Lu, to serve her one-year sentence at home, in order to care for their 12-year-old daughter.

The news release says: “When Feng Lu went to see her husband at the Baimiao Re-education Through Labor Center, she was told she was not allowed to visit him for a month, and was not informed he would be transferred to another labor camp. Feng Lu is required to report to the Public Security Bureau regularly, and could be sent to labor camp again if she is found ‘engaging in illegal religious activities’ again.”

ChinaAid explains that Rock Church’s gathering site is still sealed at this time, and authorities have refused to release the computer and other materials that were confiscated in the raid on June 14.

Rock Church recently released a ‘Declaration on June 14 Incident by Rock Church of Zhengzhou’ to the international community and a petition to the Chinese government.

In the declaration, the Christians of Rock Church state, “We hope the government can give us justice, give back our innocence, cancel the penalties of one year of re-education through labor for Dou Shaowen and Feng Lu immediately, protect the normal religious life of the believers, severely punish those people who committed crimes when they are supposed to enforce the law and apologize to all the believers.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

INDIA: CHRISTIANS DISPUTE POLICE THEORY ON PRIEST’S DEATH

Hindu extremists suspected in area known for anti-Christian violence.

NEW DELHI, August 3 (Compass Direct News) – The suspicious death of a 39-year-old priest in the southern state of Karnataka has further terrified Christians living in an area known for anti-Christian violence, but police indicate that they doubt it is a homicide.

The body of the parish priest of St. Mary’s Church, the Rev. James Mukalel was found lying near his motorbike on a remote roadside in Belthangady sub-district near Mangalore early last Thursday (July 30). After family members reportedly sought a second autopsy that delayed interment, the priest’s body was buried on Saturday (July 25) with the cause of death still unsolved.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) maintains that Mukalel, from Belthangady’s Syro-Malabar diocese in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, was killed.

“According to Fr. Joseph Valiaparambil, vicar general and spokesperson of the diocese of Belthangady, the death of the priest appears to be suspicious and unnatural,” officials at CBCI said in a statement, “as his body was found lying on the roadside near the motorbike which he was riding, and there were no clothes on his body.”

Alluding to Hindu nationalist extremists, the CBCI affirmed that “such killers represent no religious community but only a section which promotes the cult of violence, whose inhuman acts only further widen the gap between religious communities, thus aggravating the agony of the even larger human family.”

The Catholic Church demanded that the alleged killers be brought to justice, but police said Mukalel may have died from food poisoning. Superintendent of Police of Dakshina Kannada district Subramayeshwar Rao told Compass that police had only two theories on the cause of death.

“Although I have not seen the autopsy report, I learned from the forensic surgeons that Fr. James Mukalel died of poisoning – most likely naturally because of food poisoning, or he was poisoned.”

There were no external marks of injury or signs of suffocation, Rao added. The diocesan social work director had reportedly said there were signs of suffocation on the body.

Asked why Mukalel’s body was found nearly naked, Rao said only that Mukalel had vomited and passed a stool before his death.

“The body was found without any clothes, with only underwear, which had been pulled down the legs,” Rao said. “I don’t know why some people are thinking like that [that he was killed and for religious reasons].”

The Karnataka-based Global Council of Indian Christians has demanded an inquiry by the federal Central Bureau of Investigation.

Two Autopsies

Mukalel, from Kannur district in the neighboring state of Kerala, was recently assigned to St. Mary’s Church.

According to the CBCI, Mukalel was killed as he returned to his parish in the Kutrupady area after attending the funeral of a parish priest in the adjacent Charmadi village around 9 p.m. on Wednesday (July 29).

On Friday (July 31) the priest’s body was taken to Government Wenlock Hospital in Mangalore, district headquarters of Dakshina Kannada district, after which the Catholic Church sent the body for last rites to St. Sebastian’s Church in Vellad, in Kerala state’s Kannur district.

A funeral service was held at St. Sebastian’s Church on Saturday (Aug. 1), but the body was not buried. It was instead taken to the Government Medical College at Kozhikode in Kerala for another autopsy because Mukalel’s parents and brother, along with other close relatives, felt it was not a natural death, Indo-Asian News Service reported.

Police official Rao said he had not been apprised of a second autopsy. “I heard about it in the news,” he said. “There is no legal provision for a second autopsy.”

Reports of the two autopsies were awaited at press time. The case, registered as a suspicious unnatural death under Section 174 C of Criminal Procedure Code, will be processed only after autopsy reports are completed.

Past Attacks

The minority Muslim and Christian communities have faced numerous attacks in Dakshina Kannada district in general and in Mangalore in particular.

Most recently, The Hindu reported that on the evening of May 16, the day general election results were announced, a group of people celebrating the victory of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Nalin Kumar Kateel from Dakshina Kannada attacked four Muslim families with sticks, soda bottles, cricket bats and cycle chains in the Nettrakere area in the Bantwal area in Mangalore.

In August-September of last year, at least 28 attacks on churches were reported in Dakshina Kannada district, mainly in Mangalore. According to a report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), in every case, the attackers were from Hindu nationalist extremist groups like the Bajrang Dal, the Hindu Jagaran Vedike or the Sri Rama Sene.

The attacks were seen as fallout from violence in Kandhamal district in the eastern state of Orissa, where Maoists on Aug. 23 killed a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or the VHP, whose youth wing is the Bajrang Dal), Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, for which Christians were wrongly blamed.

In Karnataka, Hindu nationalists also based their violence on alleged conversions of Hindus to Christianity and to protest a booklet, which they said was “derogatory” to Hindu gods, published by a Christian group, New Life Fellowship Trust.

Mangalore police were also suspected of having played a role in the attacks.

“What was striking about these attacks, especially in Mangalore, is that the police acted in tandem with the Bajrang Dal,” said the PUCL report, entitled, “From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face of Sangh Parivar” released in March.

“The pattern we observed was that the Bajrang Dal would attack Christian places and cause injury to persons and damage to property,” according to the report. “Then the police would step in, not to chase and arrest the assailants, but ostensibly to prevent any violent retaliation by the Christians. And in the course of the alleged preventive activity, they would assault the Christians further.”

A report by the National Minorities Commission also said that in the first week of the attacks on churches, police arrested more Christians, 47, than extremists from the Bajrang Dal, 36.

Karnataka is ruled by the BJP, which came to power for the first time in the state in alliance with a regional party, the Janata Dal Secular, in February 2006. In May 2008, it won the state assembly elections and became the one-party ruler of the state.

Report from Compass Direct News 

SOMALIA: KENYAN PASTOR BEATEN AT SOMALILAND BORDER

Immigration officials threaten to kill convert from Islam unless he renounces faith.

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 8 (Compass Direct News) – A pastor trying to visit Somalia’s autonomous, self-declared state of Somaliland earlier this year discovered just how hostile the separatist region can be to Christians.

A convert from Islam, Abdi Welli Ahmed is an East Africa Pentecostal Church pastor from Kenya who in February tried to visit and encourage Christians, an invisibly tiny minority, in the religiously intolerant region of Somaliland.

Born and raised in Kenya’s northern town of Garissa, Ahmed first traveled to Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia. When he arrived by car at the border crossing of Wajaale on Feb. 19 with all legal travel documents, his Bible and other Christian literature landed him in unexpected trouble with Somaliland immigration officials.

“I was beaten up for being in possession of Christian materials,” Ahmed told Compass. “They threatened to kill me if I did not renounce my faith, but I refused to their face. They were inhuman.”

Ahmed said the chief border official in Wajaale, whom he could identify only by his surname of Jama, took charge of most of the torturing. Ahmed said their threats were heart-numbing as they struggled to subdue him, with Jama and others saying they had killed two Somali Christians and would do the same to him.

His pleas that he was a Kenyan whose faith was respected in his home country, he said, fell on deaf ears.

“I was abused, and they also abused my faith as the religion for pagans, which they said is unacceptable in their region,” he said. “I told them that I am Kenyan-born and brought up in Kenya, and my Christian faith is respected and recognized in Garissa.”

Jama ordered Ahmed’s incarceration, and he was locked up in an immigration cell for nine hours. The officials took from his bag three CDs containing his personal credentials and Christian educational literature. They also took his English Bible, two Christian books and US$400, he said.

Ahmed said he was released with the aid of an unnamed Ethiopian friend.

“They warned me to never dare step into or think of going to Somaliland again,” said Ahmed, who doubles as a relief and development worker.

On March 22 he sent letters of complaint to Ethiopian, Kenyan and even presumably less-than-sympathetic Somaliland officials; none has shown any signs of pursuing justice, he said.

Compass e-mailed a copy of the letter to Alexander O. Oxiolo, head of consular affairs at Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs ministry, who subsequently denied receiving it. When Compass printed the letter and took a hard copy to him, Oxiolo said he could not act on it because the complainant had not signed it.

He also questioned whether Ahmed was a Christian because of his Muslim name, apparently expecting him to have changed it after conversion.

Ahmed converted to Christianity in 1990. Soon after he was baptized in 1995, Ahmed came under threat from Muslims and fled to Niger in 1996, where he married. He and his wife returned to Kenya in 2000, Ahmed said, and since then he has received a steady stream of threats from Muslims in Garissa. On several occasions he has been forced to leave Garissa for months at a time, he said, waiting for tensions to cool.

Ahmed was ordained in 2004.

Report from Compass Direct News

TALIBAN THREATENS POPE IF CHRISTIANITY IS SPREAD IN AFGHANISTAN

In the lead-up to his coming trip to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI has been warned by Islamic extremists that he must stop any attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity or face “the consequences of a severe reaction,” reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

ANSA news service reports that the Taliban issued the statement on an Islamic website after the Islamic news service Al Jazeera showed American soldiers holding copies of the Bible translated into the two local languages.

“The Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan asks Pope Benedict XVI to act to stop the foolish and irresponsible actions of the crusaders upsetting the feelings of Muslim rebels, without awaiting the consequences of a severe reaction,” said the message on the website, alemarah1.org.

“The Taleban forcefully exhort the mujaheddin [jihadis], scholars and all religious circles to control the activities of the invaders and crusaders, and not allow anyone to preach religions except Islam,” the message continued.

The US army later responded, “Any form of religious proselytism by troops is prohibited,” and assured that the bibles pictured had been “confiscated and destroyed.”

At the same time, Islamic extremists in Jordan condemned the Pope’s visit, claiming that he had failed to apologise for what they regard as insults to Islam in a speech at Regensburg in 2006. The Pope is scheduled to arrive in Jordan on Friday for the first stage of a tour that will include Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Zaki Bani Rusheid, head of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the international organisation the Muslim Brotherhood, told Reuters, “The present Vatican pope is the one who issued severe insults to Islam and did not offer any apology to the Muslims.” The Islamic Action Front is the Jordan’s largest mainstream Islamist party.

In 2006, Pope Benedict spoke to an audience at the University of Regensburg where he had once served as professor of theology, on the inherent unity of faith and reason. In it he quoted the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who wrote in 1391, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The emperor was writing on jihad and of forced conversions of Christians by conquering Muslims.

The comments, after careful management by liberal western news media, prompted a wave of riots and violence by Muslims around the world, including attacks on Christian churches in Israel, the murder of a nun in Somalia and the beheading of a priest in Iraq.

Observers note that there are early signs that the same media that instigated the “Muslim outrage” in 2006 are setting the stage for another round.

The Huffington Post reported at the end of April that in the town of Nazareth a large banner has been stretched across the main square condemning anyone who insults Mohammad. HP’s Diaa Hadid wrote, “The pontiff may have to tread carefully with his visit to Nazareth,” and said that “many Muslims” are still angry over the Regensburg speech. Hadid quotes an Anglican head of a local ecumenical group that Christians in the area fear more violence if the Pope makes any other “contentious” statements on Islam.

The Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt wrote on Tuesday that Pope Benedict “must” go to Jerusalem as a “penitent pilgrim.” Butt cites 35 Christians, Jews and Muslims who claim that “papal blunders” are sending out “‘divided messages’ on anti-Semitism and inter-faith activity.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph