Report by Radio New Zealand.

Algerian democracy activist Ahmed Zaoui, a New Zealand citizen, has been charged with subversion by police in his homeland.

Zaoui was arrested at gunpoint three weeks ago, after holding a political meeting at his home.

He had released a statement on behalf of the Islamic Salvation Front calling for peaceful political dialogue, amid the current economic and political crisis.

Zaoui’s New Zealand lawyer, Deborah Manning, said he was a former elected member of parliament in his own country and was being “arbitrarily detained for his political opinion”.

“We have learned in recent days that Mr Zaoui has been charged with subversion, under a new law in Algeria… and has been transferred to Koléa Prison. This prison is known for its overcrowding and harsh conditions,” she said.

“Over the weekend, I submitted a request to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, requesting them to make an urgent appeal to the Algerian Authorities, on the basis that his detention is arbitrary (as it is for political reasons) and due to concerns for Mr Zaoui’s health.”

Zaoui was a diabetic, and his family – who were only allowed to see him for 15 minutes every two weeks – feared for his health, she said.

Recognised as a refugee by New Zealand 20 years ago, he entered Algeria on a New Zealand passport.

“Mr Zaoui returned to Algeria to be with family in recent years, as the political situation appeared to be settling,” Manning said.

“He was planning to return to New Zealand later this year and to live between Algeria and New Zealand.”

His arrest came amid a recent crackdown on political activists and journalists, including arrests and detentions.

“His arrest was not expected and has been a shock to all,” Manning said.

“Just days before Mr Zaoui’s arrest, the UN expert on the right to peaceful assembly and association made a statement at the end of a 10-day official visit to Algeria, calling on the government to allow peaceful assembly and association.”

The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was offering “advice and assistance”, Manning said.

“Mr Zaoui, and his family are grateful for the support they have received from New Zealand since his arrest.”

They wanted him to be released, so he could return to live in New Zealand with his family, she said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

In this week’s security podcast, Dr Paul G. Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning discuss:

• three areas that have been relied on to protect New Zealanders from terror-style attacks;
• legal measures designed to protect communities from danger and even protect individuals from themselves;
• and why they failed.

The background to this episode is the tragic, terrifying, attack that were committed against unarmed innocent people at West Auckland’s LynnMall Countdown supermarket, by Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen.

The attack occurred last Friday, 3 September 2021. It ended with the hospitalisation of seven people, and, the death of Samsudeen, who was fatally shot by special tactics police officers during his attempt to kill and injure as many people as he could.

Immediately after, the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the nation that the dead man was a terrorist and that she herself, the police, and the courts were all aware of how dangerous he was and had been seeking to protect New Zealand from this man.

Within days of the attacks, we learned, that Samsudeen was a troubled man with psychologists describing him as angry, capable of carrying out his threats, and displaying varying degrees of mental illness and disorder.

Refugee who sought asylum
Samsudeen was a refugee who sought asylum in New Zealand after experiencing, through his formative years civil war and ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka, who, at around 20 years of age, arrived in New Zealand on a student visa and then sought political asylum.

He was eventually granted refugee status, and since then spent years in prison on various charges and convictions – largely involving the possession of terrorist propaganda seeded on the internet by Islamic State (ISIS), and, threats showing intent to commit terrorist acts against New Zealanders.

In this week’s episode, Dr Buchanan and Manning examine questions about whether this tragedy could have been prevented and considered New Zealand’s:

• Security and terror laws
• Deportation laws involving those with refugee status
• The Mental Health Act and whether this was available to the authorities.

Dr Buchanan and Manning also analyse whether it is necessary for the New Zealand government to move to tighten New Zealand’s terrorism security laws. And, if it does, how the intended new laws compare to other Five Eyes member countries.

Republished in partnership with EveningReport.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Immigration New Zealand has confirmed that Behrouz Boochani has been given refugee status in New Zealand.

Boochani has been in New Zealand since November. He had travelled to Christchurch for a writers’ festival on a one-month visa and was supported by Amnesty International.

He was detained in Manus Island and in Port Moresby for six years under the Australian government’s policy to deter asylum seekers arriving by boat.

READ MORE: The journalist who became the victim of Australia’s punitive detention policies

He catapulted to worldwide fame in 2019 after his book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literature prize.

He wrote the book with WhatsApp on his phone.

Boochani’s 374-page book, detailing his experiences in detention, was written in secret and was smuggled out of the detention centre via hundreds of text messages to his translators and editors in Australia.

Boochani discovered he had been granted asylum by New Zealand almost seven years to the day from the moment he was arrested by the Australian Navy, taken to Christmas Island, and subsequently flown to PNG.

Moved to transit centres
Following the closure of the Manus Island centre in 2017, Boochani and his fellow detainees were moved to refugee transit centres near the island’s main town of Lorengau, and later, to the country’s capital Port Moresby.

The executive director of Amnesty, Meg de Ronde, said it is wonderful news that Boochani has been given asylum.

“This means that he’s now a free man. He is free from the persecution as a Kurdish journalist. He’s free from the persecution of Australia’s torturous detention system and he is able to enjoy his life as anyone should be able to under our human rights system.”

She said 400 asylum-seekers like him were still trapped in limbo however, and it was time for Australia to accept New Zealand’s offer to take 150 of those refugees per year.

“Some of them are still on Nauru, some of them are still in Papua New Guinea and some are now in various hotels in Australia in very poor conditions,de Ronde said.

“This issue continues to go on, and Australia needs to act to ensure no more people are put through the torturous regime that Behrooz Boochani was.”

Last month the National Party said it was surprised New Zealand immigration officials did not consult their Australian counterparts before granting a visa to Boochani.

Excluded from Australia
The party’s immigration spokesperson, Stuart Smith, said Boochani appeared to have been excluded from Australia, making him ineligible to come to New Zealand without a special direction.

He said despite that, the response to a parliamentary written question showed no contact was made with Australian officials before he was granted the visa.

“Which was surprising given the high profile nature of Boochani and the fact that the Australian foreign minister said that Boochani would never set foot in Australia.”

Boochani travelled through the Philippines to get to Auckland so that his flight did not touch down in Australia.

Green Party human rights spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman – herself an Iranian refugee – said it was a day of celebration.

“I’m just so excited for us and for him and so grateful for our refugee authorities demonstrating – at least to Australia – that it is possible to actually process and asylum seeker fairly.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Caitlin Johnstone of Medium

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has been arrested and taken into custody by the London’s Metropolitan police, just as WikiLeaks warned days ago was about to happen.

Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson reports that his arrest is related to an extradition request from the United States, which the British government has until now refused to admit exists.

“Just confirmed: #Assange has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request,” tweeted Robinson.

“From #Assange: The US warrant was issued in December 2017 and is for conspiracy with Chelsea Manning in early 2010,” Robinson added.

So there you have it. Extradited for journalism.

In a blur, everything that Assange and WikiLeaks have been warning about for years has been proven correct, contrary to mountains of claims to the contrary by establishment loyalists everywhere.

The same government which tortured Chelsea Manning is in the process of extraditing her publisher so that they can silence him forever.

Everyone who has ever denied that this was happening needs to hang their heads in shame for scoffing at a very real threat to press freedoms everywhere when they could have been opposing this obscene agenda. It’s time for some serious soul searching.

The time to act is now. It’s too late to prevent Assange from losing his asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy, so the goal now is to fight extradition.

Activist groups are swiftly organising as I type this, so it will be easy for people around the world to find rallies to attend and online movements to help boost.

I encourage everyone in the US, the UK and Australia [New Zealand] to contact their elected representatives and politely but urgently inform them that the agenda to extradite Assange to the US must be fought at all costs.

Educate yourself as best as you can on Assange’s case, and inform everyone you know about what’s going on.

Caitlin Johnston is an independent journalist and radical poet. 

The precedent that could cripple journalism holding the US government to account.

• Implications of the persecution of Julian Assange for journalism, democracy
• Full report at Medium
• More information

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

]]> https://eveningreport.nz/2019/02/01/iran-refugee-detained-in-png-wins-australias-richest-literary-prize/ Thu, 31 Jan 2019 23:01:34 +0000 https://eveningreport.nz/2019/02/01/iran-refugee-detained-in-png-wins-australias-richest-literary-prize/ Behrouz Boochani … wrote his award-winning book bit-by-bit via texting from Papua New Guinea. Image: Hoda Afshar/Behrouz Boochani/RNZ Pacific

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

An Iranian asylum-seeker detained in Papua New Guinea under Australian asylum laws has won Australia’s most valuable literary prize for a book he reportedly wrote using the online messaging service WhatsApp, reports France 24/AFP.

Behrouz Boochani, a Kurd who has been held on PNG’s Manus Island since 2013, was awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature yesterday, said a statement on a government website for the state of Victoria.

The journalist and filmmaker was awarded the A$100,000 (NZ$106,000) prize for his book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.

READ MORE: The book written one text at a time

He will receive an additional A$25,000 after it also won the non-fiction category.

“(Boochani’s) award was accepted by the book’s translator Omid Tofighian, who worked with Boochani over five years to bring the stories to life,” the state website said.

-Partners-

Media reports said Boochani wrote the work on his phone and sent it to Tofighian bit-by-bit in text messages.

This was because he felt unsafe in the guarded camp, which was shut last year after a local court ruling and the asylum-seekers moved elsewhere on the island.

For years Canberra has sent asylum-seekers who try to enter the country by boat to Manus Island or Nauru in the Pacific for processing, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Australia.

The harsh policy is meant to deter people embarking on treacherous sea journeys, but the United Nations and other rights groups have criticised the camps’ conditions and long detention periods.

Boochani’s book beat 27 other shortlisted works published last year in Australia to win the overall prize.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

]]> https://eveningreport.nz/2018/09/19/refugee-children-on-nauru-living-without-hope-says-advocacy-group/ Wed, 19 Sep 2018 09:01:17 +0000 https://eveningreport.nz/2018/09/19/refugee-children-on-nauru-living-without-hope-says-advocacy-group/ ]]> Children outside RPC3 tents in Nauru … situation “untenable”. Image: Refugee Action Coalition/RNZ Pacific

By RNZ Pacific

A legal advocacy group has told the UN Human Rights Council that more than 100 asylum seeker and refugee children are living without hope on Nauru.

The Human Rights Law Centre addressed the latest council session in Geneva.

The centre’s Daniel Webb told the council that despite the fact the Australian government was professing its committment to human rights in Geneva, it continued to indefinitely imprison 102 children in its offshore detention centre on Nauru.

“Imprisoned for fleeing the same atrocities our government comes here and condemns. And after five years of detention, these children have now lost hope.

“Some have stopped speaking. Some have stopped eating. A 10-year-old boy recently tried to kill himself.”

Webb said if the detention was not stopped there would be deaths.

-Partners-

He said even the government’s own medical advisers were warning that the situation was untenable.

“Yet the Australian government still refuses to free these kids, and is fighting case after case in our Federal Court to deny them access to urgent medical care. Mr President, we are talking about 102 children.”

Australia presented their concerns regarding human rights around the world at the same session but did not mention their detention camps on Nauru or Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

BRIEFING: By Erin Harris

The decision to terminate a long-standing arrangement that saw the Australian High Court act as a partial appellate court for Nauru, as reported last week, has heightened concerns about Nauru’s appropriateness as a venue for an Australian immigration detention centre.

The timing of the decision – 90 days’ notice of the termination was quietly given to the Australian Government on 13 December – appears to have been designed to block the avenue of appeal for 19 citizens (several former Nauruan MPs among them) charged over a 2015 protest outside the Parliament of Nauru.

However, it has also served to further erode the rights of hundreds of asylum seekers, including dozens of children, currently in Nauru.

The cancelled court arrangement had been in place since 1976, yet determined only 16 cases in total. Thirteen of those cases were heard in 2017, with 11 brought by asylum seekers disputing the refusal of refugee status.

Of those 11 cases, only one was dismissed. Eight were successful, and two were dropped due to refugee status being granted in the interim.

Nauru has declared it will set up its own court of appeal, but in the meantime asylum seekers are denied the basic legal right of appeal.

-Partners-

In response to the termination becoming public, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared:

Australia supports Nauru’s sovereignty and its December 2017 decision to terminate the treaty in advance of the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence.

Secretive nature
Australia is right to support Nauru’s assertion of sovereignty, and the removal of this somewhat awkward arrangement – an oddity the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended terminating in 2001.

But Australia also needs to question the secretive nature of the announcement, its politically motivated timing, and the fact that the termination took effect before an alternative appeals court could be established.

Several legal rulings and a Senate inquiry have determined that Australia has a duty of care in relation to the asylum seekers in our facilities, regardless of their location, and this development indicates a further blow to the rights of an already vulnerable population.

This shutdown of a legal avenue of appeal is not the only reason to question the ongoing appropriateness of Nauru as a site for Australia’s immigration detention centre.

In the past few months, a steady stream of cases have demonstrated Nauru’s lack of capacity to deal with the mounting number of health issues among asylum seekers held on the island.

Despite Australia’s claim that “healthcare in Nauru is the responsibility of the government of Nauru”, in reality, Nauru is unable to meet asylum seekers’ needs.

The Australian government’s own health contractor on the island has declared the hospital in Nauru to be unsafe for surgery, and Nauru has no permanent specialist child psychiatrists.

Suicide risk
In 2018 alone, there have been two cases (here and here) of juveniles at acute risk of suicide on Nauru being ordered by Australian courts to be transferred to Australia for treatment.

Taiwan has also been used as an alternative venue for surgical treatment not available in Nauru. Because Taiwan is not a UN member state, and therefore not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees transferred there cannot claim protection on their arrival.

A consideration of Australia’s duty of care in relation to the asylum seekers housed on Nauru begs the question of why Australia continues to doggedly prioritise the US resettlement deal to the exclusion of all other options?

This is particularly pertinent in light of President Donald Trump’s recent escalation of negativity towards immigrants and refugees, and the slow pace at which the US deal is unfolding.

UNHCR Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Geneva, Indrika Ratwatte, recently urged the Australian government to reconsider the offer by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made in November, and reaffirmed this week.

By doing so, Australia could quickly bring an end to the suffering of many of the detainees who remain on Nauru.

Ultimately, Australia needs to recognise that the asylum seekers on Nauru are its responsibility, and that Nauru’s declining ability to provide them with adequate care and basic rights is a problem that must be solved.

Erin Harris is a research associate at the Lowy Institute, where she works with both the Diplomacy and Public Opinion Programme and the Digital Program. Her research interests include gender, development and the Pacific. This article originally appeared on The Interpreter, published by the Lowy Institute and is republished with the permission of the author.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz