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Keywords: Persecution

  • RELIGION

    Elusive Easter's challenge to wider society

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 March 2016
    24 Comments

    To many the challenge to endurance comes from a public world in which small gains are overtaken by huge losses. Why bother about people who seek protection from persecution or about our natural environment when the small initiatives we take are overrun by a flood tide of brutality and cynicism? What hope of building harmony in society when the Paris bombings are followed by those of Brussels? This challenge is universal, so the Christian celebration of Easter is of wider interest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No retrospective fix for traumatised refugees

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 05 February 2016
    6 Comments

    The practice of governments using the Parliament to change the law in order to win court cases is unfair, as only one party to a court case has the power to do this. The M68 case decided on Wednesday, which challenged the detention and transfer to Nauru of asylum seekers, was effectively won by the government because they changed the law retrospectively to make sure they would win. No retrospective fix will be possible for people who fled persecution only to face a punitive and hostile policy.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Syrian priest rages for refugees

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 30 September 2015
    1 Comment

    'They are people. They are not sheep for slaughter. They deserve to be treated like a human. And that's what Europe stands for.' Born and raised in Syria, Fr Rahal Dergham now serves as chaplain to Syrian and Iraqi Catholic Migrants in the Archdiocese of Sydney. In this interview he speaks about what Australia and the broader international community should be doing to address the present refugee crisis, the persecution of Syrian Christians, and the troubled relations between Syrian Muslims and Christians.

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  • The politics of popular evil and untrendy truth

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2015
    1 Comment

    If you want to form government in Australia and if you want to lead the Australian people to be more generous, making more places available for refugees to resettle permanently in Australia, you first have to stop the boats. If you want to restore some equity to the means of choosing only some tens of thousands of refugees per annum for permanent residence in Australia from the tens of millions of people displaced in the world, you need to secure the borders. The untrendy truth is that not all asylum seekers have the right to enter Australia but that those who are in direct flight from persecution whether that be in Sri Lanka or Indonesia do, and that it is possible fairly readily (and even on the high seas) to draw a distinction between those in direct flight and those engaged in secondary movement understandably dissatisfied with the level of protection and the transparency of processing in transit countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The popular evil is that political

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Is our morality at sea with the refugees?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 April 2014
    8 Comments

    'We should abandon talk of taking Australia off the table. We should also abandon talk of taking the sugar off the table. The collateral damage of that is too great. The best we can do ethically and practically is to put the sugar out of reach while leaving it on the table for those who make it here with a visa or in direct flight from persecution.' Frank Brennan contributes to a Palm Sunday panel at St Michael's Uniting Church, Melbourne.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Seven pointers for stopping the boats ethically

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2013
    35 Comments

    Last Tuesday, seven West Papuan asylum seekers reached Boigu Island in the Torres Strait. Without any determination of their refugee claims, they were removed to PNG. They were not engaged in secondary movement, they were in direct flight from persecution. The Abbott Government should recommit to our obligation under the Refugees Convention to grant asylum to refugees who have entered Australia in direct flight from persecution.

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  • RELIGION

    Community fear feeds Fox News Muslim bashing

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 02 August 2013
    10 Comments

    The now notorious Fox News interview in which host Lauren Green quizzes academic Reza Aslan as to why he, a Muslim, 'would be interested in the founder of Christianity', is mind-boggling in its casual persecution. A similar mistrust of Muslims is evident in Australia, as the Ed Husic debacle demonstrated. Even I, a non-practising Muslim at best, encounter hostility when I write on certain issues.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Facts alone won't save Australia's fatuous political agenda

    • Michael Mullins
    • 15 July 2013
    12 Comments

    It is pleasing that PolitiFact is able to demonstrate that foreign minister Bob Carr's claim that boat people 'are not people fleeing persecution ... they are coming here as economic migrants' is 'mostly false'. But even if Carr's claim was mostly true, how does discussion of the comparatively small number of economic migrants justify its place on the agenda, compared with issues such as the mental health of Australia's youth? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ensnared by sex abuse paranoia

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 02 May 2013
    3 Comments

    Kindergarten teacher Lucas' life falls apart after he is wrongfully accused of abusing a young girl. We might feel outraged at his persecution, yet are his persecutors really guilty of anything more than taking a victim at her word? Rather than a cautionary tale, Lucas' story is best viewed as a tragedy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We all lose when governments trash the law

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 December 2012
    15 Comments

    Evidence about the persecution of returned Sri Lankan asylum seekers calls into question the justice of summary repatriation. And the actions of the Australian Government have thrown doubt on its legality. The rule of law is a delicate web of relationships that protects the weak from the tyranny of the great, and we are all weaker when it is broken. 

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  • RELIGION

    Religious persecution is not a contest

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 November 2012
    11 Comments

    Research into the persecution of Christians brings to notice abuses that could otherwise remain hidden. But the persecution of Christians is often compared with that undergone by other groups, like Muslims. The discussion takes on a competitive and proprietorial edge. This has unfortunate consequences.

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  • INFORMATION

    Refugee persecution is stupid

    • June Factor
    • 18 March 2011
    8 Comments

    A Sydney Morning Herald editorial 71 years ago declared that to persecute refugees 'is stupid from the purely practical point of view'. The practical and humanitarian reasons it outlines for welcoming refugees remain relevant today.

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