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Post by Admin on Jan 26, 2014 22:19:39 GMT
INDONESIA has boosted its military presence near Australia and ramped up moves to increase the firepower of its armed forces, according to a report. It comes at a time of growing turmoil in Australia's relationship with our northern neighbour after revelations last week Australian Navy vessels breached Indonesia's territorial waters while enforcing the Coalition's asylum seeker policy.  Indonesia is reportedly awaiting the delivery of 30 F-16 fighters, a dozen Apache attack helicopters and 103 Leopard battle tanks from the US and Germany, and is purchasing a dozen Russian submarines armed with cruise missiles. Indonesia has also expanded its Marine Corps.  Asylum-seekers travel to Australia via Indonesia, in often crowded and rickety boats The Australian government has been under scrutiny over asylum policy in recent days amid reports of boats being turned back to Indonesia. Indonesia serves as a transit point for people-smugglers, who ferry people to Christmas Island, the closest part of Australian territory, on rickety boats. The number of boats rose sharply in 2012 and the beginning of 2013, and dozens of people have died making the journey. In recent days multiple reports have emerged in Australian and Indonesian media of boats carrying asylum seekers being towed back to Indonesian waters by Australian navy vessels. It has also been reported that Australia has bought lifeboats for the purpose of transporting asylum seekers back to Indonesia. |
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Post by Admin on Apr 22, 2014 15:17:41 GMT
A Royal Australian Navy ship captain will be stripped of his command and another will receive a formal warning for his conduct over incursions into Indonesian waters during border protection operations. The Chief of Navy, Vice-Admiral Ray Griggs, said in a statement on Thursday that he believed the incursions in December and January were inadvertent, but that they were not up to the standard of a navy commander.  Five other ship captains will be counselled. Seven navy ships were involved in the six breaches of Indonesia's maritime boundary, which infuriated Jakarta and caused the Abbott government acute political embarrassment. "There were, in the Chief of Navy's view, lapses in professional conduct that required action to be taken," the statement reads. As a result, Admiral Griggs would "remove one Commanding Officer from his command and another will be administratively sanctioned". It is understood that the administrative sanction will be in the form of a formal warning and reprimand. “Each of the Commanding Officers conducted these activities with the best of intent. However, I expect nothing but the highest standards of those in command,” Admiral Griggs said. It is understood at least some of the incursions happened while asylum-seeker boats were being turned back to Indonesia. A review of the incidents by Defence and Customs found that the breaches were inadvertent and arose because the ships' crews did not know where the maritime boundaries lay.  Indonesia, as an archipelago country, has boundaries that are calculated according to base lines, meaning the actual boundary can be much further out than the standard 12 nautical miles. Citing the Privacy Act, the navy is not giving the names of the ships' commanders, nor of the ships themselves. Furthermore, the statement does not explicitly state why the punishments differ across the seven ship captains involved, though it says that Admiral Griggs had "carefully considered the circumstances of the positioning of each ship" – indicating the captain stripped of his command had made more grievous errors than the others. Admiral Griggs added that the actions he was taking were "not punitive in nature but are aimed solely at upholding the professional standards that the Royal Australian Navy is renowned for and that are necessary for it to undertake its mission". |
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2015 19:54:04 GMT
The country’s refugee debate won’t change overnight, but with humane voices rising we can start making gains, writes Ben Eltham. The glimmer comes from the medical community, after doctors and nurses at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital announced they would refuse to discharge children back into immigration detention. Medical staff held a rally outside the hospital on the weekend, holding a prominent banner that read “Detention harms children.”  The well-established literature on the mental and developmental health impacts of detention places medical professionals in an invidious position. Doctors are famously charged with an ethical duty to “do no harm”, and yet allowing children back into the clutches of Australia’s brutal immigration gulag will almost certainly harm them. A Royal Children’s Hospital paediatrician, Paul Monagle, said in a statement that “what we see from children in detention is a whole range of physical, mental, emotional and social disturbances that are really severe, and we have no hope of improving things if we’re sending those children back to detention.”  “Many of the children we’re seeing have spent more than half their life in detention,” Monagle continued. “This is all they know and it is not what children should know. Children should be safe in a community with their family, not in detention.” The Australian Medical Association and Victorian Labor government backed the protest. But in recent days it appears as though the hospital has backed away from its vow not to release children back into detention.  For his part, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was having none of it. “I understand the concern of doctors, but the Defence and Border Force staff on our vessels who were pulling dead kids out of the water don’t want the boats to re-start,” Dutton told journalists in a statement. “My support is with the Defence and Border Force staff and I won’t be supporting a change in the policy.” The brave action of the Royal Children’s Hospital is one of the strongest protests in recent times against Australia’s horrific offshore immigration jails, which have seen well-documented incidents of murder, rape, and the sexual abuse of children. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 24, 2015 20:02:54 GMT
 The United Nations chief, Ban Ki-moon, has personally called on Malcolm Turnbull to reconsider Australia’s policy on turning back asylum seeker boats during a meeting in Malaysia. The UN secretary general also took the opportunity to raise concerns about conditions in Australia’s offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. The meeting with the prime minister took place on the margins of the Asean summit in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday. Ban raised the issue of refugees and migrants in the Asia Pacific region. “The secretary general expressed concern over the detention conditions in Australia’s offshore processing centres and encouraged the prime minister to reconsider Operation Sovereign Borders,” a summary of the meeting issued by the UN said. Ban noted Australia’s “longstanding commitment to refugee resettlement” and “appealed to the prime minister to share responsibilities”. Turnbull has continued the practice of secrecy around Operation Sovereign Borders, saying on Friday that the government would not disclose details about the reported boat arrival because “we do not comment on operational matters”. On Monday, the government again refused to comment on the location of the boat, or the circumstances of its passengers and crew. |
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