Here are some of our favorite snaps from the event, courtesy of our photographer Wendell Teodoro. All photos available online here.

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Border Politics follows Burnside as he travels the globe examining the harsh treatment of refugees at the hands of western democracies. This contemporary story is about the threat to human rights, the loss of democratic values and our increasingly heartless treatment of ‘the other’. Seventy years after the world constructed international conventions to ensure the horrors of World War 2 wouldn’t be repeated, Burnside finds it terrifying to see Australian and other western political leaders exploiting fears around border protection to extend political power.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to hear from Burnside on his experience filming Border Politics, and how we can turn the ship around and regain our humanity.

We are pleased to offer Sydney Peace Foundation supporters special discounted $15 tickets! Don’t miss out, join us for this exciting event.

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Jandali composes symphonies which integrate ancient folk melodies from Aleppo and the Silk Road to preserve the musical heritage of Syria.

“I’m trying to integrate these ancient melodies that Aleppo embraced into my symphonic, classic and chamber works in an effort to present it on an international stage,” Jandali told AAP.

“Someone in 200 years might say ‘what happened in Aleppo’ and someone can say ‘here’s how it sounds’ because there’s no Aleppo any more. The world is witnessing the eradication of Aleppo and total destruction, I’m trying to revive it and keep it alive through the music.”

The musician and composer makes his Australian debut this week for a series of concerts in Sydney to coincide with National Refugee Week.

Jandali left Syria in 1994 to study piano in the US. He has since become one of the first artists abroad to speak out against state oppression and the Assad regime, and has been awarded for his humanitarian work as well as founding Pianos for Peace, a non-profit promoting peace through music.

He returned to perform at a refugee camp in 2012 and last month travelled to the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, home to 80,000 refugees, where he performed in a benefit concert for Save The Children.

“Music evokes all these memories so when you have all these children and they hear a tune from their village or homeland, seeing that smile on their faces, or having them join us in singing the tune, that was just magical,” he said.

“You can sense the psychological effect of the war and being displaced and forced to leave home, it’s very tough. I could sense that in the children.”

His main goal is to spread a message of peace through music and give refugee children a voice.

“What we are trying to do through this meaningful concert and timely event is to unite all communities to change the narrative, make the art accessible to all and tell the world that these poor children are humans. We are trying to humanise their voice through music,” he said.

“The audience forgets the beauty of Syria and how beautiful it is, we only see the ugliness the bad news, the blood shed and the politics, how about presenting a beautiful piece about these innocent beautiful children and the music they have?”

*Malek Jandali will kick off a week of concerts and engagements in Sydney on Friday June 16 and will perform A Syrian Symphony for Peace in the Sydney Opera House on Saturday, June 24.

This article, written by Danielle McGrane (AAP) appeared on news.com.au on June 15. 

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The death of a 23 year old asylum seeker and injuries to over sixty others on Manus Island are the inevitable consequences of a policy of violence based on bullying and brute force to arrest, detain and humiliate vulnerable and weak people.

The present government’s policy runs counter to the UN Refugee Convention and our international legal obligations, is an abuse of human rights and an affront to ideals of a common humanity. No asylum seekers are illegals. All merit a nonviolent response to their efforts to escape persecution and oppression.

A nonviolent policy initiative would include on shore processing of applications and the management of the special needs of traumatised asylum seekers by experienced, professionally trained and carefully chosen caseworkers.  The goal would be to assist those found to be refugees to become productive members of the community as quickly and efficiently as possible.  That policy should include a human rights education programme to explain to the public the world wide dimensions of the refugee tragedy, plus explanations as to where people seeking asylum in Australia have come from and why they are fleeing.

Yet instead of nonviolence, the major political parties have engaged in a race to the bottom to demonstrate who is the toughest, who the most intolerant. The present government has opted for a policy aimed at frightening asylum seekers who contemplate turning to Australia for help and punishing those who still try by sending them to one of the most dangerous countries on the planet.  Our pugilistic Prime Minister would have it that anyone who objects to this institutional mistreatment of others is a ‘wimp’.

Further, these policies have been sustained by extraordinary secrecy.  They are being justified on the basis that, as the provocatively named Operation Sovereign Borders suggests, we are under attack and on a war footing.  That proposition is both shameful and ridiculous.

The events on Manus Island should make all of us think again about principles of human rights and the philosophy of nonviolence. Those principles and that philosophy should underpin our response to asylum seekers from wherever they come and by whatever means they come.

If arguments based on the rule of law and common decency can be dismissed as “moral blackmail”, another angle should be considered:  Given this government’s commitment to fiscal responsibility and budget reduction, why not deploy its battalions of productivity analysts to compare the billions of dollars spent on the current asylum seeker policy with costs of a nonviolent alternative?

For further information or interviews please contact Professor Stuart Rees: stuart.rees@sydney.edu.au

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In spite of the Rudd resurrection, the refugee debate in Australia is still framed in the odious game of gaining political mileage by demonstrating a certain chauvinist pride in protecting borders.

To that end, to convey that the assessment of refugee status is not tough enough, that too many unworthy people may gain entry to this boat-people-besieged-country, the Foreign Minister Bob Carr claims that as many as 100 per cent of Iranian asylum seekers may only be “economic migrants”.

Yet, in crowded camps on the Thai Burma border, the values of refugees and their supporters suggest that if Australia wants to build a fairer society, much can be learned from refugees – people so easily stigmatised as unwanted and unworthy.

Evidence from Jim Chalmers’ recently published book Glory Daze shows Australians bemoaning their financial lot even when most enjoy the benefits from an affluent economy. On this issue there is a chasm between the values of refugees and their supporters and the priorities deemed important by politicians.

Different attitudes towards entitlement to health and education services are an indication of the width of this chasm.

Kachana, the director of the Burma Children’s Medical Fund, describes her work:

Of course we provide medical services as a right, not just because our patients are poor. We do depend on donors to finance our services but how could you talk to sick people about costs when our responsibility is to meet their needs?

In the Thai border town of Mae Sot, the Mae Tao clinic provides medical services for hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrant workers. The director of the clinic, Dr Cynthia Maung, gives me her interpretation of a common good:

During the funding crisis of last year, we were $650,000 short, but we could not afford to charge patients. To combat that crisis, all the staff agreed to take a 20 per cent cut in their meager wages.

A supporting Australian doctor, Kate Bruck, explains:

That reduction was uniform because of an equity in pay policy: same wages for surgeon, nurse, social worker, fund raiser, accountant, librarian or manager of sanitation.

My interpreter and guide in the Ma Lae refugee camp was a 41-year-old Karen named Law La Say, whose salary for his job to train camp residents to be therapists for drug addicts is $250 per annum. To the question, “How do you mange to be so optimistic?”, he answered:

I survived 17 years in the jungle, always on the move from the Burmese army. There was no time to cry. Laughing expresses my feelings. This camp may seem like a prison, but we know one another, we can support one another.

Law La Say’s thoughts are echoed by Naw Nweh, a member of the camp’s Women’s Support Group:

I also lived in the jungle. This camp is better because it is our family home. We know we are refugees but we have hopes for our children, even for repatriation to Burma.

With a shy smile she adds:

But don’t believe what they tell you about the reforms in Burma. The people in charge are the same people who drove us here.

In Australia, in the controversy over the Gonski report, state premiers still calculate the difference between their political fortunes and a commitment to children’s future education. The pugnacious Premier Newman of Queensland seems to favour his short-term political interests over any long-term vision about the quality of education for all children irrespective of their parents’ means.

Karen children also want the opportunities provided by education in good schools. The Bangkok Post journalist Phil Thornton records:

On the Karen side of the border, the schools have no buildings and no desks. In small groups children cluster under the shade of a large teak tree. Their teacher explains, ‘Time is precious for our children. They are desperate to learn but our biggest problem is malaria.’   

A final contrast in values concerns food. While Australian television is saturated with programs on how to cook, how to extend knowledge of nutritious dishes, and even how to lose weight because you have eaten too much, UN reports about Burma identify problems of hunger and food security. In their report Chronic Emergency, the Back Packer Workers Team from Mae Sot concluded that hunger and malnutrition has drastic effects in eastern Burma where one in 10 children will die before age one and more than one in five before their fifth birthday.

A refugee, Naw Doo, explains that she and her two teenage children are used to going without food:

Many times we only have rice and chilli. We eat twice a day. We get sick but that’s normal for people here. Look how thin I am.

In Australia’s election campaign, reference to a common good is unlikely. We are likely to hear derision about asylum seekers, probably talk about the benefits of privatising public hospitals to make them more efficient, and attacks against trade unions for eroding individual freedom.

Ironically, several significant projects on the Thai Burma border are financed by the humanitarian arm of Australia’s trade union movement, Apheda, whose staff value the ideals of a common good. To achieve such a goal, economist Jeffrey Sachs writes that perhaps the best we can do is to appeal to enlightened self-interest because it is everyone’s interest to care for the vulnerable and for the planet.

If the impressive Dr Maung became the campaign manager for Kevin Rudd or for Tony Abbott, she would emphasise why refugees who are thankful for small mercies have so much to teach those in a lucky country who might regard refugees as a threat to their well being.

On the hustings for either party, Dr Maung might start by explaining why health care should be given according to need and not according to an ability to pay:

If you want a healthy society, all people have to be treated as equals. If people are to live and work as equals, the barriers that divide them have to be removed.

Professor Stuart Rees travelled to the Thai Burma border in mid-June on an exploratory mission for the Sydney Peace Foundation. Stuart Rees is Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.

This article was first published by ABC’s The Drum on 3 July 2013

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Foreign Minister Bob Carr will head to London shortly for the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, amid growing calls for the cancellation of this year’s Heads of Government Meeting in the Sri Lankan capital.

It comes as the United Nations is finally preparing for more decisive intervention following the country’s civil war, in which government forces are accused of killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.

Australian diplomacy risks sending the wrong signals. Carr visited Colombo in December and pronounced it safe for the return of Tamil asylum seekers – flatly contradicting every independent assessment. The UN Human Rights Council recently voted to send its own investigators after hearing ‘serious allegations of violations of international human rights law’, along with ‘continuing reports of violations… including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as intimidation of and reprisals against human rights defenders, members of civil society and journalists, threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief’.

Sri Lanka was supposed to be tackling such issues through its self-proclaimed ‘Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission’, but this was a cynical exercise to buy time until international attention moved on.

The final offensive against the Tamil Tigers was planned as a ‘war without witnesses’, but investigative journalism led by the UK’s Channel Four, in collaboration with brave Sri Lankan reporters both in country and in exile, has kept the issue in the public eye.

The Commonwealth summit would be hosted by president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has been removing political and judicial constraints on his ability to wield despotic power. Two of his brothers also hold cabinet posts. The constitutional limit restricting presidents to two terms in office was removed, and the High Court chief justice was dismissed, after she stood up to him.

The last Heads of Government Meeting, in Perth, strengthened the Ministerial Action Group’s mandate. Empowered to intervene when the Commonwealth’s ‘values and principles’ are threatened, its grounds for engagement now include ‘the systematic denial of political space, such as through detention of political leaders or restrictions on freedom of association, assembly or expression’, particularly in conditions such as ‘systematic violation of human rights of the population, or of any communities or groups, by the member government concerned’ and ‘significant restrictions on the media or civil society’.

Human rights monitors and the UN’s own expert panel, which reported two years ago, show this is an accurate description of Sri Lanka today. Canada has already said it will not attend CHOGM if it is held there, and cites recent developments to support its argument.

So why has Canberra never backed demands for an independent international investigation of the alleged killing of civilians? Why has it not added its voice to calls for CHOGM to be moved? The answer may lie not in Sri Lanka at all but in one of the grimmest places in Australia: the MITA Detention Centre in Melbourne.

There, a group of 30 asylum seekers, most Sri Lankan Tamils, are on hunger strike because, they say in a statement by the Tamil Refugee Council:

We left Sri Lanka because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.

Their refugee claims have been granted, but they cannot leave detention – after three or four years in most cases – because of adverse security assessments by ASIO. The implication is that they are associated with the Tamil Tigers.

Not only is it fanciful to suppose that – even if they were – they would pose any threat to Australians, it is also difficult to imagine how such assessments could be made without collaboration with the Sri Lankan authorities: a source that is inevitably biased, because party to an unresolved conflict, and tainted by credible allegations of torture and abuse.

Is Australian diplomacy being distorted to avoid upsetting Colombo, for fear of an increase in the passage of boats carrying desperate people to our shores?

ASIO assessments cannot be challenged in court, which makes them a convenient tool for a government wishing to send signals to other would-be asylum seekers, without appearing to fall foul of international obligations. It’s a case cited by the NSW Council for Civil Liberties in its campaign to phase out ’emergency’ powers granted to the security agency following the 9/11 attacks.

Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka will have genuine asylum claims for as long as the country’s government attempts to suppress their political aspirations rather than engaging with them. Diplomacy should send a clear signal that Colombo is on the wrong track. Withholding its showpiece summit is among the only meaningful gestures the Commonwealth can make. The Ministerial Action Group, if it is not to belie its name, must now recommend that step.

First published on The Drum 15 April 2013. Associate Professor Jake Lynch, PhD is director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.

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By Professor Stuart Rees

In answer to the comment ‘Stand up for Human Rights in Sri Lanka’, a young man wearing a sombrero and an Australian flag draped around his shoulders, responded, ‘Fuck human rights.’

It was 10:05 am on Thursday January 3rd, a hot blue sky day, perfect for the start of the Australia v. Sri Lanka Test Match. In the company of about thirty others, on a pathway some distance from the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), I was attempting to hand out leaflets which said, ‘Don’t Let Cricket Hide Genocide, Boycott Sri Lanka.’

The “fuck human rights” man was followed by other expletives from a few others, so several of the boycott protesters changed tack and tried to be informative, ‘40,000 Tamils slaughtered, do you care ?’ A middle aged couple hurried by, looked straight ahead but answered ‘No we don’t care, we’re going to the cricket.’

Others strode along stony faced, some apparently dismayed by the sight of the protest, some obviously embarrassed at the thought that if they took our pamphlets they might be filmed by the accompanying television cameramen.

To add to the ‘40,000 slaughtered’ plea, I tried, ‘Journalists have disappeared and others have been killed for criticizing the Sri Lankan Government.’ Most people stared ahead and kept on walking but a large, swarthy man in short shorts responded ,’That’s bullshit’ and a few meters behind a smaller man said, ‘Don’t support you mate.’

A more understandable response came from groups of young men daubed in green and yellow, some wearing wigs of curled hair in the same colours. They seemed to think the protesters were supporters of the Sri Lankan team, a perception which provoked their patriotic ‘Ossie, Ossie Ossie, Oi, Oi, Oi.’

With a few exceptions most cricket followers did not seem to want to know about the lives of Sri Lankan Tamils, let alone about any past slaughter.

The task of informing the public had been made more difficult when security guards representing the Moore Park Trust forbade the erection of placards outside a main entrance to the ground which they said was SCG Trust Land. The leaders of the protest were directed to move to a pathway 400 metres distant.

This official Sydney reaction, ‘ Don’t let human rights interfere with cricket’ contrasted with the response of officialdom at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on the opening of the Boxing Day Test when a similar Boycott Sri Lanka protest was permitted at a prominent entrance to the hallowed MCG. There are no regulations about political demonstrations outside the MCG.

That Melbournites might be more sympathetic than Sydneysiders towards protests against the appearance of the Sri Lanka team, could be implied from an Age poll taken on the day after the Boxing Day test . A sample of 650 readers of that newspaper were asked ‘ Should Sri Lanka be banned from world cricket?’ 66 per cent said yes. 34 per cent said no.

The case for boycotting Sri Lanka was listed on pamphlets taken by only a handful of people streaming towards the SCG. At least that small number could have read that the UN has called for a war crimes investigation of the Sri Lankan government over the murder of 40,000 innocent Tamil civilians, that the persecution of Tamils continues and largely explains the numbers of Tamils seeking asylum in Australia.

Former Sydney Morning Herald cricket writer, the late Peter Roebuck, wrote that a TV exposé of the execution, rape and abuse of Tamils had ‘provoked deep consternation’ among Australian cricketers. A heading in the London Guardian said, ‘A Sri Lankan Scandal; Cricket and the Killing Fields.’

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We make this statement in terms of our commitment to the needs of a common humanity, in particular regarding the suffering of citizens within Syria and regarding those who have become refugees.

In terms of the Syrian people’s legitimate demands for democratic reform, we encourage everyone to aim at celebrating those differences which would nurture a flourishing democracy. Those differences would include religious beliefs and loyalties, ethnic origin and culture. But they might also be differences in terms of traditions of hospitality, dress, food, music, great art and poetry.

We also encourage celebration of a common ground in terms of universal human rights, the sovereignty of a nation and responsibilities for the preservation of Syria’s unique heritage and for stewardship of the environment.

Our thoughts are dominated by a commitment to non violence, ‘ the law for Life’ as defined by Mahatma Gandhi. Such non violence includes not only a cease fire in the present conflict but also an end to the smuggling of arms inside and outside the country.

Non violence also means an end to authoritarianism of any kind, whether in dictatorship, hatred for minority groups or domestic violence. Only dialogue and commitment to non violence can start a process of peacebuilding and healing within Syria.

The plight of Syrian refugees must be high on the agenda of any peace proposals. Turkey’s welcoming and caring for refugees illustrates the commitment to a common humanity which prompts this statement. We urge affluent developed countries to consult and support Turkey and any other host countries for Syrian refugees as to the short term resources required to make the numerous tent cities livable.

As for the long term prospects for refugees, that depends on an end to the violence and persecution within Syria; and a commitment by all parties not only to peace but also to peace with justice?

December 6th, 2012

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Last week Australia’s politicians determined to “do something” to stop people risking their lives at sea on asylum boats headed for Australia.

The government wanted a bill from independent MP Rob Oakeshott to pass because its ministers desperately want the boats to stop coming. Each new arrival is another nail in their political coffin. The opposition wanted the bill to fail because its members desperately want the boats to keep coming. Each new arrival is ammunition for them to fire at the government.

Both sides couched their arguments in humanitarian language: grief for those who died at sea last week and care for those contemplating the journey.

Both major parties have demonstrated their specific brands of “care and compassion” for boat people over the years.

The ALP introduced mandatory detention in 1991, amending legislation in 1992 to ensure a meddling judiciary didn’t set any time limits on how long someone could be detained. The coalition extended the care to include three year Temporary Protection Visas, the Pacific Solution and excision.

Out of sight, out of mind

Debate last week rested upon the “Stop the Boats” mantra. All eyes were on the domestic political prize. The proposed bill might have stopped the boats and “solved” the government’s political problem. But it would do nothing to solve the problems of the people getting on the boats. Instead, their problems would be pushed out of our sight and they would be left to fend for themselves without status in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan or Iran.

The people getting on boats know the crossing is dangerous. But all their options carry danger. They face danger in their home countries, in border towns and refugee camps, and in transit countries. At least the danger on the high seas holds the hope of safety ahead.

The solutions being discussed in Australia all focus on removing the enticement of safety ahead as a deterrent. None offer a realistic chance of safety at any step prior to the boat journey.

The Afghan situation

The largest group of people arriving in Australia by boat is from Afghanistan. Afghans are the world’s largest refugee population and have been for more than three decades; 96% of Afghan refugees are in Iran (1 million) and Pakistan (1.9 million).

Last year, a record high number of resettlement places were made available to Afghan refugees in Iran – just 1,350 visas. That’s a slightly better than 1 in 1000 chance of resettlement. Numbers of Afghans in Pakistan offered resettlement are not provided by the UNHCR. The focus there is on voluntary repatriation, although the security situation in Afghanistan makes this difficult to sustain as returnees quickly become refugees again.

Although the UNHCR considers Afghan refugees to be among the “largest and most protracted refugee situations in the world”, the reality is that resettlement through the UNHCR is effectively unavailable to Afghans. This leaves two ways for Afghan refugees to access permanent resettlement: enter a UN Refugees Convention signatory country and seek asylum, or be sponsored by a relative in a safe country. The second option often only becomes available after someone succeeds in the first.

Afghans are considered a “high risk” of seeking asylum by most signatory countries and are rarely granted tourist or other temporary visas. This means that Afghans wanting to seek asylum must enter without proper papers (a lawful right in Australia’s Migration Act as well as under the Refugee Convention).

No solutions, but better policy helps

Australia alone cannot solve the problems of all refugees. But there are policies that could be implemented quickly that would make a difference.

Increasing Australia’s refugee and humanitarian program to 20,000 would make 6,000 additional visas available immediately. If the government wants to stop the boats, it should look at who is getting on them and target the additional visas to those groups.

Perhaps 1,500 visas could be made available for asylum seekers in Indonesia and Malaysia – asylum seekers already in transit would see the “queue” moving and the expensive dangerous boat journey would immediately look less appealing. To avoid this becoming a “pull factor” into the region, the remaining visas could be allocated to refugees in Iran and Pakistan.

Working with the UNHCR

There are several precedents of nations working together and alongside the UNHCR to determine priority groups and end the protracted limbo of life in border regions. The Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indo-Chinese Refugees from 1989 to 1997 is an oft cited historical example. The resettlement of 100,000 Bhutanese refugees since 2007 has received little attention.

The UNHCR estimates that 786,000 refugees globally are in urgent need of resettlement, around a quarter of who are Afghan.

If Australia worked with the UNHCR to make resettlement through the “proper” channels a real enough possibility, it could reduce the need for refugees to get on boats in the first place. Then Australia’s politicians would really be doing something about deaths at sea.

Lucy Fiske does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

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