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Last Updated: Wednesday 26 February 2020
Biloela family may spend months more on Christmas Island waiting on court decision
25 February 2020
Home affairs adviser accused of untruthfulness as Tamil family waits on court to decide if youngest daughter can apply for asylum
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The Tamil asylum seeker family from Biloela may have to wait another three months for a decision on whether their youngest Australian-born daughter can have her asylum application assessed, after a court hearing in which a home affairs adviser was accused of untruthfulness.
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Tamil asylum seekers Priya and Nades and their Australian-born daughters Kopika and Tharunicaa have been detained on Christmas Island since late last year awaiting the hearing on the processing of a visa application for Tharunicaa.
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In a federal court hearing on Tuesday, lawyers for the family and for the government made arguments over whether the immigration minister, David Coleman, or home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, had considered lifting the bar under the Migration Act that was preventing Tharunicaa from applying for a visa because, despite being born in Australia, she is considered an unauthorised maritime arrival like her parents. The court is also considering whether the process of deciding whether to lift the bar was fair.
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Behrouz Boochani's book, No Friend But The Mountains, to be made into a film
24 February 2020
Kurdish Iranian writer says the film will bring more attention to Australia’s brutal immigration detention regime
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Behrouz Boochani’s award-winning debut book, No Friend But The Mountains, will be made into a feature film with production to begin in Australia in mid-2021.
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The Kurdish Iranian writer and journalist, who is currently living in New Zealand after six years in immigration detention, said the film adaptation would bring more international attention to the truth behind Australia’s brutal immigration detention regime.
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“The most important thing is that we should share this story, and this story is not just my story,” he told Guardian Australia. “What the Australian government has done, in Manus and Nauru and still continues this policy – we should share this story in different languages – and cinema is a very important and powerful language.
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'The only one who made it out': Incredible Manus Island escape revealed
22 February 2020
In 2017 Jaivet Ealom, a Rohingya refugee who fled Myanmar, escaped Australia’s offshore detention centre on Manus Island by posing as an interpreter.
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Jaivet Ealom understands if you struggle to believe his story. At times, he can hardly believe it himself.
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Ealom, 27, is a political economy student at the University of Toronto with a soft voice and a lively mind. Most of his classmates know him as a Rohingya refugee who fled Myanmar.
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What few of them know is that he escaped Australia's offshore detention centre in Manus Island by posing as an interpreter. Or that he lived as a fugitive in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, where he obtained a passport by pretending to be a local. Or that he arrived in Toronto broke and alone, and was forced to sleep in a homeless shelter.
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Judge tells government to give documents to Biloela family's lawyer after ‘overenthusiastic’ redactions
17 February 2020
Non-redacted documents of briefing between Peter Dutton and Sri Lankan authorities should be given to family’s lawyer, judge says
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The federal government has provided heavily redacted documents to lawyers representing a Tamil family detained on Christmas Island, entirely blacking out details of discussions between Australian and Sri Lankan authorities on the matter.
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In a pre-hearing before Melbourne’s federal court on Monday, lawyers representing the family, known as the Bileola family after the Queensland town where they had been living, said they had also been given a redacted document about a ministry briefing between the home affairs minister Peter Dutton and the department secretary.
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The documents had been received late on Sunday night but could prove “critical” to the case when it is heard on Friday, lawyer Angel Aleksov said, who is representing Priya and Nades and their Australian-born daughters Kopika and Tharunicaa.
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'Finally, a life': Canada comes to the rescue when a refugee family loses hope in Australia
8 February 2020
Dima, Hani and their son escaped the hopelessness of detention through sponsorship that led to permanent residency, in Toronto
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Dima first appeared in the headlines three years ago. Back then, she was a 37-year-old anonymous refugee on Nauru with a potentially life-threatening pregnancy, being refused a critically needed transfer to Australia. When the Australian government finally agreed, Nauru’s ministry refused to let her go.
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Eventually, at 38 weeks pregnant, suffering suspected pre-eclampsia and with her baby in breech, Dima was flown to Cairns. Her husband, Hani, was left behind.
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It took almost two years before she and her family were reunited – across the country in Adelaide, in the limbo of community detention.
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'Hysterical and ruinous': Christmas Island furious over Australia's coronavirus plans
6 February 2020
There is disquiet over the decision to quarantine Wuhan evacuees on an island that thought it had left behind its prison image
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“We are a colony. That’s how we are treated.”
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In 22 years on this island, Gordon Thomson, president of Christmas Island shire and head of the island’s workers’ union, has fought and lost too many battles with the commonwealth of Australia for diplomatic niceties.
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“The commonwealth is all-powerful on this island, and they are exerting all of their authority to run this operation,” he says of the latest incarnation of the island’s immigration detention centre, as a quarantine station for Australians evacuated from the global centre of the coronavirus, Wuhan in China.
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Government reverses decision to charge Australians fleeing China if they’re from marginal electorates
2 February 2020
Australia will pay for PM's about-face on $1000 Wuhan co-payment - Peter Dutton says mining camps could be used as coronavirus quarantine sites
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The Australian government has today reversed its stance on charging certain citizens a fee for using a chartered flight to escape the Coronavirus infested region of Wuhan.
Bill Rort from the Department of Foreign Affairs spoke with reporters this afternoon, said it was simply unfair to charge Liberal voters extra to fly home, stating “after careful review of where these affected people reside we are now more than happy to financially assist some of them, as set out in this colour coded spreadsheet.”
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