Asylum Seeker Attempts Suicide On Nauru (New Matilda)

An Iranian asylum seeker attempted suicide two days ago on Nauru, reportedly after being told of long waits for processing under the Gillard Government’s “no advantage” rule.

Nauru Asylum Seekers Protest Delays (New Matilda)

More than 200 asylum seekers on Nauru held a three-hour peaceful protest meeting yesterday calling on the Gillard Government to close down the camp and start immediately processing asylum seeker applications.

Dear Government & Minister Bowen – given your successful attempt at simulating the Howard government’s “Pacific Solution” is now yielding the expected identical results of misery and despair, will you now please cease destroying people’s lives as well as wasting our time and money in this endeavour and instead return Australia to behave in a decent humanitarian way?

It was not really up to you to provide a practical demonstration of how Tony Abbott’s ideas on asylum seeks are nonsensical and dangerous.

People seek asylum in Australia because their home country is not safe. These people deserve care and protection. Detaining them for years, reducing them to mental wrecks, is senseless. The human cost and the loss to our society is huge. Even if a humane process were to inadvertantly let in some “non genuine” applicants, the net balance would still be far on the positive side.

If you are actually worried about “the boats” which as we know only make up a tiny fraction of the total influx of asylum seekers, and more specifically get rid of the people smuggling related to this, then let’s have Australia pick up asylum seekers from various countries in the region. Either by plane or ship – even a fancy cruise ship would be more economical than Nauru or other off-shore processing.