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'Refugees/not refugees — here it is all the same,' a man tells me with a shrug. There seems to be both recognition of the impossibility of the situation for all who have been left here — but also an attitude that no one should be left behind.
'Another thing you should note about the deer,' Augustine gestures to the crowd. 'They cross a stream in single file. One deer lays its head on the back of its forerunner, and the leader changes place often. In these ways they carry one another's load and show us how to bear burdens of our sisters and brothers.'
Social media drove the Arab Spring, the story goes. If it weren’t for viral posts in Tunisia setting off a cascade of dominoes across the region change would never have arrived. For a brief period, the arrival of social media giant Facebook in countries with low connectivity or strict freedom of the press and internet meant change was afoot.
Uteruses, and in particular, periods, have long been used against menstruators — to malign, to marginalise, to make us feel lesser than. In ancient Greece, it was thought that the uterus (hysterika) was able to travel throughout the body, and that a wandering uterus was a sign of mental illness. The word hysteria has been used since then to minimise the severity of women’s mental health issues.
We're about to land, but I don't know where I'm going. The landscape spread below me is a tableau of muddy waters and tin-roofed houses poking out from palm groves. I thought I'd be flying direct to Paro, in Bhutan, but discovered once airborne that this Royal Bhutan Airways flight would be landing first at a place I'd never heard of.
Recently the Minister for Home Affairs has confirmed he still wants to provide humanitarian visas to 'persecuted' white South African farmers. Regardless of any political issues, there are a number of legal hurdles these farmers could face in order to meet the strict definition of refugee in Australian law.
Francis' approach to the religious differences in Myanmar and Bangladesh models something of universal significance for the Catholic Church. If, in the 21st century, the Church in Asia is generations from its colonial foundations, it is also well aware of its minority status and its need to live well with fellow citizens who are religiously different.
Australia's incoherent urge to 'lead' in the Asia Pacific while refusing to meaningfully reflect on the responsibilities this would require has left us floundering in the face of what the United Nations has called the 'ethnic cleansing' of Myanmar's minority Rohingya population.
Much has been reported on the plight of the Rohingya in Rakhine state in Myanmar's west, where violence has seen more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh. Elsewhere in the country, local villagers continue to suffer the effects of a four cuts strategy, and are targeted if they are suspected of helping ethnic armies. In the country's north, aid has been slow to reach 20,000 Kachin villagers living in former gambling dens and warehouses along the China border.
Inspired by the exploits of Aboriginal AFL stars, the young Lumumba quickly recognised football as an arena in which a black man could flourish. This fact makes his treatment at the Collingwood Football Club years later all the more galling. The club so far has failed to Lumumba's comments in any meaningful way. He deserves better, and so do we.
If climate change were a short-term problem, polarisation wouldn't be so crippling. One side could push a solution through parliament, and by the time the other side took power it might be a non-issue. But climate change is an extraordinarily long-term problem that requires massive investment in new infrastructure and consistent policy settings over decades. It needs a supermajority of support so years of work isn't undone with each change of government. That means getting conservatives on board.
On Sunday, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton seemingly relented, allowing the child to be released into community detention rather than carting her off to Nauru. It has, however, been made clear that this is no prelude to settlement in Australia. Dutton's line goes to evenness in policy: 'We are going to have a consistency approach here ... intelligence out of Indonesia recently was that people smugglers were reporting ... there was going to be a change in policy.' None of these arguments passes muster.