Keywords: Criminal Responsibility
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AUSTRALIA
- Julian Butler
- 22 February 2022
5 Comments
Having previously spent time as lawyer working predominantly in the Children’s Court of Victoria, there isn’t too much about the State’s treatment of young people that shocks me. That is, until a few weeks ago when I was drawn to the final item of The Weekend Australian’s editorial column. Under the heading, ‘Hurt boy’s inhuman treatment’, was set out the details of a 15-year-old West Australian boy who had been ‘locked alone in a glass-walled observation cell of a juvenile detention centre in the southern suburbs of Perth for 79 days.’
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AUSTRALIA
- Julie Edwards
- 18 January 2022
2 Comments
The images are simultaneously striking and terrifying. A raging grassfire that is shooting flames into the sky and destroying nature around it and lapping perilously close to the fences around Central NSW’s Lithgow Correctional Centre. As local residents were evacuated and highways were closed to protect public safety when the fire raged out of control just before Christmas in 2019, 400 prisoners remained detained.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 23 November 2021
51 Comments
The passing of South Africa’s last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, raises pressing questions about a complex historical character who, according to his brother, Willem de Klerk, slowly outgrew apartheid. In a critical sense, he was bound, understandably, by both time and context: race, the need to defend a racial hierarchy, the historical role of a segregationist system that saw his all-white National Party retain power for decades.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 July 2021
9 Comments
The tidal movement from treating children as persons each with their own dignity, and worthy of respect and of encouragement to a good future, to treating them as adult and incorrigible criminals worthy only of punishment is both irrational and injurious of society as well as of the children themselves. Yet it is deeply rooted in the mindset of all Australian Governments.
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AUSTRALIA
- Celeste Liddle
- 15 June 2021
9 Comments
Those two little boys turn ten this year, reaching a milestone most Australians celebrate simply as reaching 'double figures'. Yet with these double figures comes a new threat most Australians aren’t aware of: they will also reach the age of criminal responsibility.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 13 April 2021
2 Comments
In May 2019, Adani Ports entered into an agreement to construct, operate and transfer land held by the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) military conglomerate for 50 years in an investment valued at US$290 million. Such corporate conduct has broader implications. Investing in Adani is not only environmentally unsound but imperilling of human rights.
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AUSTRALIA
- Cristy Clark
- 26 November 2020
5 Comments
This past weekend, I visited my grandparents in their residential aged care home. As usual, it was both lovely and utterly heartbreaking. Lovely, because I feel so lucky to be able to spend time with them, that they are still alive, their home is accepting visitors, and they still remember who I am. But, also, heartbreaking, because aging is tough, and living in residential aged care is tougher still, and this year, well, this year has made it all so much harder.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 24 November 2020
21 Comments
The discussion in Australia as to how such atrocities are to be approached is telling. The call for responsibility has varied by degrees. Most tend to some variant of the rotten apple theory: a few particularly fruits that may be isolated and extruded from the barrel. Culpability can thereby be confined, preserving the integrity of other military personnel and, importantly, political decision makers.
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AUSTRALIA
- Sherry Balcombe
- 09 June 2020
25 Comments
The streets were packed there were thousands of people there to march in solidarity with us. It was so incredibly heartening. Australia is growing. The only time I have felt this atmosphere was in Sydney in the 1988 march on Australia Day. But this time was different very different it was predominately young people under the age of 30. They get it, they do see it.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Bree Alexander
- 31 January 2020
On 23 January, the International Court of Justice handed down an unprecedented unanimous decision on provisional measures in the case of The Gambia v Myanmar. While the judgement has given hope to some, the Rohingya population still remains largely in dismal and precarious refugee camp conditions.
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AUSTRALIA
- Bree Alexander
- 22 November 2019
4 Comments
From strip searches to a needlessly low minumum age of criminal responsibility, Australia continues to be a menacing place for children encountering law enforcement. The need to be seen as 'tough on crime' plagues the major parties and precludes nuances within the criminal justice sphere including the protection of the rights of the child.
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ENVIRONMENT
- Bronwyn Lay
- 23 September 2019
11 Comments
These strikes aren't solely sites of protestation but rather a chance to step out of the individual grey loneliness to come together for our collective future in intergenerational solidarity. There is something powerful and visceral about putting your body on the street, in the public forum, with other bodies and being vulnerable together.
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