The AJDS often hosts unique events and gatherings, attended by a diverse crowd that gathers to talk in ways otherwise unavailable. We cherish these moments and always try to keep a record of each as best we can – notes, pictures, and recordings. For this reason, we call upon our members and supporters to dig deep […]
By Sivan Barak. Every Friday night for the past 60 weeks I’ve driven out of the ‘ghetto’, over the river, just 32 km south, to the far away land of Broadmeadows. It’s a weekly participation in a macabre ritual, the antithesis to Melbourne’s dubious title, ‘most livable city’. During these visits I witness what I can only […]
By Jordy Silverstein On March 25 2004 it was reported by the Hobart Mercury that “immigration minister Amanda Vanstone said yesterday she had received letters from primary school children calling her a racist pig.” Apparently, “she said she was not offended by the abusive letters but annoyed children had been influenced to write such things.” […]
The Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia was used for the mandatory detention of asylum seekers between 2002-2007. In 2003 detainees protested and set fire to the facilities over the Easter Weekend protests. This happened again with worse results in 2005, but then Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said that acts of vandalism and self harm […]
By Sam Levnad This article was originally published in Arena Magazine. How can we work towards refugee and asylum-seeker rights while acknowledging Aboriginal sovereignty? The death in September last year of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Kurdish Syrian boy, filled the front pages of international media. Aylan, along with his elder brother, Galip, and his mother, […]
It’s been noted here, there and everywhere, that the Melbourne Jewish community, as a general rule, continues to support the Jewish National Fund and the United Israel Appeal, despite widely available evidence of corruption and embezzlement in those organisations. Here are two items from mainstream Hebrew media, both by Raviv Drucker, detailing the extent of […]
The Refugee Council of Australia has issued the following statement (3/2/17), of which the AJDS is signatory, along with countless other organisations: We, as a coalition of organisations and community groups from around Australia, are writing to express our concern regarding the humanitarian crisis that Australia has created. Successive Australian governments have managed and funded offshore […]
Last year Behrouz Boochani wrote in the Guardian about arriving in Manus Island: “Twenty-eight months ago, with a shattered body which was ravenously hungry and deeply wounded, with bare feet and exhausted soul, I made the trip to the soil of free territory, to Australia. It was four days after the announcing the 19th of […]
It was on International Holocaust Memorial Day this year, after issuing a statement that made no mention of Jewish – nor any other – victims of the Holocaust, that Donald Trump signed an Executive Order banning people from 7 predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The effects were swift and brutal: people who […]
While the world focuses on the Occupied Territories, the plight of Israel’s Bedouin citizens has gone largely unnoticed. The Bedouin communities of the Negev (Naqab in Arabic) desert have been subject to Israeli policies of forced relocation and home demolitions, which has heightened in recent weeks. These moves have been pushed by the Israeli government […]
